EFF Calls On HP To Disable Printer Ink Self-Destruct Sequence (arstechnica.com) 250
HP should apologize to customers and restore the ability of printers to use third-party ink cartridges, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in a letter to the company's CEO yesterday. From an ArsTechnica report:HP has been sabotaging OfficeJet Pro printers with firmware that prevents use of non-HP ink cartridges and even HP cartridges that have been refilled, forcing customers to buy more expensive ink directly from HP. The self-destruct mechanism informs customers that their ink cartridges are "damaged" and must be replaced. "The software update that prevented the use of third-party ink was reportedly distributed in March, but this anti-feature itself wasn't activated until September," EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow wrote in a letter to HP Inc. CEO Dion Weisler. "That means that HP knew, for at least six months, that some of its customers were buying your products because they believed they were compatible with any manufacturer's ink, while you had already planted a countdown timer in their property that would take this feature away. Your customers will have replaced their existing printers, or made purchasing recommendations to friends who trusted them on this basis. They are now left with a less useful printer -- and possibly a stockpile of useless third-party ink cartridges."
Just don't buy HP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't help all the people who bought HP before they knew this "feature" would activate at a later date.
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Yeah, but "don't buy HP printers" has been good advice for at least 20 years.
Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but "don't buy HP printers" has been good advice for at least 20 years.
So has don't buy Canon. Oh and didn't Lexmark start this whole cartridge encoding thing? And then there was Brother's reputation for jamming more than a fruit preservative factory.
The only good advice is to use pencil and hope you never need to duplicate pages at home because quite frankly all printer companies have shown some level of dickish behaviour.
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Whilst I'd never defend manufacturers grossly inflated ink prices, I do recall years ago, in my first ever job I had to repair printers sometimes and you could always tell when people had bought 3rd party ink because it genuinely did completely fuck up the print heads. It would just clog the things up, and it'd be a nightmare cleaning the dodgy ink off, my advice back then was to suck it up and buy 1st party, because it was still cheaper than getting your printer repaired, or replacing it every 6 months. Th
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So has don't buy Canon. Oh and didn't Lexmark start this whole cartridge encoding thing? And then there was Brother's reputation for jamming more than a fruit preservative factory.
The only good advice is to use pencil and hope you never need to duplicate pages at home because quite frankly all printer companies have shown some level of dickish behaviour.
All wannabe's anyway, HP included. I bought a business-class Xerox color laser off-lease and it has never betrayed me. It's ridiculously large and overpowered for what I need, since I turn it on maybe two or three times a year, but it has 4 independent toner cartridges for CMYK and Just Works, Windows and Linux over the network (it has its own Ethernet port). Never dries out, can do color if I need it, driver supports black-only printing so I don't waste color toner needlessly, and it's built like a tank
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Oh please, what a pile of crap.
I have an HP printer, and it's excellent. It's a LaserJet 2300d, made in 2003. It's only 13 years old.
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I'm fairly sure the 2x00 series printers used Canon engines.
Anyway, my 2300 is 13 years old now and still works great, though the plastic is yellowing. The 2200d I have before that was great too, but was slower and didn't have as many features, but it was quite reliable.
Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:5, Insightful)
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the problem is when the OEM carts are the inferior product.
what should happen is somebody should develop a printer where the head and the ink "tank" are completely separate and then publish a spec for the ink itself and the tank (with details on how big/heavy the tank should be max to prevent the carriage from getting damaged).
also any product with OTA/OTN firmware upgrades should have an actual physical jumper to enable/disable the flashing process
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That is what class actions are for.
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Yeah, great hindsight there. If you said so in March with details on why, that would have actually been useful.
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That's an entirely separate issue and the reason I don't personally use HP. However, it's not so bad that I would have recommended against them. Especially for everyday consumers who let the ink dry out in the printhead.
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That's an entirely separate issue and the reason I don't personally use HP. However, it's not so bad that I would have recommended against them. Especially for everyday consumers who let the ink dry out in the printhead.
Yeah, the alternative is exactly that.
I had to trash an almost-new $500 Epson inkjet; because the head WASN'T in the cartridge, and if you didn't print at least once or twice per week, the ink turned to some sort of "concrete", that, despite my best efforts and best Googling, would not dissolve with anything that wouldn't also turn the print head to mush.
So, I'm kinda glad that HP decided to put the print-head into the print cartridge, thankyouverymuch.
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Their software, however, is the work of the devil, and its "quality and reliability" entirely justify jailing the entire board of directors - possibly to several life sentences each.
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How do you not buy HP retroactively?
Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:4, Interesting)
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Thank you. I needed that. I have a colour laser printer from HP that's stuffed, not because they've done anything to deliberately disable it, it's just crap.
Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:4, Insightful)
Just don't buy HP
Ahhh yes. The USA. Freedom to get screwed over by corporations where the only power is to not buy from corporations after the fact, or to start a class action lawsuit netting the victims of corporate sabotage a $15 discount voucher for their next HP product. And when we're finished boycotting every company we can go back to using a mechanical pencil, at least until one company decides to release a 0.35mm version and their own super expensive refills for that.
I think it's time the USA woke up to the fact that the anti-government / free market takes care of all of our problems approach is not necessarily having the best outcomes.
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> or to start a class action lawsuit netting the victims of corporate sabotage a $15 discount voucher for their next HP product.
$15 !?
Usually the lawyers make millions and the people get a $0.10 refund.
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So you think this update was only for HP printers sold in the USA?
Wow you really have the reading comprehension of a 2 year old.
Stupid git.
Words fail me.
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Do you perchance have a newsletter to which I could subscribe?
No. But you can read about my thoughts in the legal systems of many other countries. But don't worry American't the rest of the world will bail you out when our consumer advocacy agencies which actually have teeth solve this mess for you. Just like we did with the Xbox red ring fiasco.
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I'm coming at you from an HP laptop I bought this year and have been happy with. But I bought a printer this year and after hearing that they are acting like such bastards about it I am very glad I didn't buy HP.
I bought a Brother double sided laser printer for $80 or $90 dollars off of Amazon. It also functions as a scanner, and third party cartridges for it from Amazon cost about $10-$15 and have worked great so far. I have been extremely happy with it. The double sided printing has been very helpful
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I'm coming at you from an HP laptop I bought this year and have been happy with. But I bought a printer this year and after hearing that they are acting like such bastards about it I am very glad I didn't buy HP.
I am still using a HPLJ2300DN with a jetdirect card in, and I love it. But I had an HP laptop with the G71 Quadro FX1500 which had a known wire bonding problem. It took over 24 hours of phone time to get the machine replaced. Fuck HP sideways. I won't buy anything new of theirs. I hear there's another printer made about the same time as the 2300 which is a little bigger and fancier and also good, but this fucker is multi-protocol and prints 17 PPM at 600 dpi which is really enough for anyone... who's just p
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Yes, for both individuals and businesses who are making a decision based on cost of ownership, HP's just went up a lot.
Probably moved them way down the list on the value for your dollar scale now. Not to mention they are no longer trustworthy either.
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People may need to learn the hard way that there is no free lunch here. If HP original printer + third party ink looks like a deal that is too good to be true, it probably is. Not defending the underhanded and dishonorable tactics of HP here, but in the end they have to make a profit and if they make a loss on the printer, they have to sell their own ink to compensate. This should not come as a surprise and neither should it be a surprise that HP would resort to sabotage.
The right approach is, of course, to
Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:5, Funny)
What is this "printer" thing you people speak of?
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I print personally maybe once a year, for taxes. A moderately priced home printer isn't good enough for that. At work, I print maybe 2 or 3 additional times per year. Printing is just becoming extremely rare for me.
My mother however likes to print a few times a year, and it's problematic. It's a second hand printer first of. But generally ink cartridges aren't working, nozzles get clogged, the color she wants is empty, several prints needed before it gets sized correctly, etc. If she understood things
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I print personally maybe once a year, for taxes. A moderately priced home printer isn't good enough for that. At work, I print maybe 2 or 3 additional times per year. Printing is just becoming extremely rare for me.
My mother however likes to print a few times a year, and it's problematic. It's a second hand printer first of. But generally ink cartridges aren't working, nozzles get clogged, the color she wants is empty, several prints needed before it gets sized correctly, etc. If she understood things like thumb drives and how to use them she'd probably do better just taking it to the local drug store to print, or to a friend's house.
Laser printer... No clogged heads, dried ink, etc....
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Laser printer... No clogged heads, dried ink, etc....
While old HP Laserjets are legendary, even my clearance model 5 year old Samsung Monochrome laser all in one is great when I need to print off the very rare printout... I still have the original ream of paper I bought with it.
That was the last printer I bought. I've had good luck with a couple low end Samsung Monochrome lasers before it.
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My ancient Samsung ML-1710 has been running for years. My Samsung CLP-300 color laser, on the other hand, jams every third page. I've given up using it. One of these days I'll get rid of it and free up desk space
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old laser jet 4s? (Score:2)
old laser jet 4s?
Build like tanks and they can take network cards and more. Also will just say something like NON HP cartage on boot up but that does not stop them from working.
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old laser jet 4s?
Build like tanks and they can take network cards and more. Also will just say something like NON HP cartage on boot up but that does not stop them from working.
LJ 4s don't have any DRM on the carts. that I know of.
I'll second that!
I bought an LJ 4M (with the Postscript Module) and a Jet Direct card, used, at a Salvation Army for $8. It had 8,000 copies on it (!!!!!)
It will work for me until the heat-death of the universe.
It's REALLY slow rendering Postscript; but if you send it PCL, it's pretty fast (about 8 ppm?).
I would, however, look for an LJ 4+; because it has a "sleep" mode that is reduced power, and doesn't keep the fuser hot all the time, like th
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You don't have to go that far into the past. You can get a HPLJ2300. $3 or so on eBay gets you a stick-on PCB which will bypass the toner DRM. Just transfer it to your next toner cart with some nice thin double-sided foam tape. It's a drastically better printer than a HPLJ4.
However, neither of these printers will print color, which is probably a requirement for his mom. She should just go to Kinko's.
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Yup, probably a good idea if you don't want color. I remember at the time of their popularity that people didn't like dealing with the powder cartridges, but probably simpler overall then the inkjet cartridges.
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don't buy printers (Score:2)
I quite agree w/ this. I used to have a printer, but found myself using it once in a blue moon. Actually, I had a combo device, and I used it to copy and scan documents to save in case of emergencies.
I think that it makes more sense to go to FedEx or UPS and print/scan/copy whatever one needs. All the paper activity one does won't sum up to the cost of a printer. And if the day comes when one can show a cellphone snapped copy of a document, such as a driver's license, to the government, that would e
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Re:Just don't buy HP (Score:5, Interesting)
What is this "printer" thing you people speak of?
If you deal with governments, lawyers, or doctors, you still need to print stuff on paper. I emailed a form to my local hospital, and they called and said I had to fax it. So I "e-signed" it, and sent it with my fax card. They called again and said that they could not accept e-signatures, so I had to print it out, sign it with real physical ink, scan it back in, and then fax the image. That was two months ago, and I haven't used my printer since.
Scan your signature (Score:5, Informative)
This is why I keep a transparent-background PNG file with my signature around. Easily inserted into a LyX document and no one on the other end of the fax call can tell the difference.
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This is why I keep a transparent-background PNG file with my signature around. Easily inserted into a LyX document and no one on the other end of the fax call can tell the difference.
That is what I meant by "e-sign". They rejected it. They could tell because there were several pages requiring signatures, and they were all exactly the same. They can also tell by the size/speed of the transfer. If only the sig is a scanned image the transfer will be much smaller than if the whole page is rasterized.
As much as hospitals charge, do you seriously believe that they aren't staffed up enough to detect fax cheaters?
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That is what I meant by "e-sign". They rejected it. They could tell because there were several pages requiring signatures, and they were all exactly the same. They can also tell by the size/speed of the transfer. If only the sig is a scanned image the transfer will be much smaller than if the whole page is rasterized.
As much as hospitals charge, do you seriously believe that they aren't staffed up enough to detect fax cheaters?
Could they also tell by the crispness of the fax? I remember being amazed 20 years ago at how aligned and clear things I "printed" with my "fax modem" were. Any time you fax something physical it's every so slightly crooked and jaggy.
10 years ago I remember when the "scanner" on the Multifunction machine at the office actually faxed it, complete with header, and it would end up on the network. I gave up and scanned things with my digital camera.
At my current job, for the past 6 years, I think I've only HAD
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Records are also a lot easier to steal and falsify on 21st century machines than they used to be.
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I though every one was going paperless
For those of us who eek out a living in ecommerce mail order, affixing a tablet (even a cheapo one) with a jpg of a postage label on it to each package would be cost prohibitive. Because of this, we still have to actually print out our labels and tape them to the packages before mailing.
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If you're doing that, you must be really clueless about ecommerce mail order, or you just got started and haven't figured out the proper way to do shipping.
The way you ship stuff is you buy a Zebra 4x6 label printer, and print your postage labels on that. Then you just peel and stick. You can even print these labels from within PayPal, though you can get better rates through places like encidia.com if you do a lot of volume (there's a monthly fee for those places though, so it's only worth it if you ship
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If you're doing that, you must be really clueless about ecommerce mail order, or you just got started and haven't figured out the proper way to do shipping.
The way you ship stuff is you buy a Zebra 4x6 label printer, and print your postage labels on that. Then you just peel and stick. You can even print these labels from within PayPal, though you can get better rates through places like encidia.com if you do a lot of volume (there's a monthly fee for those places though, so it's only worth it if you ship a lot of stuff).
What I have been using for years is an HP Laserjet 4100 network printer my little brother gave me (with enough refilled toner cartridges to last me a lifetime). Before printing, I reduce the label size down to 80%. At that size, I only need three short strips of clear tape to apply the label. Since I do have a paper guillotine and a tape emoizer*, it is a pretty quick process nowadays. No need to spend money on dedicated sticky labels either, as I have a metric buttload of regular paper to print on, whi
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Peeling and sticking 4x6 labels is far easier.
And I'm not sure how you can reduce a label to 80% and have it still work, though I'm admittedly somewhat ignorant on barcode standards. Do the labels still even scan?
Sticky labels are dirt cheap if you buy them in bulk on Ebay.
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What in the fuck are you yapping about? Has the Apple cult driven you completely insane?
I never said anything about paperless anything; we're talking about printing here.
And WTF are you talking about with aluminum? Aluminum isn't environmentally-unfriendly, especially not in the minute quantities it might be used in thermal paper. It's certainly a lot better than using a bunch of plastic packing tape to tape labels to packages.
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Thanks for the correction. It isn't an expression I use frequently, at least not in writing, so the typo should be understandable. ;)
HP should be shut down (Score:2, Interesting)
Do the world a favor.
Probably actually illegal (Score:5, Interesting)
This is probably actually illegal. Sony had to pay a settlement for disabling Linux on the PS3; HP is doing the same, so has at least a civil suit. Uniquely, however, HP has proven that their product is compatible with third-party ink, and has taken action to specifically to lock-out competition. That's probably an instance of Tying, and HP has sufficient market power to show that Tying is anti-competitive.
Re:Probably actually illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably, but I am reminded of the Microsoft/Stacker lawsuit. Stacker was a company that did on-the-fly disk compression for DOS systems. Microsoft met up with them and went through a lot of due diligence and saw a lot of Stacker's software code as part of a discussion about Microsoft licensing Stacker for the next version of DOS. They did not reach an agreement. Microsoft then incorporated a product in the next version that looked a lot like Stacker. Stacker sued and eventually won, but was already driven out of business by the time everything cleared court.
So, I ask you.. does it really matter if something is illegal if no one goes to jail and it is cheaper to pay a fine than deal with competition?
Re:Probably actually illegal (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked at a company next door to Slacker in the 90s. Long after the suit. And yet there was their building with a few actual people going in and out that we could see. The theory we had was that they were living off of the proceeds from the lawsuit, so yes, it was worth it for them.
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Sorry, "Stacker", not "Slacker". Freudian slip.
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The payout from the lawsuit was probably over time and the people who got the proceeds probably paid less taxes to take it over time. Keeping the shell of the business running for a few years made sense financially even if it was just a sham operation that would eventually fold.
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You are falling for the fallacy of scale.
Everyone knows that a candy bar is worth about $1-$2. So when you see someone get one for 50 cents, you know they underpaid, and when someone pays $10 for one, they overpaid.
But you have no idea the value of something like stakker. So they got a huge amount of money, it was their BUSINESS, and was beyond doubt worth a huge amount of money. If they had a $200 million company, but settled for $20 million, you would see that same thing as if they had settled for $400
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No one could really predict what it would be worth had Microsoft not stolen it. Microsoft's software was very popular because it was from Microsoft and included by default, whereas a third party product would struggle to get a decent market share over time. On the other hand they could have done the partnership deal with Microsoft, but would they have gotten the same amount of money that way? This was slighlty before the era of Microsoft shafting everyone and buying out competitors for a dime and shuttin
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Not really...
They won an original settlement of $120 million (about $5.50 per copy of DOS sold) less $13.6 million awarded to Microsoft for their countersuit. That was never paid. Microsoft appealed the decision and hung it up in court. Eventually, they settled for Microsoft investing $39.9 million into Stac (ie, they ended up part owner of the company they screwed over) and $43 million for Stac to try to move into a different area. Stac tried other products, but failed. In 2002, they sold their remaining
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I don't know about the USA, but in Brazil it *is* illegal, and as soon as enough such printers are "caught in the act" to be used as evidence, HP will be sued by PROTESTE (a consumer rights action group mostly made out of lawyers :p).
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A warranty cannot be voided if you replace a part that has a limited life due to being used up, for example ink-cartridges, paper in a printer, brake-pads on a car etc etc..
If someone claims otherwise they are wrong. Just check the Magnusson-Moss Warranty act regarding "Tie-in sales".
The only time you can void your warranty in this kind of instance is if you use 3rd party replacements parts even though the original manufacturer supplies the replacement for free OR if your 3rd party replacement breaks the eq
Illegal in Canada (Score:2)
Re:Probably actually illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
But will HP be punished enough so that they change their behavior? A suit is not always about getting rich.
Criminal damage and extortion charges (Score:2)
My machine was working, Now it's not. Therefore you have deliberately damaged it. And you are extorting money from me.
If each owner of an affected printer files a local criminal charge against the company, it will be forced to employ lawyers for each court appearance, they will soon be very very poor.
Only one surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Only one surprise (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only one surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The only surprise here is that anyone would still recommend HP printers.
Since we don't recommend pretty much every printer company for various and often similar dickish behaviour (seriously you think HP had enough innovation left to come up with this? They just copied this from Lexmark, and added a time delay to make it look new), just what should we do?
How many times do we have to say this? (Score:2)
OK, so I guess I'll be the one to say it:
I RECOMMEND that you buy an HP LASERJET PRINTER!
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Since we don't recommend pretty much every printer company for various and often similar dickish behaviour (seriously you think HP had enough innovation left to come up with this? They just copied this from Lexmark, and added a time delay to make it look new), just what should we do?
Maybe Lexmark could sue them for infringing their business model.
Brother laser printer $39 off Amazon (Score:3, Insightful)
I ran into this issue when the firmware auto updated and then all of the ink cartridges that I used to refill suddenly stopped working. There are a few hacks that involve putting tiny pieces of tape over the copper sensors of the ink cartridge, but it's not easily done. I ended up turning my HP printer into just a scanner and purchased a brother black/white laser printer off Amazon for $39. I've printed hundreds of documents and it's still running strong. My HP printer would print around 10 documents before running out of ink.
Go laser and never look back, black and white preferable unless you really need to print photos or something. We use Walgreens online for photos so don't really mind. What HP doesn't understand is they are shooting themselves in the foot over the longterm just to make short term profits.
The real (and very bad) message: no updates (Score:5, Insightful)
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Wow.
Please show me this amazing code you have written that has zero bugs ever and runs flawlessly in scenarios you had no way of imagining when you wrote it.
Re:The real (and very bad) message: no updates (Score:4, Insightful)
Please show me this amazing code you have written
I have this printer that does everything it was advertised to do correctly and prints just like it is supposed to. I have never seen it fail to produce a document that doesn't match the electronic version it was sent, except for hardware related issues (out of toner, e.g.)
Why the hell would I want to "update" it when "update" means "change" and "change" means it may do something different than it used to? It is doing what I want; change is not necessary.
I have yet to have any of my HP printers update anything. Maybe that's because I'm smart enough to not put the gateway address into the networked ones so they couldn't talk to a remote update server even if they tried.
HP employee here (Score:5, Informative)
Well, HPE, and not for much longer (going out on my terms)... anyway - we used to get ink for free, before the split last November, but honestly, I stopped using my HP printer about a year before that. The scanner functionality didn't work right over the network and after getting a Dell (the horror) color laser, there was no reason to print on an inkjet anyway. Now I have an All-in-one that prints great color and scans, all over the network - even does AirPrint and an app to print over Android devices, too.
Regardless of my feeling toward Meg Whitman and destruction of HP, I'd still recommend never buying HP Inkjets - same as I recommend not buying Epson (had those for years, then they put in a self-destruct after 3000 prints that just printed garbage on your media, dumb and expensive to the user).
The tactics of these companies are reprehensible, and should not be supported by anybody. It's not like HP cares about its customers any more, anyway. It's all about stock prices so they can sell it all off to hedge funds (and devalue the middle class' pension funds to line their own pockets) just before it finally collapses.
Re:HP employee here (Score:5, Informative)
Ditto from another HPE employee.
HPI makes printers, ink & consumer electronics (desktops, laptops, etc)
HPE makes enterprise hardware. (servers, networking gear, SANs, etc)
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Regardless of my feeling toward Meg Whitman and destruction of HP...
Unless you switched in mid-stream to talking about eBay, I do believe it was Carly Fiorina that fucked HP into the ground...Both of those ladies did a bang-up job on their respective corporations...
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Not quite: Ebay these days is actually still pretty useful, depending on what you're shopping for. I'm using it more than Amazon now, as the prices are frequently better. I've gotten lots of great stuff on there in the past year even: used cellphones, used laptops, new-old-stock items, etc. So Meg didn't quite manage to drive it into the ground.
Carly and HP, however, is another story....
HP has really come a long way... (Score:2)
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Back when there were no kids on my lawn... (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember the olden days when HP made good printers. Expensive, but good. They'd last 10+ years with virtually no trouble. Their network connectivity was flawless and reliable. Their mechanical design was indestructible. The print quality was top notch.
And then they started building "consumer" inkjet printers. And then they started marketing those low-grade printers to small offices. And then they jacked up the prices of ink. And now they're pulling this DMCA bullcrap. This is what "hell in a handbasket" looks like, and this is how legitimate businesses go to it.
What once was done by being a competitive provider of goods and services has now been replaced with marketing and lobbying. Corporations, take heed: hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but even that doesn't hold a candle to nerd rage. Do. Not. Piss. Off. The. Nerds. Or. They. Will. Put. You. Out. Of. Business. And. Use. Way. Too. Many. Single. Word. Sentence. Fragments.
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10+ Try 20+! My father still insists on using his old LaserJet 4P.
Laughs Out Loud, I have a LaserJet 5P I still use.
Threw my HP OfficeJet in the garbage last week ... (Score:5, Informative)
Screw HP (Score:2)
The EFF? WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
This strikes me as a contravention of anti-fraud and/or anti-trust laws, and should be the subject of criminal charges filed by various States and Federal attorneys. Sure, it's about Electronic Freedoms, and I'm glad the EFF is weighing in - but dammit, they shouldn't have to do so. Legal authorities should be doing their jobs.
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This strikes me as a contravention of anti-fraud and/or anti-trust laws, and should be the subject of criminal charges filed by various States and Federal attorneys. Sure, it's about Electronic Freedoms, and I'm glad the EFF is weighing in - but dammit, they shouldn't have to do so. Legal authorities should be doing their jobs.
HP has been doing this for so long that EFF weighing in now is questionable.
High-Maintenance but can't give me a blowjob... no (Score:5, Interesting)
If it floats, flies, fucks, or prints, it's cheaper to rent it.
I find I print more often after switching away from inkjet to laser. The problem with inkjet was I'd print so seldom that the cartridges would get clogged and that just made me want to use it even less. Why fiddle around for an hour trying to get a good photo print when the Walmart down the street is faster and doesn't go through $5 in ink each time? I had a geriatric (Centronics-50 SCSI; that's how old) Kodak dye sub printer that was less trouble.
I picked up a used business-class HP B/W laser all-in-one for $25 and the damn thing goes like a champ.
For color, I have a Brother laser. I'll sacrifice print quality for reliability any day.
Modern day Peasents (Score:5, Insightful)
Even better... (Score:2)
I call on my IT service customers to stop using inkjet printers entirely. Even if you insist on color, there is a Canon color laser for about $250. For the rest of us, there are a number of good $100 monochrome lasers. You can send the occasional color photo to Snapfish, with two-day turnaround.
yeah (Score:3)
I've used HP printers exclusively for decades, mostly because they "just work" with Linux.
I recently had to get rid of my still perfectly working HP all-in-one (PSC950) because it wouldn't work with Windows 10 and HP aren't concerned enough to support it anymore.
I switched my brand loyalty to Epson entirely because of these stupid ink cartridge games HP keep playing, and because Epson have individual cartridges for each ink colour, whereas none of the HPs I was looking at did. I calculate that In about 6 months of ownership, just my ink bill savings from going Epson this time round have more than paid for the new printer. It was only $89 but its actually a great networked printer/scanner.
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The OEMs can counter cheap third party ink by making their OEM cartridges priced competitively with their competitors.
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The stockholders should love such a scenario. Customers having access to HP branded ink cartridges at prices that won't break the bank, means more sales for OEM ink cartridges than HP would have otherwise received keeping prices artificially and prohibitively high. Mere sales quantity and the subsequent bottom line would likely be much higher than they would be with the current business model.
Plus, if HP makes it affordable to use their products, then customers may consider buying an HP printer again in t