![The Courts The Courts](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/court_64.png)
![Government Government](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/government_64.png)
![Printer Printer](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/printer_64.png)
![News News](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/news_64.png)
![IT IT](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/it_64.png)
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?
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Interesting)
Take your computer offline, reboot, set your BIOS date forwards four years, bring it back up in Windows and try printing again. If it comes up bitching, take the debugger to their printer drivers and sniff out any Win32 API calls to GetSystemDate(). Patch according to taste (hardwiring a return value of 1/1/2000 should make their carts happy that they haven't expired yet.)
I can't think of any legitimate reason for a printer driver to know the current date, so there doesn't appear to be an immediate reason why this wouldn't work.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Funny)
I can think of one reason - they're waiting for the time when printerkind is to rise up and enslave humanity.
Hell hath no fury like the vast inket printer army of a woman scorned!
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:4, Funny)
Runs away from
Legitimate reason: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Legitimate reason: (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:4, Funny)
<blink>12:00</blink>
Bah. Why did they have to deprecate that tag?
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:Hack-a-do (Score:3, Funny)
Did you cover your printer before you started typing?
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:4, Informative)
YMMV, I have no personal experience with these products or this particular hack.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Interesting)
If you keep ignoring it eventually the machine shuts down and asks for a new cartridge to be installed.
On the side of the cartridge is a small plastic cover with a couple of electrical connections nearby, underneath the cover is a pico-fuse (small fuse that looks like a resistor) when you insert a new cartridge the printer detects the fuse, resets the counter and then blows the fuse.
Replacing the fuse on one of these used cartridges will indeed give you a few more thousand uses.
Re:Hack-a-do (Score:5, Informative)
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
Are you sure? (Score:5, Funny)
However, it may not be so much as noncommitment, which is merely a lack of commitment, as an anti-commitment.
Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent (Score:5, Interesting)
"I guess now we know why printers are HP's last profitable division."
And, as soon as ink can no longer be sold for $8,000 per gallon [ebusinessforum.com] (mostly cheap solvent, bought in tank car loads), HP will go out of business? (Also see this analysis about Epson ink: Comparison of ink in bulk to prefilled cartridges. [nomorecarts.com])
If so, then HP has not been a real business for a long time, but has been merely piggybacking on the ignorance of its customers. And that means that Carly Fiorina was not a businesswoman at all, but merely good at giving the appearance of competence. And that, in turn means that people who write for the business press are completely incompetent, too.
Slashdotters should have a mission in the world, to provide at least minimal education to their friends and family and neighbors and political representatives:
Don't buy anything from a spam email.
Buy ink refills from Costco and refill Canon cartridges. (See this comment: 54 cents per refill [slashdot.org].)
Re:$8,000 per gallon for mostly cheap solvent (Score:3, 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:4, Informative)
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 fl
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
WTF?
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
It means that its stupidity is dependent upon the current position of the moon.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
"Hello. We're the Future Haters. We came back in time to call you a cracker." </chapelle>
Re:Wow (Score:3, Funny)
It's seeped its way into common use in the americas, as a general-purpose word, meaning anything so outlandish it can't be believable.
The south american lunar christ cultists have recently been dissolved (forcibly) by the argentine government, (see news [univision.com] relating to that), I'm sure they're satisfied that their diety will live on for awhile in popular language.
The primary lunacris cultist belief was that upon death, a man will rise to the heavens and join the
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Funny)
Slashdot doesn't report... (Score:4, Funny)
Proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
It wouldn't surprise me at all, but I'll believe it when I'm able to read the alleged expiration date off of my own HP cartridges. I've had an HP printer for 2 years--some of the cartridges are original and some have been replaced just once. I can't say I've ever had them stop working or falsely report empty. The nice thing is the cartridges are even a clear case so I can easily optically verify whether they are empty or not.
Re:Proof? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Proof? (Score:3, Interesting)
The ink was being used as a security marker and the business model of the company producing the hardware required that people buy three times as many disposables as they would if they let the cartridge run dry. The hardware company wasn't in the business of making print cartridges, so couldn't change the fill levels, so t
Re:Proof? (Score:5, Funny)
WTF?!?!?
The nice thing is the cartridges are even a clear case so I can easily optically verify whether they are empty or not.
-9mm-
Re:Proof? Next time, RTFA's. (Score:3, Interesting)
I didn't see anything about this in ANY of the linked articles in the summary...even regarding the Lexmark case (And since Lexmark
Re:Proof? Next time, RTFA's. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Proof? (Score:4, Insightful)
My conclusion was that the ink had dried/solidified. I don't think that is completely implausible, and probably much more likely than embedding expiry dates.
Also, with my HP printers (2 multifunctions) it is possible to have it keep printing even with ink warnings, and I have always noticed that the printouts start to have gaps of fade right when it tells me its run out. It would be far too much work in my opinio nto program the printer to fade out blotches and signal low ink at an early date just to make you buy new catridges.
I also examined the packing for my HP cartridges, the expiry date is 2 years after when we bought them, 2 years sounds like enough time for things to dry/solidify.
Inkjet sitting for long storage. (Score:3, Informative)
Ink dries out eventually (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure dried ink can reek havoc on printer heads. This is not necessarily an attempt to screw over their customers
Re:Ink dries out eventually (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ink dries out eventually (Score:2)
Re:Ink dries out eventually (Score:2)
Other causes than expiry date (Score:4, Interesting)
However, there are far more important things than exiry date for the useful lifetime. If you use the printer in a very dry area then the ink is far more likely to dry out quicker. If we're really to believe that HP is doing this to be nice to us, then I'd expect to see a humidity sensor.
It might be OK to tell the user that their cartridge has expired and let them choose to use it or not. Surely the choice is the customer's. Analogy: Milk has an expiry date. If you use old milk, that's your business. The milk company don't prevent you from using milk that's a couple of days past expiry (though maybe if they could figure out technology to do this they would).
Re:Other causes than expiry date (Score:3)
The milk company (and the law) can prevent the store from selling it past that date.
Re:Other causes than expiry date (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Go Cannon (Score:3)
Re:Go Cannon (Score:3, Interesting)
The Canon's I've seen are nice in the fact that they use simple ink tanks and have a easily detachable printhead when the time comes to replace it.
The Epson I own, the R200 doesn't look as easy as the Canon to replace the printhead.
The HP PSC 950 I own takes a $30 black cartrage with an estimated yield of 603 pages. The print head is as usual onboard. About
There is another cartrage for HP ( 5164
That doesn't stop Epson from selling ink (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the stinker: most Epson printers will NOT let you replace the cartridge until it says it needs to be replaced. So if it tells you it needs to be replaced, and you just pop the old cart out and put it right back in, it will assume that a new, full cart is installed. Then when it DOES run dry, it won't let you replace it because it doesn't think that it's empty.
There's a workaround though: turn off the printer. Then look under the printhead carriage, there'll be a plastic tab that prevents you from sliding the carriage out to where you can change the cart. Just flip this tab forward, and replace the cart. Slide the carriage back, and turn on the printer. It won't even know that you've just changed the cartridge.
Since the cart is separate from the head, and the head isn't replaceable, it's probably a good idea to NOT let it run truly empty, as then you'll end up with air in the head that you'll have to purge.
I've got another gripe about inkjets, and they all seem to do this. If, say, your cyan has a blocked head, you can't just clean the cyan. You have to clean them all. This wastes ink from colors that don't need to be cleaned!
It's not cleaning the heads, it's cleaning out your wallet.
Bone dry (Score:2, Informative)
Plotters (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Plotters (Score:3, Funny)
Shouldn't this be modded funny? The plotters I've used didn't have an "ink system".. unless you count "markers on paper".
In an unrelated note... (Score:5, Funny)
my experience is... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:my experience is... (Score:2)
N.
Re:my experience is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Instant profit for HP! Who knows, maybe they'll write the virus themselves...
N.
New law on class-action suits (Score:5, Interesting)
Since this seems to be the first major suit announced, it'll be interesting to see how it works under the new law. Will there be real limits on attorney's fees? Will it be tied up in Federal Court even longer than it would've been in State Court? Will customers see something other than a coupon to buy more ink?
Stay Tuned to find out!
Re:New law on class-action suits (Score:4, Interesting)
That depends on the president appointing them. Thomas and Jackson both were evidently unqualified at the time they were proposed. But on average the quality of federal judges is certainly higher.
I don't think that the class action bill will work the way that its promoters intend. I think that it is most likely to eliminate the '$5 coupon' type of settlement where the principle objective is to pump up the lawyer's fees to the maximum possible and let the persons damaged by the defendant's behavior go hang.
I don't think it very likely that the Federal courts will refuse to hear the cases due to mixed jurisdiction issues either. congress has decided that these cases should be heard in their jurisdiction. All prior case law concerning venue is now obsolete. Legislation trumps precedent, that is the point of legislation. The only way the courts could push the cases out would be to declare the venue clause unconstitutional which I can't believe would happen.
I noticed that too (Score:5, Funny)
and Canon, Epson, Oki, Brother,... They all slowly render my printers unusable by selling me ink at $38000/gal [bizjournals.com], which slowly makes my wallet thinner and thinner until eventually I have no money left, I have to sell my home, put my wife on the street, dress my kids in rags and send them to beg at street corners, and get me a cardboard box to sleep in at night, and protect my (now useless) printer during the day...
Re:I noticed that too (Score:2)
Another class action (Score:4, Interesting)
We are just livestock on the corporate ranch (Score:2)
This surprises you... how? (Score:5, Interesting)
And companies want to recoup that cost as fast as possible.
I worked on some yellow dyes and can tell you it's a very difficult process. Very expensive- you might have 6 months of failures.. and the floor lab might be stained a million colours.
But when it's done (and your scale up engineers have done it right) you'll get the cost of your ink way down.... I seem to remember some were down around 30$/kg. Pretty cheap. But that was the 'cost' of making the ink, not including all the $$ into research.
And being a chemist I can tell you inks in suspension aren't good after sitting for awhile. Yes, it's in a dark cartridge, but I don't know many people that will tell you it's safe to take a drug
Anyways.... this shouldn't surprise anyone that works with inkjets. The high-volume people will never see the problem, only the low volume people. And those that know will probably do something like this instead http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cat
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:This surprises you... how? (Score:4, Interesting)
If it costs so much money to create ink, then why are third-party ink vendors able to do it for so much cheaper?
If there's really that much innovation going into the ink R&D, why not just patent the ink?
Do ink formulations really change that much from printer to printer?
Reverse Engineering (Score:4, Interesting)
Then quick jaunt to the patent literature will help pinpoint any patented routes that are 'protected' to produce similiar compounds.
Finally, set up any graduate in chemistry to come up with a synthetic route.
Retool a pharmco plant or use (*if you care about quality*) some form of purification (membrane, recrystallization, solvent exchange, chromatography) and you've got an ink with no upfront costs.
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:This surprises you... how? (Score:3, Funny)
Well, a few years back, I happened to find a joint stashed among my old baseball cards (???) while visiting my parents, and let me tell you, the date of expiration had zero deterrent effect.
Wow! (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. But this entire article is based solely on a "Yahoo! News" article saying a woman filed a lawsuit. Hardly up to the level of content needed for a Slashdot discussion. What exactly are we supposed to post about? "So, a lady is claiming this. It wouldn't surprise me if it was true. Um...yeah." It's just a lawsuit claiming this. There are endless lawsuits each year claiming all kinds of things.
Come on,
HP, Take a lesson from the diary industry... (Score:2)
Epson printers... (Score:5, Interesting)
At a predermined time (On time? Date? Droplets fired?) the printer shut down with the equivilent of an "Engine Check Light" and refuses to print. The driver brings up a generic error message about "serviceable parts are past their usable lifetime" even though the printer was working perfectly.
The printer is so old now that having it serviced is completely out of the question and given that new printers of much greater quality only cost $50, well...
Welcome to the peak of the throw away society! You no longer have to wait till normal, planned, obsolesence kicks in, electronic devices are now programed to fail!
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.
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:Slashdot dupes are getting older...April 30th 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, but that article's past its expiry date, dontcha know? ;)
That's how capitalism works. (Score:2)
Re:That's how capitalism works. (Score:3, Insightful)
Democratic way. How does democracy relate to our economy?
If a company breaks the law and makes me lose money, I have no other recourse but to sue them to recover my losses. Why would you even think that I would buy the products if they are a dishonest company. Of course I would no longer purchase from them. But you haven't resolved with how to deal with them breaking laws and cheating me out of money.
Asking for justice with in our system IS the democratic way.
Is there a list of printers? (Score:2)
can be justified (Score:4, Interesting)
If the vendor makes it clear on the product that there is an expiration date, then there would seem to be no reason that they can't also enforce it by technical measures. I mean, when you buy a one year license key for a software product, you read and agree to the license that says that it will stop working after one year. If the consumable actually says that it will expire and stop working after 2.5 years (or whatever), then that's what it'll do, and this is what you are cogniziant of when you make the transaction!
There are some complications.
Firstly, if the time-expiring consumable is tied to the product and not available from any other vendor, there may be some sort of anti-trust issue here with "product tieing"; i.e. the vendor is trying to control the market more than is allowable: this is anti-competitive.
Secondly, if there are objective reasons for time-expiring, then the vendor may be okay: for example, if it can be shown that the the quality of the ink degrades to the point that after the expiration date, it would actually cause damage to the product it is used in. In this case, the vendor is making a fair and reasonable attempt to reduce damage caused by the item, which seems fair enough. Note again, there would need to be a provable reason for this, not just some kind of marketing spin.
Thirdly, it's a free market: if one vendor wants to offer a consumable with time-expiration built in, then there's nothing stopping other vendors from offer non-expiring products. As the consumer, provided you are given the knowledge up front (i.e. product labelling), it's then your free choice about which product you want to choose. There's no reason for the government or courts to step in and regulate this behaviour.
So without knowing a lot more facts, it's hard to understand what the exact position is here.
Running b&w only on HP printers (Score:3, Funny)
This is new? (Score:3, Interesting)
My friend was furious as his cart. was still half full and (was) perfectly functional the day before. He called HP and chewed a$$ mightily, to no avail. Neither one of us will ever buy a HP product again.
It was my understanding that the Lexmark lawsuite was peripherally in response to a 3rd party cartridge that had this feature bypassed or removed. Also - hacks do exist. Removing the offending system date calls from the driver (I think) is supposed to work.
Re: HP SecretlyRenderingPrinterCartridges Unusable (Score:5, Funny)
HP Laserjets (Score:3, Interesting)
It could be cleared if you knew the codes, but thae were not given out to mere 'consumers'.
Its still a scam, but its not new.
Expiring Inkjet Carts (Score:3, Interesting)
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].)
I have issues with my Brother MFC (Score:5, Interesting)
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 serie
Re:I have issues with my Brother MFC (Score:3, Interesting)
Short of buying a laser printer, I don't know what to do either. I really didn't like the ozone that I smelled around laser printers in the past, I don't know if they changed it. Inkjets seem to be maintainance nightmares, if you print too much, money is bein
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.
-----
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:Old news. "Acumen" chips carry "freshness dates (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, I've got a Laserjet 4M+ with more than a few miles on it. The last (used) cartridge I put in lasted three years before something failed in the cartridge and started dumping toner on the paper. I had another (used) cartridge handy and it has lasted over a year and a half to date. Needless to say, print quality (PQ) remains great.
These shady inkjet printer manufacturers can take their $30,000/gal ink, their half-filled chipped cartridges, their plasticky disposable printers, their business models, the lawyers they use to enforce said business models, and shove them where the sun don't shine. Sideways.
. . .Home to Roost (Score:3)
I thought, "Wow. This whole thing is a big, stupid scam. I want a printer where I can buy straight ink and just re-fill the machine. Buying cartridges is for chumps. This is a big, giant rip-off and in a few years people are going to be screaming."
Then I thought:
"Of course, there are two levels at which people will put up with this bullshit; the business level and the personal level. --The business level is tighter; they can't afford to be pushed as far as individuals, and so they won't be. --The average office simply couldn't function if they had to replace ink cartridges every sixty pages! So it's better to buy whatever a medium-sized office would use rather than what Joe and Jenny Average want to put on their hallway desk. Spend the extra four hundred bucks and get a half-decent laser printer."
Boy was I ever right on that count. I go through maybe one toner unit every two years, (2500 pages, approx). --This is still a stupid rip-off, but it's better than having to replace a thirty-five dollar ink cartridge every month, (before tax!)
Back when the home office computer equipment market was still establishing itself. . . (Make good stuff to establish market share, then slowly start to suck.)
The HP Laserjet II was one of the best pieces of hardware I've ever seen. I miss that indestructible, ultra-reliable monster. Sigh. Back when HP was a good company which had ethics. I'm sure glad I don't work for them now! Their Karma is sinking fast. Must be a misery to be there today.
One of the worst things in the world you can do for your mental and physical health is to work for a company you don't respect. Imagine, a million people silently cursing you. .
-FL
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:Modchips (Score:3, Insightful)
4 - Get DMCA C&D notice from printer manufacturer
5 - Hire a lawyer to fight ludicrous claim in court
6 - Realize they have more money than you to throw at lawyers and give up the fight
Re:Dates in printers (Score:2)
Re:Alternate drivers? (Score:3, 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: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:UPS batteries (Score:3, Informative)
It appears from the model numbers of the batteries that they just use very cheap very ordinary batteries on their low end models - but a lot of discharges will kill even a decent battery, and you can get decent replacement batteries in a lot of places. One thing I intensely dislike about APC is their price gouging on their serial cables (10x usual price where I live) which appear to have a couple of wires crossed over for the sole purpose of only