HP Secretly Rendering Printer Cartridges Unusable? 565
Momoru writes "Looks like a woman is suing Hewlett Packard, claiming that their "smart chip" technology, besides giving information about ink usage, is also secretly programmed to not work after a certain certain date." From the article: "HP ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But the suit claims those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty." We've reported recently on printer companies making questionable business decisions.
Hack-a-do (Score:5, Informative)
Do these cartridges have expiry date printed on them?
Go Cannon (Score:4, Informative)
I know they say its good to replace the nozzles every once in a while, but with every ink tank???
HP/Lexmark/etc. need to learn that consumers aren't willing to pay these taxes anymore.
Bone dry (Score:2, Informative)
Plotters (Score:5, Informative)
my experience is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ink dries out eventually (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot dupes are getting older...April 30th 2003 (Score:5, Informative)
Me, I buy Canon inkjets. They've gone off in a completely opposite direction: Imagine a world where ink refill cartridges were little plastic containers that hold only ink, no 'chips', no replacing jets each time you run out of ink, no corporate attempt to dictate who you shall buy your ink and/or ink refills from. That's Canon Think Tank [canon.com].
Re:Epson printers... (Score:5, Informative)
It's possible to reset the printer by pressing a combination of keys on the front panel. Of course, it's recommended that you remove and clean the ink sponge first (there are websites that show how to do this).
N.
Re:Ink dries out eventually (Score:1, Informative)
"HP ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But the suit claims those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty.
"The smart chip is dually engineered to prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer," the suit said."
It's the "not revealed to the consumer", as in, "go ahead and buy this about-to-become-useless-cartridge", that's the focus of the lawsuit.
Legitimate reason: (Score:5, Informative)
Alternate drivers? (Score:2, Informative)
Solutions to this issue (short, long term) (Score:5, Informative)
1. Short term: remove the offending cartridge, wait about 30 seconds, then re-insert the cartridge and run the head cleaning routine. The cartridge will probably work fine.
2. Long term: buy a printer that's on the Laser Monk's list (http://www.lasermonks.com). I've been buying their ink cartridges for a couple of years without problems. I'm about to buy an Epson Stylus R200 -- but I didn't spring for it until I checked that the Monks have the cartridges.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Eugene
Choose who your diety is.... the Corporation? (Score:5, Informative)
I urge EVERYONE to make sure they see the movie The Corporation [thecorporation.com] and everything is put in proper perspective. (Torrent 1 [chomskytorrents.org], Torrent 2 [chomskytorrents.org].)
Re:Ink dries out eventually (Score:1, Informative)
The ink delivery system is composed of 4 small tubes that are connected in a ribbon and is about 2 feet long. If old ink was to dry in those tubes, this led to the ink clogging and the printer would need to have the ink delivery system repaired.
The HP 2000C printer was the first model from HP that was reasonably popular to use the chips on the cartridges. We were told the chips were used to insure a guaranteed quality of print and to prevent the printer from damaging itself.
So basically, this is so HP can say to the customer, "if your colors aren't vibrant, it's not our fault - you're using expired ink. We only guarantee the results if you use fresh/new ink and only our fresh/new ink.")
Technical support calls regarding print quality issues would sometimes go on for hours - even regarding print quality issues that were within the specifications indicated. Or people expecting extremely high quality prints from printheads that are several years old, covered in dust particles, and with half the nozzles clogged due to dry ink.
So my point is, you can have a dried printhead, and a perfectly fine ink cartridge with some models.
And now I'm beginning to worry that I know who this woman is since I might have tipped her off about this problem from a past tech support call. So now I will be a coward.........
I may have been stung too. (Score:2, Informative)
Admitedly they were a little old but I wouldn't be surprised if this had something to do with the problem.
I was most un-impressed.
Many drugs are good after 4, 10, 25 years... (Score:5, Informative)
The US Army studied this because they were throwing away millions of dollars worth of medicines each year because of the expiration date. Results? They throw away far, far less meds now:
(From the cached version of Recycling expensive medications- why not? [216.239.63.104])Re:Alternate drivers? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:all stop!! (Score:5, Informative)
I phoned and complained to HP directly and they told me about an undocumented feature: hold down the start button on power up and it skips the cartidge check.
Re:Wow (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Other causes than expiry date (Score:2, Informative)
If a store just goes out and purchases 10 gallons of milk and puts it on the shelf...no, the milk company could not prevent the resell.
Of course, it would be illegal, but that's for health reasons, not 'might damage your printer' reasons. It's not illegal to sell products that people can use to damage their printer, whereas it is illegal to sell 'food' that people cannot safely eat.
Re:I have issues with my Brother MFC (Score:3, Informative)
All inkjet printers run a cleaning sequence, generally when they are powered on and are 'initialising'. During the cleaning cycle they flush ink through the printhead to remove any potentially dried pigment which may have lodged there. This can consume a significant amount of ink.
While I agree that they may have gone overboard in how they restrict cartridge usage these days, in part the reason is the increased quality expectations from consumers - compare the quality of output from an old Deskjet 500 series to one of todays printers. The number of nozzels have increased significantly, the size of the nozzles has similarly decreased. Smaller particles will block the nozzels and affect print quality.
In the early days of inkjet printers, HP used to use the fact that their cartridges had inbuilt printheads as a selling feature. Inkjet inks are mildly corrosive, and over time the flow of ink through the printhead erodes the assembly, causing the quality of the image to decline. canon recommended changing the printheads every 4 or so ink carts. Epson used to have non-user servicable printheads which could cost more than a new printer to be replaced if blocked.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Informative)
Old news. "Acumen" chips carry "freshness dates" (Score:5, Informative)
The on-cartridge chip in question is internally called the Acumen chip. It's really just a tiny ROM + FLASH combo storage device containing a few dozens of ROM bytes and a few dozens of re-writable FLASH bytes.
Encoded in ROM, among other info, is a "shelf life" or freshness date -- this is effectively the date of manufacture of the cartridge. If the cartridge is not unsealed and put into service within a certain number of months (something like 18-36 months I think), it will be deemed too old. The printer will refuse to use it.
The cartridges' ink reservoirs do lose moisture over time (osmosis [everything2.com]and all that) and will eventually be unable to print as the ink's viscosity rises.
In addition, as an in-service cartridge is used, its osmosis rate becomes much higher. (It's factory applied nozzle tape has been removed, it sits docked in a relatively more porous "garage" when not printing, it prints sometimes and the nozzle then contact open atmosphere, etc.) The freshness date is thus shortened significantly once a cartridge goes into service. This new info is written to Acumen's FLASH area and checked from print job to job.
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In HP's defense, it is possible muck up the print head if old or sufficiently dried-out ink is passed thru the nozzles. For printers with permanent or nearly permanent print heads (you replace the ink supplies only, not the print head each time), this is a real problem. Using sufficiently viscous ink will actually kill the printer.
The reasons to do this on devices that use combo printhead+ink cartridges are less strong: you're typically not gonna kill the printhead (and thus the entire printer) because you throw away the printhead each time you run out of ink. You get a brand new printhead with each ink replacement cycle; this occurs [typically] well before the onboard ink becomes viscous enough to kill the attached printhead (unless your printer sits unused in an Arizona school house all summer...). You are, however, going to reduce the user's effective print-quality (PQ). PQ is something HP and competitors care dearly about. They basically don't want you to ever get a "bad" image. So they punt the cartridge when the ink is deemed old enough.
These design requirements lead the manufacturer to "freshness date" cartridges. I'm pretty sure Canon, Epson, Lexmark, and Tektronix (oops, Xerox) do the same thing.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:2, Informative)
Re:$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent (Score:5, Informative)
The real purpose of the circuitry is to prevent refilling (for the "tell when it's empty" chips).
The integrated printhead/ink carts are also a scam. They use a thermal ink system which is guaranteed to break down in only 2 or 3 refills. Epson/Canon/(maybe others) use a piezo system with permanent printheads, and I've never had one wear out in thousands of printed pages.
I use a Canon printer, and the ink tanks are just plastic boxes full of ink. I've never bought one. I have refilled the ones that came with the printer dozens of times per color, and have never had so much as a clogged nozzle.
My first two printers were HPs, which were nightmares, even if I bought factory carts. I don't know why the hell anyone buys those on purpose, unless they assume all the others are just as bad.
My next was an Epson, which was OK but hard to refill, and one day just stopped working. Epson wanted more in a flat rate repair than a new printer cost.
Now I'm on Canon, and couldn't be happier. Refilling a tank takes less than 2 minutes, and I don't even get a drop of ink spilled.
Re:$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:1, Informative)
Posting AC because I work at HP and don't want to get fired.
Inkjet sitting for long storage. (Score:3, Informative)
This is new? (Score:3, Informative)
Some of my clients (generally small to medium buisnesses) use HP inkjets. More then once they've called me saying that they had just opened a new ink cartridge only to be told by the printer that it is expired, and every time the cartridge in question had been one that was kept on hand for a couple of months.
Also, this happened once with a computer that had the date set wrong. A perfectly working printer was plugged in and immediately the cartridges expired. Even setting the corect date wouldn't bring them back.
This is something that HP put in to the cartridges to combat all the ink refill kits. It's a real pain, too, since it means you can't keep any extra cartridges around as spares.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:4, Informative)
This is nothing new. As soon as WinXP was released, my firewall started logging a bunch of connections to Microsoft's subnets. They were all trying to phone home to sync clocks.
Re:$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Alternate drivers? (Score:3, Informative)
Just a thought.
Interestingly, my HP sitting over in the corner had the same cartridges installed in it for over 18 months, and it never had a problem using the above drivers.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:4, Informative)
YMMV, I have no personal experience with these products or this particular hack.
Re:UPS batteries (Score:3, Informative)
Even a good battery treated well only lasts a few years.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:3, Informative)
Well, you might search in Google for: 30 months after first install or 2 years after printed date on cartridge
Re:Reverse Engineering (Score:4, Informative)
I'll give you a hint - NMR solvents, such as CDCL3, are VERY high purity, because any contamination will show up on the NMR and mask the readings. Didn't air the sample tube out properly after rinsing with acetone? You'll see the acetone peaks. Drop of water somewhere because you didn't dry it properly? You'll get that big blob from the OH group.
That ink is most likely a mixture of chemicals. Running it under an NMR will give you peaks. LOTS of peaks. Like - a solid set of spikes. You won't be able to read anything in there. Even if you were to run it through some sort of magical chromatography setup to separate out all the component chemicals, you'd still have to figure out stuff like particle size, mixing ratios, etc.
-=- SK
Re:Wow (Score:3, Informative)
Think Carly. The woman from lucent (of WinModem fame), hired to be HPs president, and (thankfully) now fired.
Essentially, when you start thinking of your business as a scam, then people start avoiding you. As a techie, I was aware of the problems the moment she came in to HP, and the other management scattered.
I therefore advised people not to buy new HP products. Shortly thereafter, HP quality *did* go through the floor, while their flash and spin went through the roof. Their printers suddenly were *streamlined*, *decorative*
Well, when it happened, I wasn't surprised; and the cost increase I could bear. But I'm not going to go back to HP in such a case, am I?
Nor did others.
Don't say that printers are HPs last profitable division. Rather, say that printers were HPs scam that sucked the profits out of all their divisions.