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How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

kevin.deldycke.com

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Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#31

Post by Nextgrid »

LeonM wrote: post #27
a012 wrote: post #10

Most of printer drivers are BS. I also bought a printer after lockdown, and had to spent hours to do research on the printer model that's interested me: Mac & linux compatible. The result is Brother is the most reliable and less BS than the rest printers. In the end, I bought a wireless Brother printer, and you can throw whatever cartridge in to it.

I have run a paperless business (and life, mostly) for the past 10 years. For some old-fashoned customers I always carried a Brother DS-mobile 600 portable document scanner in my bag. The scanner was expensive, but really nice. And it worked perfectly with MacOS 'capture' application that existed on Snowleapard (10.6). However, Apple removed TWAIN support in MacOs Lion (10.7), and Brother refused to release updated d…

A solution (if you still need the scanner) is to use VueScan: https://www.hamrick.com

It's an application that has its own (reverse-engineered) drivers for many USB scanners that doesn't depend on the system having support for it. I've used it and it works perfectly, though the UI is quite complex at first glance due to the amount of various configuration options it offers.

Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#33

Post by jug »

I thought this was illegal and why the third party cartridge market is so big. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend inkjet printers for normal home users: for plain text, I'd use a B&W laserjet printer and if I had to print in color (like broschures or food recipes with photos), I'd use a color laserjet. For quality photos, I'd send them in to a professional service: it's still pretty cheap compared to inkjet printing...

I've had it with inkjet cartridges drying or having to be wasted as the printer takes them through a "restoration procedure" if it was long enough since you last printed, and you have to second guess your printer whether it's really just spending your ink, or if it does indeed do only what is absolutely necessary to not have them dry up.

Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#35

Post by simonboulton »

I don't want to be an apologist for HP or any other printer manufacturer, but there is at least one point that seems to be missed in this debate. If I design a printer, whether inkjet or any other type, I probably design it to some pretty tight tolerances in terms of the ink or toner. So I probably don't want people to drop in cartridges where the manufacturing tolerances might be way off the mark as they might well cause issues with the performance. That I as the manufacturer might be asked to fix, also possibly gaining a reputation for poor quality in the process. Yes, you might reasonably point out that OEM cartridges are expensive, but it's far from a monopoly out there, isn't it? In some ways, the expense of printing could be considered to be a good thing. Because it's a disincentive to the production of waste paper. Just my 2 cents worth :)

Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#36

Post by csharptwdec19 »

alpanka wrote: post #9

A VP at HP once told me they make 3/4 of their profits from selling inks (I am sure he exaggerated but still). You can buy original laserjet cartridges for $150 or third party cartridges for $40-60 (or $25 if you are happy with noname Chinese cartridges). So there is big money involved.

That number could make sense if 'toner' counts as ink. And TBF, a lot of the nice multifunction printers of the 2000s were sold at a pretty decent loss.

> (or $25 if you are happy with noname Chinese cartridges).

Okay so I'm not one of those '3rd party evil' people. But speaking as someone who has had to repair multiple large format Inkjet and Laser printers, I would have at least a few concerns about Hazmat; even first party toner is pretty nasty stuff.

Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#37

Post by teraku »

LeonM wrote: post #23
k_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't print anything anymore. I wish =/ Most of the documents I have to print are documents to be printed, signed, and scanned again (or sent by mail - not email). Some (including my employer) still don't accept anything else than signature on real paper somehow.. Luckily I have a "re-purpose device" at home (a young child with a huge appetite for drawings), but I'd still like to avoid this waste.

Fun fact: on the receiving end they usually have complex systems in place to scan and process those documents back into digital format. And the people working with it pay good money to OCR those scanned documents to make the whole system usable. This is sometimes referred to as the 'five monkeys with a ladder' paradigm [0] (not to be confused with the '5 monkey experiment'). It basically comes down to: we must use pa…

There's also the whole issue that entities (usually governments) have no unified and standardised way of encrypting mails yet, thus to not be open for data protection law lawsuits, they just use paper and mail, which is considered a safe transfer of documents.

Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#38

Post by vetinari »

drtillberg wrote: post #14
a012 wrote: post #10

Most of printer drivers are BS. I also bought a printer after lockdown, and had to spent hours to do research on the printer model that's interested me: Mac & linux compatible. The result is Brother is the most reliable and less BS than the rest printers. In the end, I bought a wireless Brother printer, and you can throw whatever cartridge in to it.

Linux support for HP requires some HP daemon running at all times and in my experience fails in edge cases where a standard Linux integration would not. I also don't like their logo on my Linux task bar, no one else requires that to make a printer 'go'. Recently got a Xerox, it's better.

It does not require that; just some users install it for some reason.

I do have a LaserJet at home; all I did was to connect it to the network and it popped up in the printer dialogs on Linux and Mac machines. On Linux, standard cups+hplip that's in the default package set in most distributions does the job.

Re: How to revert HP printer’s ban on 3rd-party ink cartridges

#39

Post by sokoloff »

LeonM wrote: post #23
k_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't print anything anymore. I wish =/ Most of the documents I have to print are documents to be printed, signed, and scanned again (or sent by mail - not email). Some (including my employer) still don't accept anything else than signature on real paper somehow.. Luckily I have a "re-purpose device" at home (a young child with a huge appetite for drawings), but I'd still like to avoid this waste.

Fun fact: on the receiving end they usually have complex systems in place to scan and process those documents back into digital format. And the people working with it pay good money to OCR those scanned documents to make the whole system usable. This is sometimes referred to as the 'five monkeys with a ladder' paradigm [0] (not to be confused with the '5 monkey experiment'). It basically comes down to: we must use pa…

We do almost all of our internal legal documents paperless (or at least accept scans as equivalent).

Some of our legal documents in the Czech Republic have had to be wet ink on paper originals only, no scans or copies allowed. I’m not sure how much of that is superstition on the parts of lawyers/bankers and how much is genuine, but it’s the only jurisdiction where I frequently have to send originals.

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