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Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
161–170 of 297 posts
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#162Why hasn’t the printer industry not been disrupted by a company that isn’t hell-bent on fucking over their customers?
Who's going to look at a distorted market that's also shrinking and try to compete by offering printers at realistic costs and no lock in.
Home users aren't going to buy that when they could get an inkjet for $50 (damn the costs later), and office users aren't going to buy it unless there's a service network and the lineup scales up to the 4 foot high office monstrosity multi function machines with collating and all that jazz. If they have printers at all.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't had a printer for the past 3 years and I refuse to buy one because of the disgusting economic and environmental practices of the ink mafia. Their behaviour has been beyond despicable for decades but somehow the world has just shrugged their shoulders and accepted it. I have an iPad and downloaded PDF Expert and got an Apple Pencil to sign digital documents and I've only occasionally had issues I can't get a…
You can return Amazon purchases without a printer. I've done it multiple times. You can either have them mail you a label (for $1) or take it to a UPS Store where they scan a barcode on your phone.
2 other no label options sometimes available are to use an Amazon returns drop at a local Whole Foods or return to a local Kohl's store.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#164I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers". I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spendin…
> I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device For printing something like once a month, it is even harder to justify wasting space by putting a printer. Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.
I'd love this but I can't think of a vendor that is reliable enough to put in a minimally attended machine. Thus we have the ones in UPS stores and markets.
There's been a sea change. In 2000 if you wasted time on a website for a pitch, it was a gimmick. People wanted a nicely printed, bound pitch book that they'd have in front of them at the meeting. They'd probably throw them away but one would float around for a while if you were lucky.
Now people expect you to have it digitally, and don't have a place for paper.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#165Would you be interested in getting a laser printer? I have a Brother and it works very well. It doesn't come with a huge toner cartridge but I'm still on the starter and it's been more than 5 years. Honestly I don't print super often, but it's a nice to have thing. The build quality is also good. It's a bit of a pain to set up, but once done it "just works".
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
IDK, I'm in my mid 30s and I really can't remember printers being alright.
I'm in my late 40s and I remember the joy of printing out banners with Print Shop on a Commodore 64 using a dot matrix printer. It was fantastic but it's been pretty downhill since there. Video to show what I mean: https://youtu.be/BIltpheSZPs In the modern era, I've just bought a cheap Brother black and white laser printer and called it a day. The toner lasts F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
> The toner lasts F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
Now you know why the manufacturer wants to change things.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japan? US 7-11's absolutely do not have this service, and you're lucky if you find a grocery store that has a photo copier these days (was somewhat common in the 90s).
US drug stores commonly have a photoprinting area which I'd guess will do documents too. Not usually at the grocery stores or convenience stores though. There's also reprographics places and most shipping stores do printing as well. None of that is as convenient as a home printer, though. If you can get a decent color laser and lightly use it, it should treat you well for quite some time. Inkjets don't really like li…
In my experience, US drug stores that can do document printing are the exception rather than the rule, though the self-service photo printing stations are practically universal.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't they get you by making you change the proprietary sponge/ink pad though? Oh and it's not user serviceable. https://epson.ca/Support/wa00369
I've seen a few guides on youtube on how to replace or clean them out, then a paid service similar to unlocking phones to pay a hacker to reset the counter.
Sounds like we are back at square one. Or even worse because "regular" DRM'd printers are atleast cheap upfront and you can keep it cheap if you are ok with replacing ID chips/flashing cfw.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#169Soon they'll have a hidden 5G Internet connection that sends all printed material to the manufacturer, who will then sell the data to advertisers and the state. Are there still any new printers (postscript, laser) that are reasonable? Black and white printing is sufficient.
They already add hidden tracking dots to documents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code
I don't know how this is legal without informing the user. But that's the case with a lot of censorship/surveillance technology - they not only want to keep surveil/censor, they want to do so while keeping users in the dark about it.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#170Wanting to update the firmware
If you weren't ever wary of updates, this should be a strong lesson. The updates are not for your benefit anymore; the companies just want to have you on a leash where they hold the other end.
"Don't fix it if it ain't broke."
and then just purposefully print like garbage
In other words, they're maliciously spreading FUD that 3rd-party consumables will result in lower print quality, and then making that a self-fulfilling prophecy. That should be illegal if it isn't already.