Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

hothardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 308 posts

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#241

Post by Steeeve »

tamana wrote: post #165
Steeeve wrote: post #70

I've had nothing but great success using third party ink with Epson printers. Every two-three years I buy a new epson printer and either a continuous ink system or refillable cartridges. I never worry about the kids printing too much or the print cartridge getting dry and clogging. Epson gets used a lot as a base in the third party space - for things like T-shirt printers and other textile based printing. The print h…

Why do you buy so many printers?

I don't consider one every two-three years a lot. I buy one whenever I run out of ink.

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#242

Post by PavlovsCat »

vlehto wrote: post #158
PavlovsCat wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you buy a water bottle that contains a certain amount of water but closes itself after X sips regardless of remaining content?

Thats bad analogy. I could easily just sip three times every time and have empty bottle. If that bottle was cheaper than regular bottle, then sure.

Why is that a bad analogy? You can also print out solid black / coloured pages and get rid of the ink before it hits the hardcoded page limit.

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#243

Post by mentos »

bArray wrote: post #59

I think this calls for a cheap open source printer to be made. Nothing complex is needed initially, just black and white with low running costs. In reality, any liquid that stains the paper of a given consistency should be fine. It shouldn't be costing this much to replace ink.

Ideally you would not want to start from scratch and instead purchase the rights to an old proven printer's design.

Anyone know of who you could approach that would sell this design to you?

Then you could probably get on Kickstarer and say "If we raise X dollars we will purchase the rights of this Y printer and open source all of the components"

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#244

Post by prodigal_erik »

maxxxxx wrote: post #185
nine_k wrote: post #146

Stop buying dirt-cheap printers that are sold at a loss. These are designed to be paid off by expensive toner / ink. These are designed to make you waste the supplies if you don't use them up fast enough. They are designed to reject third-party cheaper supplies. Pay a couple hundred more upfront for a no-bullshit device. I hope those still exist.

How do you know the more expensive printer is a no bullshit device?

This is always the problem with using price to filter out bad behavior. Scumbags can demand a higher price with another SKU for the same crap.

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#245

Post by prodigal_erik »

gtaylor wrote: post #228
userbinator wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy separate inkjet printheads intended for industrial high-volume printing applications and build the rest from parts salvaged from other printers. Very low running cost, but also low-resolution, and those printheads are not cheap. Alternatively, reverse-engineer existing printers to be able to use them with your own firmware that doesn't care what cartridges are in it.

Just to make sure I'm getting this right, your suggestions are to: #1) Build your own printer. #2) Write your own firmware. These don't seem like good options at all unless you've got lots of time to burn on something like this.

I'm reminded of "The technology involved in making something properly invisible is so mind-bogglingly complex that 999,999,999 times out of a billion it's simpler just to take the thing away and do without it." There are things I'd like to build, but a printer is so likely to work badly that I'd probably just not print stuff instead of trying.

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#247

Post by cookiecaper »

Harelin wrote: post #33
midnitewarrior wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HP and others have a lot of patents in that space with an army of lawyers to defend them unfortunately. It would have to avoid using anything coming close to these patents...

Patents expire, and printers are fairly old technology, so perhaps there is to be a printer revolution in the not so distant future?

Unfortunately, the inapplicability of intellectual property doesn't seem to matter much. They probably wouldn't use an expired patent in a suit, but many of these places just make minor tweaks and file for a new patent on the "new invention". There's enough grey area that you have to go to court to hash out whether or not the technology is infringing.

Opposing IP lawyers working for one of the largest media companies in the world have openly told an associate that while the thing they C&D'd her on may have had a good chance to be ruled non-infringing, she should comply with the C&D anyway since she would be financially ruined by a lawsuit, win or lose (realistically, she wouldn't be able to win because she'd run out of money WAY before the case even approached a conclusion -- one of big companies' favorite strategies is to "starve out" their legal opponents by making the case as expensive and convoluted as possible).

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#248

Post by fuzzfactor »

giardini wrote: post #197
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #79

As an aside, does anyone remember the last time they were happy with ANY HP product? Everytime I see that logo I get chills knowing what a pain in the ass it's going to be. Edit: I am specifically thinking about HPSM, and HPNA here.

dec0dedab0de: "As an aside, does anyone remember the last time they were happy with ANY HP product? " For the record, a company with which I consulted was very happy with the HP 1000/2100 series computers, and especially the exquisite keyboards that now-terminated HP employees once made, with tender loving care, for those computers. I suspect that one of these computers is stored safely in an underground cave somewhe…

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/HP...

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#249

Post by smhg »

Reminds me of the last HP printer I owned and the priceless reviews people wrote about it:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B0076O2A4C/RUHTFX2XOZQFY

True, it was cheap, but the way in which it malfunctioned was so much over the top that I'll never buy HP printers again.

Re: HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

#250

Post by prodigal_erik »

imglorp wrote: post #76
ne01 wrote: post #37

Liberate yourself from softwares/products like this! We used to own the stuff we paid for! Now it's like you pay to be the product. I think this problem is worse in software. Checkout fsf.org

Stallman was right...

No surprise, it was a printer vendor being buttheaded about their proprietary driver that partly motivated the GNU project.
Post reply on HN