I'm increasingly getting irritated by the feeling that I don't actually own or control the hardware I purchase.
That's why I buy hardware that starts with "i" in its name. That way, I know that "I" am the owner and "I" am in complete control.
Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
71–80 of 485 posts
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
There really is no reason to be printing photos on your own printer (for consumers, though I suspect it’s similar for pros). Every corner drug store (in the US) can print them with better quality and at a lower cost. Maybe it’s a slight hassle, but how many people are printing a significant quantity of photos anymore?
The problem is printing photos that you want to keep private.
If you print many of those, there are pro grade inkjets that are dramatically less scammy, or color laser printers that aren’t bad either.
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the low number of pages printed at home, I don’t mind buying the actual name-brand toner. If you’re only changing it every 2 years, the cost doesn’t matter much, and at least the company (i.e. Brother) gets some profit from being a good citizen. Going with non-OEM toner in that situation just drives the company into needing to find more revenue streams, such as locking down the cartridges, which undermines you. At…
How about they make their money by selling a good printer? I don't have to buy has from my car company if I want a good car.
It’s has historically proven difficult to sustain that model because the consumer printer market for the past 20 years has been race to the bottom. It’s hard to compete when competitors are selling their printers at or below cost.
Consumers mostly tend to make their purchase decisions on the margin, and so the razors-and-blades model works well.
I guess there may be a few recent exceptions to this like the Epson Ecotank, although I don’t know how profitable that has been for them.
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#74Not to be meant snarky, but I think the office world should strive to print much less at all. Working at a University it is mind boggling to me how much paper is waster because someone internally decided they need a real signature. Not all my colleagues are savyy enough to paste a scanned signature into a pdf.
There's plenty of jurisdictions where "pasting a scanned signature into a pdf" doesn't produce a legally valid signature.
Germany requires some signing software for pdfs - though printed-signed-scanned documents are also legally valid signatures
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
There really is no reason to be printing photos on your own printer (for consumers, though I suspect it’s similar for pros). Every corner drug store (in the US) can print them with better quality and at a lower cost. Maybe it’s a slight hassle, but how many people are printing a significant quantity of photos anymore?
What you say is not true for professional photographers or designers. For one thing, pro-level printers are in fact better than what the drug store has, which are optimized for speed, economy, and vibrancy — none of which are major concerns for professionals. They want accuracy and quality above all else. For another thing, being able to print proofs in your own office is important. Having to run to the drug store to…
Pretty clearly the poster was referring to the consumer grade ones which 99% of folks are going to buy no?
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#76I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…
I had a contrary experience and I stopped buying laser printers. I had to toss two Brother lasers in the trash because Brother's customer service on warranty repairs required more hoops than I was willing to deal with. Meanwhile, I ended up with an HP OfficeJet Pro 8620 that was recommended years ago by The Wirecutter and I use HP's ink subscription service. It's never failed on me. It never jams. No fuser or toner t…
Since you’ve updated your comment, I think the key difference is that most people try to stick to B&W laser printers as those seem to be rock solid. Rather than going for new printers or printers that have an insane sale like a $450 for $150, look for reviews from forums for people who have been using the printer model for years (or join and ask on such forums if you can’t find anything). It sounds like the printer you happened to pick had a known design/manufacturing flaw and whose service life wasn’t up to snuff, which probably explains the huge discount. Remember. Laser printers make money on the printer, not the toner so much. That means if a printer is getting a huge discount, it probably has some kind of problem.
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#77I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…
Are the new ones with refill bottles instead of ink cartridges any better?
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#78My HP inkjet will not print any color or black if the “photo black” cartridge is removed. I consider this a similar “greed move” by HP.
The water dispenser on my fridge stops working if it decides the filter needs to be replaced. I get about ten days between the “new filter” light and when it stops working with the beeping and blinking getting progressively more annoying. Oddly enough the ice dispenser (which also uses the filter) continues to function. So it’s not a safety issue and someone apparently decided consumers would tolerate the inconvenien…
> someone apparently decided consumers would tolerate the inconvenience of no filtered water
What kind of person makes decisions like this? When handed a good product, who decides to make it worse on purpose?
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#79I am happy that finally somebody is suing a printer manufacturer.
Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not understand how the other printer brands are even in business when Brother is an option. I feel like their reputation for being the best in the consumer space would have spread far and wide by now. I have been able to scan all of my documents with their MFC line directly to my Dropbox (or box or drive or onedrive) account for over 6 years now, AND Brother Web Connect automatically OCR’s them.
There are a lot of people out there that haven’t figured out the scam yet, and new ones minted every day. And those brands will sell 5 of these rip-off inkjets to someone at high margin before they figure it out and buy a brother once - for 1/5 of the total profit to brother.
But between Consumer Reports, Wirecutter, the 18 million review websites, Costco, I feel like such an obviously superior brand and product should have had its reputation widely known by now, like Toyota/Honda.