HP Outrages Printer Users With Firmware Update Suddenly Bricking Third-Party Ink (arstechnica.com) 199
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: HP customers are showing frustration online as the vendor continues to use firmware updates to discourage or, as users report, outright block the use of non-HP-brand ink cartridges in HP printers. HP has already faced class-action lawsuits and bad publicity from "dynamic security," but that hasn't stopped the company from expanding the practice. Dynamic security is a feature used by HP printers to authenticate ink cartridges and prevent use of cartridges that aren't HP-approved. As the company explains: "Dynamic security relies on the printer's ability to communicate with the security chips or electronic circuitry on the cartridges. HP uses dynamic security measures to protect the quality of our customer experience, maintain the integrity of our printing systems, and protect our intellectual property. Dynamic security equipped printers are intended to work only with cartridges that have new or reused HP chips or electronic circuitry. The printers use the dynamic security measures to block cartridges using non-HP chips or modified or non-HP electronic circuitry. Reused, remanufactured, and refilled cartridges that reuse the HP chip or electronic circuitry are unaffected by dynamic security."
HP is set on continuing to use DRM to discourage its printer customers from spending ink and toner money outside of the HP family. "HP have updated their printers to outright ban 'non-HP' ink! They no longer shows the 'can't guarantee quality' message, but instead cancels your print completely until you inset a HP ink cartridge," Reddit user grhhull posted Tuesday. "After contacting HP, they advised 'this is due to the recent 'update' of all printers.'" It's unclear when HP issued updates for which model printers, but there are alleged customer complaints online stemming from late last year, showing plenty of customers surprised their printer no longer worked with non-HP ink cartridges after an update. Some pointed to third-party brands they had relied on for years.
HP community support threads include complaints about the OfficeJet 7740 and OfficeJet Pro 6970. HP lists both printers, as well as others, as able to circumnavigate dynamic security under specific conditions. However, HP's support page states this only applies to models manufactured before December 1, 2016. For more examples, there are comments on HP's support community suggesting that HP's OfficeJet 6978 and 6968 were recently affected. Both printers are discontinued, but HP's product pages make it clear that the fickle nature of dynamic security means that third-party ink could stop working at any time. And HP's dynamic security page also leaves the door open for the sudden bricking of functioning ink: "Firmware updates delivered periodically over the internet will maintain the effectiveness of the dynamic security measures," the page reads. "Updates can improve, enhance, or extend the printer's functionality and features, protect against security threats, and serve other purposes, but these updates can also block cartridges using a non-HP chip or modified or non-HP circuitry from working in the printer, including cartridges that work today."
HP is set on continuing to use DRM to discourage its printer customers from spending ink and toner money outside of the HP family. "HP have updated their printers to outright ban 'non-HP' ink! They no longer shows the 'can't guarantee quality' message, but instead cancels your print completely until you inset a HP ink cartridge," Reddit user grhhull posted Tuesday. "After contacting HP, they advised 'this is due to the recent 'update' of all printers.'" It's unclear when HP issued updates for which model printers, but there are alleged customer complaints online stemming from late last year, showing plenty of customers surprised their printer no longer worked with non-HP ink cartridges after an update. Some pointed to third-party brands they had relied on for years.
HP community support threads include complaints about the OfficeJet 7740 and OfficeJet Pro 6970. HP lists both printers, as well as others, as able to circumnavigate dynamic security under specific conditions. However, HP's support page states this only applies to models manufactured before December 1, 2016. For more examples, there are comments on HP's support community suggesting that HP's OfficeJet 6978 and 6968 were recently affected. Both printers are discontinued, but HP's product pages make it clear that the fickle nature of dynamic security means that third-party ink could stop working at any time. And HP's dynamic security page also leaves the door open for the sudden bricking of functioning ink: "Firmware updates delivered periodically over the internet will maintain the effectiveness of the dynamic security measures," the page reads. "Updates can improve, enhance, or extend the printer's functionality and features, protect against security threats, and serve other purposes, but these updates can also block cartridges using a non-HP chip or modified or non-HP circuitry from working in the printer, including cartridges that work today."
In the good old days (Score:5, Funny)
This would have resulted in heads on pikes.
Re:In the good old days (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the good old days (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people are only still alive because they just ain't worth a moment of jail time.
Re: In the good old days (Score:3)
It's only illegal if they can catch you.
Printer lessons (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Printer lessons (Score:5, Informative)
Don't buy inkjets if you don't print at least every week. Many private users are better off with laserjets.
Yeah, that was basically HP's game plan in the pre-DRM era. The print heads loved to clog, and they recommended running cleaning cycles (which wasted ink and made a mess inside of the printer when the waste ink sponge got full), ultimately leading to a need to just replace the cartridges anyway.
I switched to a cheap Brother laser printer awhile back, and aside from the minor nit-pick of no longer being able to print color photos, it's been a lot cheaper since the toner does not go bad.
Re:Printer lessons (Score:4, Informative)
Fellow Laser Brother user here, this printer is a dream. Easy to install and configure, prints flawlessly, is Wi-Fi enabled, its mobile app works very well too. It also easily integrates with Home Assistant, where I can see its stats.
Granted, I only printed under 1900 pages so far on it, and the drum status reports 82% - which is very good, considering I don't print stuff often.
Re: Printer lessons (Score:3)
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Same here. On those rare occasions where I need to print a photo or holiday cards, I put my images on a thumb drive and have them printed at Walmart or some other store with an industrial grade color photo printer.
Fuck HP.
Re:Printer lessons (Score:4)
I have a Brother color laser printer which was also not terribly expensive and I've been very happy with it, except that it periodically makes me pull the toner cartridges and move a slider back and forth for some reason. It usually has a paper halfway in that I have to pull out at the same time also. But I'd rather deal with that nuisance than HPs crap.
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and aside from the minor nit-pick of no longer being able to print color photos
You can do that at Walgreens, CVS, or Kinkos. And they will be higher quality than an inkjet printer.
Re: Printer lessons (Score:3)
Also ditched HP for a Brother laser. Duplex, scans, wifi works (HPâ(TM)s was forever dodgy) and takes non-Brother cartridges.
Re:Printer lessons (Score:5, Insightful)
still unclear as to why a printer would ever need firmware updates over the wire, or why it would need to access anything outside of your LAN to begin with?
scummy behavior though for sure.
Re: Printer lessons (Score:3)
Sounds like you're not aware of the "feature" of most HP and probably other printers, that can automatically order new ink to be shipped to you when your start running low.
It actually would be a useful feature if ink weren't more costly than unicorn blood.
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It actually would be a useful feature if ink weren't more costly than unicorn blood.
Printer ink is made using unicorn blood, there's a markup ...
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And by "low", of course, they mean "half-full".
Security updates Re:Printer lessons (Score:2)
still unclear as to why a printer would ever need firmware updates over the wire
If it's on a network, assume that it can participate in a network attack until proven otherwise.
Even if the printer is blackholed from the internet, an adversary could craft an attack that infected a normal PC, then used that PC to infect the printer, then used the printer to further infect the network.
Even a USB-only printer could probably be "abused" in this way, but the damage it could cause would be greatly limited.
Re:Printer lessons (Score:4, Insightful)
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still unclear as to why a printer would ever need firmware updates over the wire
Because it's 2023 and people can't code for shit, so expect every product to be buggy.
or why it would need to access anything outside of your LAN to begin with?
Because it's 2023 and without the ability to use something like cloud print it is borderline impossible to get modern tech to play nice. Ever tried printing from your tablet or phone over your LAN without some cloud provider? Yeah it's a sad world we live in, but a printer is there to be printed, and Apple / Google have f-ed up how to print a document on an OS level.
huh?? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Because it's 2023 and without the ability to use something like cloud print it is borderline impossible to get modern tech to play nice. Ever tried printing from your tablet or phone over your LAN without some cloud provider? Yeah it's a sad world we live in, but a printer is there to be printed, and Apple / Google have f-ed up how to print a document on an OS level.
My phone prints fine to my LaserJet on the LAN, just using the HP print driver for Android. I don't allow the printer to access the internet.
That said I probably won't buy HP again next time just because of stories like this.
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Re:Printer lessons (Score:4, Insightful)
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My printer hasn't had a firmware update since 2012. Why the fuck do printers ever need bullshit "updates"? Printers don't even need external network access.
Re:Printer lessons (Score:4, Interesting)
I have had great luck with this [newegg.com] printer. It's an inkjet, but it "just worked" with Ubuntu Linux. I didn't have to install drivers or anything. It plugged-and-played. Also, unlike HP, the phone app for this printer is not mandatory for setup or operation.
I also got it to work on Windows 10 but that did require downloading drivers from their website, and encountering some instructions in broken English and a spotty installer that got several self-extraction errors but managed to work anyway if you gave it time. That experience was a bit unnerving, but the printer performed great once it was over.
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(2) Don't buy inkjets if you don't print at least every week.
This one is off. The question of inkjet or not is not whether you print every week. You're perfectly fine printing more rarely unless you're one of those people who turn the printer off at the wall so it can't run it's cleaning routine.The question of inkjet should be limited to: do you need accurate colour reproduction yes / no.
If the answer is no then get a laser regardless if you print every week or not. If the answer is yes, then find someone who knows what they are talking about, to talk you out of the
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The only Laser print I had fail was more likely due to the Centronics to USB adaptor failing and not having any working PCs with a Centronics interface.
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Sure, the thing's the size of a minifridge and it weighs 100 pounds, but pound for dollar ($1), it's the best printer purchase I've ever made!
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2 and 3 aren't what they used to be. I formed much the same opinions about inkjets in the 1990s, and maintained those opinions through about 2015.
In addition to my color laser printer, I have an Epson Artisan 1430 and a Canon TS9020. Both are years old now, but they clearly show the advances to inkjets since the 1990s and 2000s.
The Epson is used as an office printer - one user, but she prints a lot. It has refillable cartridges in it, and it gets 1-2 cartridges refilled each week, on average. When the w
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(1) Don't buy HP.
Agreed. I've never met an HP printer with good print quality. The banding problems alone are reason enough to run the opposite direction. And I've experienced that on everything from black-and-white laser printers to color inkjet printers. And their supposedly industrial laser printers we used to have at work had a 100% jam rate printing 11x17 paper with duplexing turned on unless you printed a single pair of pages with a pause in between, because it would feed the next page in before the previous one c
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I was more thinking about ink cartridges in this case. Bottle/tank based printers a bit more expensive, but are paid off after one or two refills. The consumables are literally an order of magnitude cheaper.
Small Claims Court (Score:3)
IANALATINLA
Sue HP in small claims court. They'll lose most of them for failure to appear. The argument is that HP's actions directly lead to irreparable printer damage, and you're asking the court for compensation for your losses (a comparable replacement printer from an HP competitor, and the cost of the now unuseable ink).
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Are you sure they didn't have some BS skrinkwrap TOS that says you can only use HP approved ink?
Seems like a really good learning lesson to not buy HP ever again for those that are stung on this.
Re:Small Claims Court (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't argue that if they don't show up in court. And at a couple hundred, it is cheaper to just pay than to start a court battle trying to explain why they didn't show up.
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Are you sure they didn't have some BS skrinkwrap TOS that says you can only use HP approved ink?
I have no idea, but I don't think it matters. If they are overwhelmed with thousands of small lawsuits, they'll lose enough of them on the volume of failures to appear that legal arguments probably won't matter much.
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Small claims seems like a good idea if you can be bothered taking a day off work. Which nobody can, and HP knows it.
I've been reading similar stories to this on this site for the last 20 years, so it's clearly a profitable business tactic.
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IANALATINLA
Sue HP in small claims court. They'll lose most of them for failure to appear. The argument is that HP's actions directly lead to irreparable printer damage, and you're asking the court for compensation for your losses (a comparable replacement printer from an HP competitor, and the cost of the now unuseable ink).
The trouble with small claims court is getting the guilty party to pay up after the verdict in your favor.
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The trouble with small claims court is getting the guilty party to pay up after the verdict in your favor.
Send a collections agency after them.
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And get pennies on the dollar.
It's not that hard to do it yourself.
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Re:Small Claims Court (Score:5, Interesting)
In California, at least, that's trivial - if you go to the trouble.
You file a document with the court and subpoena someone relevant into court (someone finance, I would think, like the CFO) - if they don't show up, an arrest warrant is issued - and ask them questions, like "What banks does your company have an account with? What are the account numbers? What is the current balance." Then the court sends papers to the bank, which hands over the money.
Or, if you're feeling nasty, you have the Marshall's deputies seize office equipment and auction it off (the news media loves stories like that). (One company in Los Angeles that ignored a small claims judgement found their front doors chained one morning, with uniformed deputies guarding it. They were allowed in long enough to cut a check.)
With a retail operation (or anyone else known to keep cash on hand), you can send a uniformed deputy in to go through their cash register, or, for a somewhat higher fee, have a uniformed deputy operate their cash register, collecting all money taken in, until the total is reached.
But you do have to go through the motions (and there are up-front costs, which are added to the amount collected.)
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Sue HP in small claims court.
Whether that's worth it depends on how much it costs to file a case in your municipality. I remember looking it up once over a freight company I wanted to sue for a damaged shipment, and it really wasn't worth the cost or time it would've taken for the case to be heard. I ended up ultimately just filing a chargeback with my credit card.
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That's the easier way, especially since they'll likely be heavily biased in favor of their customer, unlike the court.
Fuck HP (Score:2)
Samsung did this shit to me (Score:5, Informative)
Samsung did this shit with an old laser printer I'd bought from them quite a while ago. They at least didn't do the firmware update automatically, but they still did it. And normally I wouldn't update the printer's firmware, except I was having an issue and their support page said it was fixed with that firmware update, so I updated. And immediately my printer stopped recognizing the off-brand toner I had.
That was the last Samsung printer that I purchased. I also had an IT consulting business at the time, helping other small businesses with their IT needs. I'd always recommended Samsung printers, but started telling all of my customers about what Samsung did, and to avoid them.
This behavior needs to die.
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This behavior needs to die.
The companies that engage in this behaviour need to die - with a government-delivered stake through their black hearts. That will never happen, but it's nice to fantasize about the bastards squirming while impaled on a pike.
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To be fair that may just be a bug. I mean Samsung is infamous at fucking up basic functionality via firmware update.
My TV firmware updated in November. Among the things they did was "improve bluetooth usability". Yeah game controllers now control the TV volume control with the left analogue stick because ... that's something I guess someone thought a customer may do. In reality customers who link game controllers to their TV do so for ... wait for it ... games. Steam Link - Broken. Samsung Gaming Hub - Brok
And This Is Why (Score:2)
And this is why you should make every effort possible to prevent your printer from communicating on the Internet.
TFS does not say that the firmware was an unauthorized "push", but it does say "all models".
We should assume that HP is depending upon it's customers to be "stupid & ignornant" with regards to updating older models.
My HP Laserjet (a year 20xx model) has the original firmware it shipped with...and it is blocked from communicating with the Internet in every reasonable way. So what if I have to
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HP is such a sad shell of its former self. HP printers were once an industry standard. I've avoided them for at least 25 years now. I finally got rid of Dad's old Laserjet II from the 80s, it still worked but maxed out at 4MB of memory it was not very useful in the 21 century.
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The only reason I gave up my Laserjet II is because the cat peed on it and destroyed the circuit board.
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Meanwhile, certain varieties of HP printer (I believe which have the "e" designation) will refuse to work unless you A) have it connected and B) have signed in with an account. The device will refuse to print otherwise. That way they can rope you into an ink/toner subscription service.
As I read recently on another site, "HP can deepthroat a chansaw"
Ridiculous! (Score:2)
Now HP is claiming they DEEPLY care a
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Not just HP (Score:5, Insightful)
Every company with software in their products will now need to decide whether they are going to be a good corporate citizen or greedy bastards. Just look at VW. They tried to be greedy bastards until it was exposed and now they are giving away a whole product for five years as a mea culpa. Sadly, HP feels none of the shame that VW felt.
Re:Not just HP (Score:4, Funny)
someone needs to make up a sob story about a little girl wanting to find her lost puppy/kitty, but can't print out the fliers because of HP's greedy corporate bullshit bricked her printer.
oh it would tug at all the heartstrings.
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Just look at VW. They tried to be greedy bastards
I'd rather not. It reminds me too much of a world where people feel entitled to use features they knowingly refused to pay for. There are plenty of other examples, but VW isn't a good one.
Decision made. (Score:2)
"Good corporate citizens" do not come out on top. They get crushed by the competition, and go out of business. The only ones that remain are the greedy bastards.
There may be a bit of an incentive to appear as a good corporate citizen. But you can bet your bottom dollar this appearance will be only skin deep, when it is there at all.
DRM roll please (Score:2)
they want there ink as an service with ongoing fee (Score:2)
they want there ink as an service with ongoing fees and when you stop paying you are not allowed to print any more.
DRM = Demands Recurring Money (Score:2)
It's a different sort of DRM...
Re:DRM roll please (Score:4, Informative)
How is this related to DRM?
The answer is clear when you understand that the 'R' in 'DRM' stands for Restrictions and not Rights.
You buy a printer. It's yours now, no?
In the novel Dune, the character Paul Muad'Dib says "The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it". HP has the power to effectively destroy your printer; so no, you don't really own it, even though you "bought" it.
I keep carping on this - increasingly, we don't get the ownership we nominally paid for. The WEF said "you'll own nothing, and you'll be happy". People scoff at that, even as it's happening under their noses. HP, and their spiritual brothers John Deere, Apple, Microsoft, Toyota, and countless others, get away with this shit every day - and, collectively speaking, we let them do it and come back for more. So get used to this kind of experience, because in 10 years or so your only choices will be to put up with it or opt out of mainstream society completely.
Firewall to the rescue (Score:2)
I just added a rule to my firewall that basically states that my HP printer is not allowed to talk to the internet. Problem solved.
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I stopped buying or recommending HP few years back (Score:3, Informative)
Back in the day I was a solid HP customer. (Score:5, Informative)
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I don't know how many Laserjet III's and IV's I sold for them.
A Laserjet 4L's MSRP was $1,229 in 1994 dollars - $2,480 in 2023 dollars. A customer willing to spend $2,480 on an HP printer can get one of the HP Enterprise models (two of some of the lower end ones), which all are clear evolutions of the Laserjets you remember - PCL and Postscript support (with the universal print drivers available for almost literally everything), massive paper trays, 10,000 page toner cartridges, and no cartridge bricking BS.
HP is no saint in their war on generic cartridges here; they
Printer economics 101 (Score:3)
People seem to have forgotten that HP isn't a printer company, it's a consumables company. They make no money selling printers to people. Printers are just a tool to lock you in to using HP ink/toner. I paid less for my HP printer than the cost of a set of regular toner cartridges.
HP are just trying to protect their primary revenue stream. Logically, I would expect them to embed several different 'features' into their cartridges so that when the third parties manage to reverse engineer one authentication scheme they can switch to a different one. I guess they made this a firmware upgrade rather than using a timed changeover because third parties might reverse compile their firmware to discover the alternative authentication schemes.
Making money is a dirty business, and when your profits have declined over 20% in two years ( https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net] ) it's going to be a very dirty business.
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People seem to have forgotten that HP isn't a printer company, it's a consumables company. They make no money selling printers to people. Printers are just a tool to lock you in to using HP ink/toner. I paid less for my HP printer than the cost of a set of regular toner cartridges.
HP are just trying to protect their primary revenue stream. Logically, I would expect them to embed several different 'features' into their cartridges so that when the third parties manage to reverse engineer one authentication scheme they can switch to a different one. I guess they made this a firmware upgrade rather than using a timed changeover because third parties might reverse compile their firmware to discover the alternative authentication schemes.
Making money is a dirty business, and when your profits have declined over 20% in two years ( https://www.macrotrends.net/st... [macrotrends.net] ) it's going to be a very dirty business.
Please, spot speaking ill about 'HP'!
The 'HP' ticker is long dead. The 'HP' ticker was born in 1957.
Then in 1999 'HP' lost its soul as it spun it of as 'A'.
And in 2001 that souless 'HP' was dead, as it became 'HPQ'.
In 2014, 'HPQ' begat 'HPE', and then and there 'HPQ' was to be known to the public as "HP Ink". (pun intended)...
So yes, do not talk about HP, for good or ill talk about either HPE or HPQ/HP Ink*... ;-)
* As it corresponds
Re:Printer economics 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is absolutely true for modern HP consumer and small office printers, at least. They've made (and I'm sure still do?) have a higher-end line of high output laser printers designed for Enterprise use, where I bet they aren't concerned about checking for "real HP toner". Because the units sell for upwards of $5,000 each and I'm sure they DO turn a nice profit on each one sold.
Is this InkJet only? (Score:2)
When my kids finished school, I got rid of my inkjet printer and got a nice Laserjet Pro MFP. I now go through a cartridge every 18 months or so and, of course, don't use HP ones.
As far as I can see from what I read, this is not a problem for me?
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When my kids finished school, I got rid of my inkjet printer and got a nice Laserjet Pro MFP. I now go through a cartridge every 18 months or so and, of course, don't use HP ones.
As far as I can see from what I read, this is not a problem for me?
SoCalChris commented a few posts back that Samsung pulled a similar move with a laser printer s/he owned. It would not be beneath HPQ/HP Ink to do a similar move to your Laser Printer if technically feasible...
Vote with your wallets people (Score:2)
This Isn't News - HP Has Always Been A POS (Score:2)
I've been telling people for 20 years not to buy HP printers. I buy Epson if I need one. Also for 20 years you could use third party cartridges no problem. Now they have ink refills, and you can get third party for them too. As far as I'm concerned, HP can kiss my ass. And I don't even have anything with their name on it anymore. Not for a very long time.
Your ink is not special (Score:3)
hp's ink is not special.
It has to be either good quality (Canon professional series for example),
Or it has to be cheap (Epson "tank" printers where you use ink tanks not cartridges).
hp wants to sell mediocre ink at excessive prices, and of course customers would want to switch to 3rd party.
And blocking an already working printer in an update? it will ensure you will lose those customers, forever.
"our" (Score:2)
HP uses dynamic security measures to protect the quality of our customer experience, maintain the integrity of our printing systems, and protect our intellectual property.
That second "our" -- "our printing systems" -- is telling as after I buy something it generally becomes "my". Sure, HP is free to decline any warranty service if I use non-approved ink, but that would be my choice to do that... Also, shouldn't the first "our" be "our customer's experience" (not the addition of the possessive) unless HP is referring to their experience with their customers.
As a side note, I have an HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M477fdw and it works great.
A short-term fix? (Score:2)
It would be great if a dozen or so HP printer owners in some large city got together and decided to make a media statement that because of HP's actions their printers are now useless junk. They could get permission from a local office building owner to take the printers up to the roof and toss them down to the pavement below. Of course, they would first alert all the media outlets they could get hold of.
A spectacle like that being in newspapers, on the evening newscasts, and going viral on the Web, might ca
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And yet⦠(Score:2)
Customers continue to buy hp products and will continue to do so because social media is very good at stifling anything beyond whining into the void
Don't buy a printer. (Score:2)
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The only people who still seem to like hard copy are real estate agents and HR.
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I find it's still useful owning a printer, but I've gone from owning several to just one multi-function that I share on my LAN.
I don't print a lot anymore, but it's something you just need when you need it.
Last Xmas, for example? I didn't have any greeting cards and found myself needing a few for a party I was attending and for a visit to my mom. It was much nicer making up and printing up my own custom ones for them than trying to use anything off the shelf.
I've occasionally had coupons where it was best t
HP == Apple (Score:2)
It's always been Apple doing nefarious shit like slowing down an old phone to get you to buy a new one, but now HP is up to this crap, just like Apple. I don't have a single thing Apple, and now will never have a single thing HP. They can just keep it up without me.
Interesting choice HP made (Score:2)
Given the choice between keeping users on old, non-bricking printers (or buying old used printers) VS buying a shiny new HP printers, HP has decided the risk from the former is lower than the loss of revenue from new printers.
So the recurring income from those consumables must be so significant HP is willing to forgo some new hardware sales.
Ultimately, it's a losing strategy as few and few users wind up buying those expensive consumables for a shrinking install base of printers.
Bend over (Score:2)
That's what corporations tell customers.
"Fuck you he he more money for me!"
Its just a bloody printer... (Score:2)
Its a bloody printer, none of those stated goals are relevant for the end users.
I have a Brother laser printer for 99% of the stuff I print.
For the odd bit of colour printing, I pay and print it elsewhere, there is no way I will ever own an inkjet ever again.
Security (Score:2)
I have an idea for security - have toner cartridges with no chips.
They have fallen so very far (Score:2)
just say no to updates. (Score:2)
My HP printer has been asking me to allow an update for the past three years. It is working fine and I don't want to change that, so I always hit cancel.
I do the same with android and that also has worked out well.
the end.
HP are grifters now (Score:2)
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As far as I now, they didn't have to walk it back last time. They apologized publicly but changed nothing. Do you have a source saying they actually walked back the policy two years ago?
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But, your mom likes a nice, hand-crafted greeting card and letter of appreciation every now and again. I don't have time for that, though, so I print one.
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Considering this is about inkjet printers... grandma wants large photos of her grandchildren. Printing a few is cheaper than giving her a tablet and teaching her how to use it.
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Locally I can have pictures printed at Walmart, or the photo department of London Drugs. I have used both, I prefer LD, because I can upload my photos online and then go pick them up paying cash. Sometimes they are even available the same day. (Usually next day.) I never have to deal with an out of date driver, running out of ink, ink that runs if it gets wet, clogged nozzles. Or any of the other nearly infinite ways a printer can screw you over when you just need one page.
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