HP Rushes to Fix Bricked Printers After Faulty Firmware Update (bleepingcomputer.com) 112
Last week the Telegraph reported that a recent firmware update to HP printers "prevents customers from using any cartridges other than those fitted with an HP chip, which are often more expensive. If the customer tries to use a non-HP ink cartridge, the printer will refuse to print."
Some HP "Officejet" printers can disable this "dynamic security" through a firmware update, PC World reported earlier this week. But HP still defends the feature, arguing it's "to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property, maintain the integrity of our printing systems, ensure the best customer printing experience, and protect customers from counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges that do not contain an original HP security chip and infringe HP's intellectual property."
Meanwhile, Engadget now reports that "a software update Hewlett-Packard released earlier this month for its OfficeJet printers is causing some of those devices to become unusable." After downloading the faulty software, the built-in touchscreen on an affected printer will display a blue screen with the error code 83C0000B. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way for someone to fix a printer broken in this way on their own, partly because factory resetting an HP OfficeJet requires interacting with the printer's touchscreen display. For the moment, HP customers report the only solution to the problem is to send a broken printer back to the company for service.
BleepingComputer says the firmware update "has been bricking HP Office Jet printers worldwide since it was released earlier this month..." "Our teams are working diligently to address the blue screen error affecting a limited number of HP OfficeJet Pro 9020e printers," HP told BleepingComputer... Since the issues surfaced, multiple threads have been started by people from the U.S., the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, and France who had their printers bricked, some with more than a dozen pages of reports.
"HP has no solution at this time. Hidden service menu is not showing, and the printer is not booting anymore. Only a blue screen," one customer said.
"I talked to HP Customer Service and they told me they don't have a solution to fix this firmware issue, at the moment," another added.
Some HP "Officejet" printers can disable this "dynamic security" through a firmware update, PC World reported earlier this week. But HP still defends the feature, arguing it's "to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property, maintain the integrity of our printing systems, ensure the best customer printing experience, and protect customers from counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges that do not contain an original HP security chip and infringe HP's intellectual property."
Meanwhile, Engadget now reports that "a software update Hewlett-Packard released earlier this month for its OfficeJet printers is causing some of those devices to become unusable." After downloading the faulty software, the built-in touchscreen on an affected printer will display a blue screen with the error code 83C0000B. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way for someone to fix a printer broken in this way on their own, partly because factory resetting an HP OfficeJet requires interacting with the printer's touchscreen display. For the moment, HP customers report the only solution to the problem is to send a broken printer back to the company for service.
BleepingComputer says the firmware update "has been bricking HP Office Jet printers worldwide since it was released earlier this month..." "Our teams are working diligently to address the blue screen error affecting a limited number of HP OfficeJet Pro 9020e printers," HP told BleepingComputer... Since the issues surfaced, multiple threads have been started by people from the U.S., the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, and France who had their printers bricked, some with more than a dozen pages of reports.
"HP has no solution at this time. Hidden service menu is not showing, and the printer is not booting anymore. Only a blue screen," one customer said.
"I talked to HP Customer Service and they told me they don't have a solution to fix this firmware issue, at the moment," another added.
Do not buy HP printers. Seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
They have been pulling this crap forever now. It is really surprising they even have a printer business these days.
Re:Do not buy HP printers. Seriously. (Score:5, Funny)
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After nearly 8 years, the Brother printer I use at home finally died. During my sysadmin career, HP printers were THE only choice. But in the past decade or so, they've gone down the shithole. I would NEVER buy another HP printer for myself or recommend them to even my worst enemy. I bought ANOTHER Brother printer to replace the croaked one, and I expect to see a similar lifetime out of the new one.
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During my sysadmin career, HP printers were THE only choice. But in the past decade or so, they've gone down the shithole.
That's what happens when bean-counters and get-rich-quick MBAs replace engineers.
By the way, Lexmark still make decent printers.
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I had a Lexmark. Mine is one of a line where the physical cartridges might or might not work. The high output cartridges only work on the more expensive printer models. I learned that The Hard Way (tm). On a related note, if you have a Lexmark printer with one -color- cartridge that is exhausted, it will not print B&W.
When the cartridges run out on the Lexmark, it's going to that field in "Office Space"...
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Indeed. I replaced Brother with OKI because it was on sale (and I wanted duplex my small Brother did not have) and have made excellent experiences with it as well. I think these days almost any choice is massively better than HP.
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Often more expensive? No, **ALWAYS** more expensive. There is no such thing as a non-HP ink cartridge that is more expensive than an HP cartridge.
Re:Do not buy HP printers. Seriously. (Score:5, Insightful)
Innovations and intellectual property my ass. It's fucking ink. ** INK ***. How many hundreds of years has ink existed? This bullshit needs to stop,
Re: Do not buy HP printers. Seriously. (Score:1)
Fortunately, HP themselves have stepped-up to put an end to this tyranny.
Way to take one for the team
Re: Do not buy HP printers. Seriously. (Score:2)
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It's the print head too
I don't think HP ever made an Inkjet printer where the cartridge is just a container of ink.
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I have never owned (and will never own) a HP printer. My current printer is a canon inkjet and it works great (I don't print enough to justify the high up-front cost for something like a Brother color laser rather than continuing to buy ink for this one)
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The problem with inkjet printers is the ink cartridges have a limited shelf life, typically around 6 months though it depends on how they're stored, the local climate, etc. Once you unseal them, the print head dries out rapidly. I don't print often so the included toner cartridges almost always outlast my printers, especially because toner cartridges generally can print a lot more pages than ink cartridges, in addition to the effective cost per page being a lot lower. My current set is still the same set th
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When it comes to a choice between spending $450 to buy a color laser multi-function (I use the photocopying function on my Canon often enough that I can't live without it) or $60 on a (genuine Canon) twin-pack black+color cartridge for my ink jet, its hard to justify spending all that money on the laser.
Note that these prices are Australian prices, the difference in prices will vary in other countries.
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What's the yield per cartridge on each?
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When it comes to a choice between spending $450 to buy a color laser multi-function (I use the photocopying function on my Canon often enough that I can't live without it) or $60 on a (genuine Canon) twin-pack black+color cartridge for my ink jet, its hard to justify spending all that money on the laser.
Depends on how much you print. The toner cartridge (using a random Canon set from a quick Google search) will give you around 10x the yield for around 5x the price, so after you have bought sixteen sets of ink or 8 sets of toner, you've hit the break-even price even if you use it often enough to not have problems with ink drying out. Given that ink tanks typically have to be replaced within 6 months whether you use them or not, that means that the laser printer will break even after at most 8 years, and w
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I agree. Virtually all of my printing is done on a brother laser because it cost next to nothing and all I have to do is turn it on, and print -- no farting around with head-cleaning or whatever.
On the rare occasions when I *do* want to do a bit of color printing I just spend the $20 or so to buy a brand new HP inkjet printer and then throw it away... because I know that the next time I go to use it the ink will have dried out and to buy new catridges would cost more than a new printer.
So HP inkjet printer
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I got a 2nd hand Canon Colour Laser MFC mostly for the rare printing and scanning. Came with full toner carts for everything,
Been over a year, and I think I probably printed maybe 50 pages till date Expect it will last me a few more years at least, without having to worry about getting new toner carts.
You should look into one, for a decent long term colour printing/scanning capability. And it will save a bunch on ink buying since you don't have to worry about it drying up over time.
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Like many people on Slashdot, I'm the person in my circle of family / friends who people approach regarding IT purchases. (For their kids, home office, etc.)
A week ago, I would have recommended against HP printers because of their antics around cartridges.
Reading today's story further entrenches that resolve. Indeed, HP has that much more reputation to mend before I consider their printers.
I've only ever used the manufacturer's cartridges for every inkjet & laser printer I've ever owned -- I did go gene
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I agree.
I used to be a big fan of HP printers like 20 years ago as they had good drivers for all os including Linux, was printing correctly and it was possible to choose your ink.
Then that degraded to the point where after fighting for months with tricks to get ink recognized (which would then stop to work and so on) , I had to dump a functional HP printer that just would not print....
They are not allowed by law to force buying their ink but they will still do very ugly things to make their customers unhapp
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Re: Do not buy HP printers. Seriously. (Score:2)
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Ah, no? There is some reduction, but "dying" looks different: https://www.statista.com/topic... [statista.com]
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At last... after nearly 50 years of promises... THE PAPERLESS OFFICE arrives? :-D
an update is available (Score:1)
buy a printer from literally any other manufacturer. for ink jet, tank printers are the best value by far.
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I dunno, they've always been hit and miss. The original 1984 HP LaserJet used the same print engine as the original Apple LaserWriter, but was a lot cheaper because it had a much simpler controller board and lacked built-in networking, PostScript, etc. The 1992 LaserJet 4M was legendary for its reliability and reasonably priced consumables, but it wasn't very fast, and it tended to suffer from paper jams when the feed rollers became worn.
The 1995 LaserJet 5L (a completely different thing to the LaserJet 5
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The 1995 LaserJet 5L (a completely different thing to the LaserJet 5P) was a horrible printer. It was built to be cheap and compact, but it was also slow and unreliable.
Rather like the F-35.
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The 1995 LaserJet 5L (a completely different thing to the LaserJet 5P) was a horrible printer. It was built to be cheap and compact, but it was also slow and unreliable. Paper jams happened all the time. When the toner ran out, you needed to replace the entire print engine as a unit, which was very expensive. Low-end HP DeskJet printers always had issues with misfeeds and expensive ink.
We always said that the "L" stood for "Lousy."
Avoid Canon laser printers (Score:4, Informative)
Canon have the dubious distinction of being the only company with region locked toner cartridges. I worked for a company that closed their office in the Netherlands and moved an expensive Canon MFC to Australia. It would not work with genuine Canon toner cartridges sold in Australia due to the region lock chip. This is presumably so they can sell the same toner cartridges for very different prices in different markets (e.g. sell them cheap in South East Asia, South America and Africa) and prevent people from using the cheaper cartridges.
It was possible to get a refilled toner cartridge, carefully remove the part at the end where the lockout chip is, and replace it with the one from a European cartridge, but this won't work forever because the chip holds a total pages printed count, and the printer will refuse to use it when it exceeds a certain value even if the cartridge is physically full of toner. This is presumably to limit how many times you can refill a cartridge. There didn't seem to be a way to get around this, besides trying to obtain used toner cartridges from Europe to scavenge chips from.
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I'm skeptical that it made any sense to ship that printer, shipping and potential duty have to have cost more than the printer was worthy.
>There didn't seem to be a way to get around this,
Buy a model with refillable tanks instead of cartridges? Think before you ship?
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https://www.epson.com.au/v2/ecotank/ [epson.com.au] ??
See their EcoTank Photo range: 6 colours. (Granted, you did say 'mostly'.)
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In a rush, really? (Score:3)
What information do we have to suggest they're in a rush?
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Businesses are printing a lot less now, which is probably stinging HP's bottom line a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if the pandemic accelerated that trend (remote work, etc) and recently their bean counters noticed that it wasn't reversing, so they ordered this in a panic.
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They need to fix those printers fast so that the owners can buy more overpriced ink from HP.
If they leave it too long the owners might even buy a better printer that doesn't require HP's overpriced ink.
There is an easy solution to this issue (Score:2)
Since the core problem is with the company, not the hardware itself, the solution is simply to buy a printer from a reputable company.
I'm so happy (Score:2)
To have a brother.
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Brother has been doing the same thing...they are just not as aggressive. I have a 2 year old Brother printer that has stopped printing with 3rd party toner. I had to literally swap the chips between the old and new cartridges to make it work.
So now I'm caught in this dilemma.....do I allow future firmware updates that might totally fuck me on cartridge compatability or do I hold the line on older firmware and hope that I didn't miss out on a change that patched some genuine vulnerability.
Re:I'm so happy (Score:5, Insightful)
Like the old saying goes "if it aint broke then don't fix it" so keep that old firmware if it does what you need. Unless your printer is exposed to the outside with a live ip address or something. If someone has access to my internal lan then there are bigger issues to deal with.
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"Ceci n'est pas une Signature !"
Nice sig.
never buy HP printers (Score:3)
Re: never buy HP printers (Score:1)
Clearly they rejected this option and went for the 'prevent anyone from intervening' option.
Razor blade economy but w yellow dots and DRM ink (Score:1)
Fucking rent-seeking HP. They might as well give away new printers for free.
Re: Razor blade economy but w yellow dots and DRM (Score:1)
Perhaps it's cheaper per-page to buy a printer, use the bundled ink then throw it away and buy another?
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They've wised up to this as well. These days printers come with only partially full cartridges. You might only get a dozen or two pages out of the original cartridges, while the full cartridges can print a couple hundred.
So it's not worth it to just keep buying new printers, if barely.
My problem is my printer complaining about low toner starting at around 50% full. It starts warning me, and I still keep printing using that cartridge for over a year.
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This is genius. Then, we will pay kids in Bangladesh to recycle the disposable printers for their precious materials.
Hell, we should go into business selling instant disposable printers. The flash only lasts to about the 5th page and cyan runs out around page 9.
F**k HP and their Vending Machines (Score:2)
The blight of HP and their "Vending machines for Ink" should end.
As a consumer, you are putting a noose around your neck (read: wallet) if you purchase one of their "vending machines of ink," as their CEO called them.
Buy Canon instead. If you want to print,, at least, they are the least worst of the lot.
It used to be (Score:3)
I gave up on HP printers a long time ago. (Score:4, Informative)
Don't buy HP printers. I'd recommend Brother or Canon instead.
I have at least one HP printer at home, and I know people with very old HP printers that they still use today. What likely keeps them running is that they are not using HP drivers. HP printer hardware is pretty solid but the firmware and drivers can be horrible. If the printer survives all the firmware updates, and someone can use open source or generic drivers, then the hardware appear to be able to live on for decades. I've seen HP printers easily last at least 15 years, just not when using the HP drivers. I haven't had to buy toner in some time so I don't recall where I'd have to go to get more, if HP offers it, or how much it costs. Should my HP printer last longer than the toner then I'll look into that, but as far as I know there is someone still making toner cartridges for these ancient HP printers. So long as I can source supplies I'll likely keep using my HP printer. I have a couple Brother printers too, and they served me well. I accumulated printers by various means, it's not like I go buying printers for the giggles but I have more than one because each has some useful feature I desire. I'll keep my HP printer but I won't buy another, if one happens to come into my possession at no cost to me then I'll give it a chance but I'm not spending my money on another HP printer.
I had to dispose of a lot of still working HP printers over the years because it just wasn't worth the trouble to deal with the driver issues. It hurts me to toss out working hardware but when work needs to be done we can't keep messing with drivers and such. Out goes the old HP printer, in comes a new Brother printer. Time is money so the Brother printers that I've seen replace HP printers paid for itself with saved support time.
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I have a Laserjet 4L and they still make non-original cartridges for it. The only problem is that some shops sell old (NOS) cartridges and they may have failed wiper blades.
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I gave up on HP inkets 20 years ago:
* crappy Mac software
* cartridges with multiple colors integrated, so when one runs out I had to replace them all
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The gold standard is still PostScript.
I agree. If the printer supports PostScript then it will work with any operating system most people care about, and will produce quality output until the hardware starts to fail. Read the fine print carefully, a printer may be PostScript capable even though the word "PostScript" does not appear in the documentation. PostScript is trademarked and not everyone was willing to pay the fees to use that trademark. There are very nice implementations of PostScript out there that are indistinguishable from the
perfect opportunity (Score:2)
This is a perfect opportunity for a competitor to offer something nice to people with bricked printer. Trade in your bricked HP for our brand, we promise to we won't brick your printer. Here is some ink, its best if you use ours but use what works for you.
Then take all of the bricked printer and stack them in front of the HP HQ main entrance. Maybe stack them in Executive parking.
That's two (Score:4, Insightful)
Two stories in 24 hours about a multi-billion dollar company who can't do basic testing before releasing an "update".
Makes one wonder what these companies are doing with all that money they claim they're making if they can't perform a simple test to see if something works.
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It's cheaper to fix things that go wrong than run a lot of tests to make sure nothing goes wrong. Basic greed at play as always. HP aren't the ones in a bind when something important can't be printed and you have to deal with packing up and sending a printer away to somewhere; that's a customer problem.
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While HP is a company that deserves no defending, the premise of your post isn't exactly on solid footing. It's precisely the multi-billion dollar companies that would find testing incredibly difficult as you don't become a multi-billion dollar company without releasing hundreds of products over a long period of time.
Testing is not trivial, even if you're constrained to testing on a single unit / product. At some point you need to release and deal with the potential bugs you get.
Now that said *how* you deal
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HP is pretty clueless about this sort of thing, though. Their product line is often very weird. Maybe this is just what happens when you get big, but they will simultaneously have products which are similar but not based on the same stuff, and also products which are notably different on the outside but are actually based on the same internals, to the point that the higher-end models suffer. I think they actually have too many products, so many of them overlap. Having to support all of those redundant produ
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"hundreds of products" is NO EXCUSE for delivering shitware.
I continue to call for legal liability for software problems like these.
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I have an Asus AP. (Score:2)
I have automatic firmware updates disabled on it and everything else where I can and this is why.
Yea, security is important (the only thing I have facing the internet is a pfsense firewall anyway), and once your shit has been out a minute I will update it myself - but, auto firmware updates is the dumbest fucking idea ever (with some things, you have no choice, like Samsung everything for example) and really should be illegal without opt-in. Whose hardware is it?
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I assume you meant the Asus router broken update.
At least that got fixed with a reboot, unlike what HP has done.
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They might've been talking about this story [slashdot.org] about an HP firmware update that rejects third party cartridges. It's already a week ago, but it feels recent.
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Their programmers were trained on free "Micro-Bit" computers.
Re: That's two (Score:2)
Taking a well earned vacation, obviously. Won't someone please think of those poor, tired, insanely rich ceo's? How will they afford their new yacht to park their old yacht in if we don't band together and make sure they have the money they -stole- earned?
Eat the rich, there's only one thing they're very good for. Compost.
To update, for your security (Score:2)
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Join the HP community today and let us take this opportunity to serve you to the fullest!
The way a bull serves a cow, maybe.
Bricked? (Score:2)
Of all the misuses of the term "bricked", this is the least correct one.
Preditction (Score:3)
And not a tear was shed for HP.
Re: Preditction (Score:1)
HP should be forced to pay to replace bricked printers with printers from a more ethical company.
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The nice thing here is for low value transaction by end consumers you can take HP to court for a cost of about $50, which HP would have to pay when they lost, and the system is set up so you ca
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Or, in the US, there will be a class action, in which the lawyers will receive millions, while the actual victims will receive a $10 check and a coupon for $10 off their next HP ink purchase.
Avoid HP in any way possible (Score:2)
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And to top it off, I have seen some PCs from them with reinvented wheels being square instead - nonstandard powersupply (while everyone else just uses ATX), 90 degree motherboard with wires connecting two parts and no place for airflow whatsoever.
No thank you, I will never buy anything from them, you have to threatten me with guns and such.
Dell and many other big companies also do this. Non standard PSUs, non standard motherboard form factors, etc.
I will rather buy a system from a local DIY shop, where at least I know that all the components follow standards, and so can be easily replaced if needed, rather then from a big brand, where you don't know what can you actually replace if there is a problem in the future.
\o/ (Score:1)
They sell printers yet their pricing model discourages... (wait for it)... printing!
Still on this "protect" shit (Score:2)
" protect customers from counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges that do not contain an original HP security chip and infringe HP's intellectual property"
And Nintendo is PROTECTED from erasing all Switch emulation tools entirely from the Net by those tools being mirrored in countries that don't follow the DCMA.
I strive to be the bigger snake by turning companies own reptillian words right back on them.
Be a big asshole, expect to create better assholes than thee.
We'll bork your system so third parties won't (Score:3)
Third-party ink cartridges don't threaten HP's innovations or intellectual property, just as aftermarket parts for your car don't threaten OEMs. As for the integrity of "our" printing systems, they seem to have forgotten that it's the *customer's* printing systems, since the customer has purchased them. "Best" customer printing experience is subjective: the customer would argue that "best" is whatever cartridge they want to use.
But most important of all: HP's faulty firmware update seems to have borked the integrity of "their" printing systems, which is exactly what they 're claiming to protect against. Kind of like a bodyguard claiming to protect you, then accidentally shooting you while he's holstering his gun.
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just as aftermarket parts for your car don't threaten OEMs
Except OEMs do see their parts as a profit centre. The difference is if your sell a car at cost and make all your money of OEM parts alone you'd be out of business. This is why GM will charge you $2800 to replace the 4 hydraulic hoses (with cheap rubber which degraded in the first place) on their $30000 convertible, while Billy Bob's hydraulic hoses down the road does the same thing for $100 and puts in proper metal braid hoses. (Actual anecdote with actual numbers from our actual quote from GM (Holden) who
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Innovation in market control (Score:1)
When your' double speak sounds like you're talking about protecting the 'intellectual property' of using a chip to control markets for inks and toners aa w
you say it couldn't get any worse? (Score:2)
SCOTUS LexMark decision (Score:1)
This is nothing new. If you want to use 3rd party products don't buy a printer that won't support you. ... so long... all the analogies, metaphors, and similies are OLD OLD OLD.
It's been going on
Don't buy a diesel car because it's cheaper and then complain you can't fill up at your local gas/petrol station.
Don't buy an iPad and expect to charge it with any other company or supermarket charger in the world.
Remember read/write lock tabs for insertable memory cards? Do you know why they're gone? Because sma
Do not buy Inkjet printers, period (Score:3)
There may be some exotic use cases for inkjet printers, but they are not suitable for 99% of what consumers or businesses need.
There are multiple reasons for that:
Ink-Lockouts and ludicrously high ink costs: While in theory this could also be the case on any printing technologies, ink jet printers are the worst in this regard.
Low reliability and frequent print quality problems: print heads are very likely to get clogged when not used daily. The work around is to spray huge amounts of ink into sponges and wipers, increasing the cost of printing even more.
No standard printing languages: While dot-matrix printers, thermal receipt printers and laser printers have standardized around a small set of publicly documented printing languages, ink jet printers have not. That means that for every printer you need to install a special "driver", which needs to be available for your operating system. It also needs to run at fairly high privileges. That is not only a security nightmare, but also a bit problem if you decide to, for example, run your printer server on a Raspberry Pi or some successor 20 years into the future. In contrast virtually all monochrome laser printers offer emulation of the HP LaserJet 4, while most colour laser printers provide Postscript. There is no need for special drivers from the printer manufacturer, as operating systems just ship with drivers for them.
So, as an occasional user what should you buy? One good idea is to buy an older laser printer, perhaps something like a HP LaserJet 4. You can buy new toner cartridges for next to nothing, and they last for many thousands of pages. There are cheap print servers available which plug into the printer port and connect it to the Ethernet... if yours didn't come with a JetDirect card. The Wikipedia page on that series lists the common problems and how to fix them. Other than that, virtually any monochrome laser printer is good. You need to have a bit of caution with Brother here, as, while they have many very good printers, they are one of the few companies still selling "GDI-Printers" which require special "drivers". Avoid those at all cost.
For Colour it's somewhat harder, as many companies were penny pinching on them, causing them to have a higher amount of "GDI-Printers". However there are refurbishing companies which will sell you used printers which will support Postscript or at least PCL. Avoid the HP Color LaserJet CM2300 series as they have reliability issues with replacement toners, often sprinkling your paper with colourful toner particles.
Re: Do not buy Inkjet printers, period (Score:3)
I have heard that the Laserjet III and IV's were solid workhorses. I think I used one in grad school (might have been a II).
Back in the day I remember one of the "benefits" of inkjets was they were amenable to photo printing (back when people regularly printed their photos), and color laser printers were not (or at least too expensive). Is that still the case? If so that would be one of the exotic uses I can think of. I had an old Epson inkjet in the early 2000's that claimed to be photo-quality, but I don
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Back in the day I remember one of the "benefits" of inkjets was they were amenable to photo printing (back when people regularly printed their photos), and color laser printers were not (or at least too expensive). Is that still the case?
The print quality of cheap color laser printers is still inferior to the print quality of much cheaper inkjets, when it comes to photos. For any other purpose the laser is better, but inkjets are still used even professionally. These days it's pretty easy to find inkjets with continuous inking systems that don't have any ink DRM, but you still have to print fairly often (or at least regularly) for an inkjet to make sense.
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I got an HP Color Laserjet 5M for free from the office when they did an upgrade, and it was an absolute beast. It lasted me for more than 10 years and thousands of pages, including numerous large instruction booklets. It came with replacements for the colour toner bottles, and I only had to replace the black once, at a reasonable cost. It sucked for photos, but was fine for graphics, and that was all I really needed. The only down side was its size...it was huge.
If you'd asked me at the time, I'd have s
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I have heard that the Laserjet III and IV's were solid workhorses. I think I used one in grad school (might have been a II).
They were, as were the 4000 and 8000 series. Plenty of those Clinton-era machines are still usable today, and they're dirt cheap on the secondhand market.
In fairness to HP here, two things. First, the Laserjet III was $2,395 MSRP in 1990, or about $5,500 in 2023 dollars. That's very, very different than the $100-$400 their inkjets currently go for, or the $250-650 their Officejet line goes for.
Second, If you *do* spend $2,395 on an HP printer today...you still get a damn good machine. Laserjet Enterprise pr
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Thank him (Score:2)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/en... [linkedin.com]
BS, HP (Score:2)
Time cost (Score:2)
Let's say my HP printer bricked itself yesterday (it didn't because I have a Brother, but just for the sake of argument...). I would have spent a solid hour trying to figure out what happened. Now HP says I need to send it back to them so it'll take me 2 hours l to pack it up and get it shipped. When it comes back I will spend another hour setting it up. In the meantime I don't have a printer, so I need to find another printer, have someone else print things for me, or print out at work. Call that another
ESG (Score:2)
As long as HP keeps meeting its ESG goals you can be sure the FTC won't bother them one bit about this fiasco.
Too late now (Score:2)
They were all replaced with Kyoceras.
Greed (Score:1)
What has happened to HP? (Score:2)
Last time I bought a consumer HP device (Score:2)
It was a LaserJet 'Pro' 1102W. It seems that they had the clever idea of saving on BOM by moving the 'continue' button, which you press after e.g. adding paper, into the Windows drivers. My main machine at the time was a mac. So whenever the printer ran out of paper I had to cancel and restart the job. Suffice to say, my next laser wasn't an HP. HP professional gear can be good. But their consumer stuff is absolute [expletive deleted].
Junk (Score:2)
HP does not innovate anything. HP does not have any legit IPs. HP does not ensure the best printing experience. HP does not protect its customers. HP has no valid good arguments for the choices and designs they've made.
Ubuntu hasn't tried to update firmware (Score:1)