fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

[stj]

Large numbers of HP printer owners found their printers stopped recognising unofficial printer ink cartridges on 13 September.

Dutch printer ink vendor 123inkt said it had received more than 1,000 complaints in one day.

HP said that during its last firmware update, settings had been changed so HP printers would communicate with only HP-chipped cartridges.

It also said some devices already had the functionality built-in.

123inkt said it did not believe that a firmware update had been issued since March 2016, suggesting the change had been pre-programmed to roll out this month.

HP said such updates were rolled out "periodically" but did not comment on the timing of the last instalment.

"The purpose of this update is to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property," it said in a statement.

It has angered some of its customers as HP branded cartridges are notably more expensive than unofficial brands.

Read the rest: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37408173

[Topcat]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

I knew there was a reason I kept all my older laser printers alive... I don't even own an ink printer.

[ddscentral]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

"The purpose of this update is to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property,"

That sounds more like "the purpose of this update is to protect our revenue stream by banning the competition".
But I guess the effect will be opposite. People will just ditch HP inkjets if they can't get cheap ink. After all, the main benefit of inkjets is their cheap price.

If you wan reliability, use laser.

[dmill89]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

Overall it is nothing new, lots of inkjet and some newer laser printers have chips in the cartridges and will reject "unauthorized" cartridges, though it has been a bit of a cat an mouse game between 3rd. party cartridge makers and printer manufactures, eventually the 3rd. party makers crack the chips, then the manufactures update the newer printers to reject the cracked chips (you will often see on 3rd. party cartridges only works on printers manufactured before xx/xx/xxxx date for this reason).

This is the first I've heard of a manufacture pushing out updates to existing printers to reject 3rd. party cartridges, but I'm sure the others will soon follow.

Even laptops are doing something similar with batteries, recent Lenovo (Thinkpad 130/230/430/530, etc. [mid/late 2012] and newer as well as some older models after the latest BIOS update) and some Dell (and I'm sure others) laptops will reject 3rd. party batteries.

Overall I think it is complete bullshit, but just about everyone is doing it, so it is hard to avoid unless you just keep your old equipment forever (which eventually newer OSs/unsupported drivers, unavailability of parts, etc. will make difficult).

[ReeceyBurger123]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

All ink printers are total shit the amount of times Ive wanted to smash my cannon one up is bad !

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

yea fuck all that inkjunk sheet. long live teh laser! when will ppl learn that when they pay peanuts, they will get monkeys!

thats why i luv this site. thanks guys for telling me about crappy printers to avoid. guess its my job to spread the word now and tell ppl to fuck off with the inkjunk crap.

[japlytic]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

It's another case of the DMCA being abused to encourage anti-competitive conduct.

[rhomanski]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

I've had Epson do that to me, Kodak, HP, Canon, Brother, and some I can't even remember. Everyone of the companies do that. The latest an Epson ecotank didn't complain about the ink. The head rails wore out and started smearing the ink after 9,000 pages. Aligning them just made it worse.

[hasefroch]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

The only thing surprising is that this got some exposure in the media. BTW, I saw from early 2015 this crap in HP; the "update" disables third party cartridges and CISS systems.
From as early as 2008, HP added some crap like "Ink expiration" in selected cartridges. (Fun fact: the first models with ink expiration never did this if you used them only with Linux)

Some others, off the top of my head:

Epson keep doing this crap from ever before HP; the XP Series can be compared to the PS3. A firmware "update" disable third party cartridges, and if your hardware revision is too new you cannot downgrade at all.
Also, some of you may remember the class action lawsuit settled in 2006: the printer marked empty cartridges when still remained between 20 or 30 percent of ink.

Vaio laptops added DRM to the battery charger circuit (I saw it myself for first time around 2009). Third party batteries will work ok but never charge, but some vendors sell their batteries with a BIOS patch to override this.

GPS's from Garmin; a firmware update disables the option to load custom personal maps from the owner of the device. This means that you can load the official maps or nothing. Ironically, still is possible install pirated official maps. I saw this around 2010, mostly for newer devices.

HP, Dell, Lenovo, and many others: whitelist (blacklist?) in the wifi modules that can be installed. The notebook only will accept modules whose PnP id matches those stored in the BIOS. This crap is at least 10 years old.
Very funny if you want to upgrade to a dual band module and the whitelist is only of 2.4GHz devices.

[TechGeek]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

BIOS mod that.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

Looks like Motorola at least attempted to whitelist chargers on their phones, at least roughly 2009... The feature is asinine, too, apparently, because of a connection that's not perfect, it randomly displays "unauthorized charger".


At least Samsung Galaxys aren't known to pull that kind of bullshit...

Looks like that kind of thing won't be tolerated now... A phone charger lockout is soo 2009-ish, at least they thought in or around 2009 that customers would all bow to them... It was during the pre-mainstream-1080p-era...

I think Motorola was cocky, at least their phone division, thinking that no one would charge it in a vehicle or on the go...
But, that was before USB chargers were common in buildings...

[dmill89]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

Looks like Motorola at least attempted to whitelist chargers on their phones, at least roughly 2009... The feature is asinine, too, apparently, because of a connection that's not perfect, it randomly displays "unauthorized charger".


At least Samsung Galaxys aren't known to pull that kind of bullshit...

Looks like that kind of thing won't be tolerated now... A phone charger lockout is soo 2009-ish, at least they thought in or around 2009 that customers would all bow to them...

I think Motorola was cocky, at least their phone division, thinking that no one would charge it in a vehicle or on the go...
But, that was before USB chargers were common in buildings...

My LG does something similar, it will charge with a non-LG charger/cable, but it gives a message and charges much more slowly than normal.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

My LG does something similar, it will charge with a non-LG charger/cable, but it gives a message and charges much more slowly than normal.

That was during the fancy-flip-phone era... I'm glad that phone makers, at least with the smartphones, did away with that...

Looks like livevideo.com thrived during the last of that era, where it was common to hear videos with weird sounds, which I think is because of sucky audio hardware in the phones...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

it randomly displays "unauthorized charger".

That probably was with the original charger, too!

[ratdude747]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

I knew there was a reason I kept all my older laser printers alive... I don't even own an ink printer.

Same here. Inkjets are bin food (good for stepper motors and components at least).

[diif]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

Not all inkjets are garbage, my Epson 7600 is awesome. It does print A1 though.

[dan8139]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

This sort of crap, especially laptop batteries, is SUCH a pain in the ass for on-site techs like me also... It seems the manufacturers only think themselves and end users exist in the world. Sort of like the way Microshite has always done things. Most of my customers couldn't even replace a laptop battery, some can't replace a print cartridge properly and NONE could reinstall Windows with any chance of it working at all / properly.

Grr, big companies piss me off.

Thanks stj for the heads up!

[junktv]

Re: fuck HP - Inkjet printers reject low-budget cartridges

Glad i scored a nice office imagistic laser printer a few years ago. Came with a nib roller and toner cartridge so it will be many more years before i run out.

With ya hasefroch. Garmin wants an arm and a leg for maps and units. Funny when the previous ones don't show half the roads. Even roads that have been there 50 years or more. Even free maps show them.