HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer • Hacker News Board

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#101

Post by KevinGlass » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 11:18 PM UTC

jonathantf2 wrote: post #47

bayindirh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requires the HP Smart app download. To be able to scan your documents to your phone directly. > Subscription may be required; subscription may not be available in all countries For some advanced, Prizmo-like scan features and OCR which are probably cloud based. > Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner Considering printers at same size provides ~3000 pages, that's good. 2 years is probably printi…

The last 3 HP LaserJets we've bought at work have had to go back because they require an HP account to print. You can't use port 9100 unless you've got an account, it just sits at an error state. No matter what we did you couldn't sign in, their cloud service seems to be down all the time and support wouldn't help.

I've installed a few dozen HP LaserJets recently and haven't needed any kind of account.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#102

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 11:28 PM UTC

ommz wrote: post #8

> Requires the HP Smart app download. > Subscription may be required; subscription may not be available in all countries > HP account required for full functionality > Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner The disclaimers, or more succinctly, the anti-feature section.

[deleted]

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#103

Post by lxe » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 11:40 PM UTC

Or, get a Brother HL-2270dw. I changed the toner twice in probably a decade. 3 moves. Toner cartridges are available from third parties for dirt cheap. No DRM. The iOS app has the "print" feature and it's all it needs. Never jammed. Never broke or failed in any way. Thought that it won't work with my new eero router... nope, the firmware update fixed the wifi. This thing will outlive me.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#104

Post by leetrout » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 11:42 PM UTC

lxe wrote: post #103

Or, get a Brother HL-2270dw. I changed the toner twice in probably a decade. 3 moves. Toner cartridges are available from third parties for dirt cheap. No DRM. The iOS app has the "print" feature and it's all it needs. Never jammed. Never broke or failed in any way. Thought that it won't work with my new eero router... nope, the firmware update fixed the wifi. This thing will outlive me.

I have nothing but bad things to say about Brother. I will never buy another one. Last purchase was a $350 multifunction color laser printer that stopped turning on. I was just over the one year warranty and no support from Brother and their authorized service centers want to put me on a commercial support plan. I bought it for my wife, a teacher, because the school copiers were always broken or unavailable. HP makes shitty printers but they will actually help you get something replaced in my experience.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#105

Post by andrewia » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

solardev wrote: post #38

andrewia wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the manual, the toner refill kit is entirely passive and has no electrical contacts or other authentication. That's just verbage to scare you into buying their refill kit instead of the inevitable generic version.

> the toner refill kit is entirely passive and has no electrical contacts or other authentication Yet.

It seems unlikely that HP will add DRM after the fact. Even if the printer has the hardware capability to enforce DRM, it isn't upon release, so you could simply keep it VLAN-ed off of the internet so it can't update its firmware to a version that begins enforcing the DRM chips. Adding DRM would also create a subpar UX where old, DRM-less HP refills stop working because the firmware thinks they're knockoffs.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#106

Post by inferiorhuman » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:03 AM UTC

mmastrac wrote: post #29

inferiorhuman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The JetDirect 600 series got a few firmware updates (and they will take any firmware you send it over PCL) and did away with the Java based interface IIRC. The duty cycle on the regular LaserJets (not P or L) was high enough (I want to say something like 50,000 pages per month) that if you come anywhere near it you'll need to start servicing it regularly. I think most folks (even businesses) who owned them didn't com…

I'll have to take a look and see if my JetDirect 300X has new firmware. EDIT: Nope, it's a Javapocalypse for that particular device.

Oh that's too bad. The 620N I put in my printer was new-in-box so it came with the original Java based firmware. Yuck. The other reason to look for new firmware is that there were various security issues that were resolved.

FWIW it looks like you may be able to use HP Web Jetadmin which is some sort of .net monstrosity.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#107

Post by da768 » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:14 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #44

selectodude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's annoying news but my Brother laser, regarded for its serviceability, needs new drums every 12-15k pages at $90/ea. That's on top of $75 toner cartridges every 5-7k pages. This $400 printer with $30 ink refills that ends up being disposable at the end of its service live has a lower TCO than anything else I've seen.

Yeah the brother magic went away, they 3x the price of first-party consumables a few years ago.

And there are reports that the 2022 firmware updates now make it harder to use 3rd party toner.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#108

Post by ChuckMcM » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:17 AM UTC

Okay wanted to post "hahahahahahahahahahaha!" but that doesn't add much to the discussion. The HP printer product managers really seemed to believe "because HP" was a license to rip off people who bought their printers. I knew they were in trouble when I was forced to replace my completely functional HP inkjet because they refused to provide drivers for Windows 10. Did the research and found an Epson Ecotank printer[1] that would meet my needs and oh hey, did NOT bone my on the cost of ink or make me sign up for "subscriptions" etc. Then I went to buy it.

Out of stock everywhere with multi-week lead times, while HP printers were "ready to ship now." I put in an order with Epson directly and waited. But what I took away from this is that HP is having a harder and harder time trying to sell their product with its "great monthly recurring revenue!" which I'm sure some product manager is super proud of. Way to go dude, you killed your own product in search of more profit for your company.

[1] In case anyone wonders, its the ET-7750 (and yes the printer it replaced was a wide format printer) based on my historical usage it will be "free" (total operating cost < than the HP equivalent) in about 24 months. I don't use the scanner even.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#109

Post by andix » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:17 AM UTC

cookiengineer wrote: post #86

ommz wrote: post #8

> Requires the HP Smart app download. > Subscription may be required; subscription may not be available in all countries > HP account required for full functionality > Get up to 5,000 pages or up to 2 years of pre-filled toner The disclaimers, or more succinctly, the anti-feature section.

Honestly, seing printers like this over the years and everything getting worse and worse makes me feel good about having an old Brother laser printer. It's monochrome, it's now 20 years old, but it's good enough for me. It keeps running and running, and the toner is dirt-cheap on the market. No internet, no spyware and no IoT-secured (tm) app required. Manufacturers like Epson and HP kind of force me into keeping thi…

This is mostly still valid for current brother printers. I bought one last year, and the web interface looks exactly the same on the one I bought 15 years earlier. The only difference: it can do wifi now.

Re: HP LaserJet Tank – Refillable laser printer

#110

Post by andix » Thu, Aug 18, 2022, 12:22 AM UTC

bpye wrote: post #89

broknbottle wrote: post #81

Avoid HP at all cost and stick to Brother, Cannon and Epson. HP is a company that had the privilege of having their logo on a iPod but is a complete turd at the end of the day.

Linux support for Brother printers is variable. brlaser kind of works for mine, but only with a patch, and some documents still end up producing a white page...

For laser printers there are always models that support PCL and Postscript. They work with any operating system and can be used with generic drivers. Usually they are a few bucks more expensive, but you will be able to still use them in 30 years, when nobody knows anymore what windows 11 was.