Live data from Hacker News

How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

theverge.com

81–90 of 208 posts

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#81
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Wifi, there's different laws about strength of broadcasts etc. in various countries, so I can understand there being some kind of region control, but having it locked is very anti-consumer. Usually you can easily change the legislative region to bring you in line with local laws. Gas equipment tends to be extremely controlled, so I can understand no-one wanting to connect to a different region's connector with p…

Yeah I've heard about the regional wifi laws to do with strengths etc. Annoyingly there is a disabled region dropdown in the web UI of the router, which has Europe listed as an option, I just cant change it. Ive tried undisabling in the inspector as well as crafting an http request to modify the region but it doesn't work. Then it reboots itself due to the lack of cable connection. I understand more with the gas due…

Usually it's trivial to change the wifi region, so it sounds like Netgear are just being arseholes there.

I thought you were talking about mains gas for the oven - they tend to get a lot more precious over that being correctly fitted than for canisters.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#82
post #34
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who need to print a bit more often, my advice is to buy a black and white laser printer for ~$40 on Craigslist and you'll get years of cheap, reliable occasional printing in your own home while you use up the rest of the toner cartridge that came with it. When it breaks you can probably find another one in the same price range.

I'm going to advise against this. Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. I have gotten 2 used printers out of not wanting to generate e-waste, only to have constant printer jams and other frustrations leading to me having to just print at the grocery store instead. "That Brother printer" will cost you more (and be Yet Another Plastic Thing To Go To A Lan…

> Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense.

Consumer printers? Sure. Highly likely. That stuff was designed to be disposable.

Business-class or Enterprise-class printers that had been used in larger offices or have low page counts? A much lower probability.

The business/enterprise stuff is meant to last because they cost a lot going out the door, and so are built robustly. You just have to ensure either a low page count, or some sort of proof that the machine had been serviced regularly by properly-certified printer techs.

Yes, it is still possible to get a lemon. But if you live somewhere with any sort of a significant metro region, you only need a little patience to find older pre-DRM hardware that is still performing well.

I have had a second-hand 4050DTN for about two decades now (liquidation sale, IIRC), and while it’s hurting for a maintenance kit (already have one, albeit in storage somewhere), it’s still running very well in all other aspects.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#84
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to advise against this. Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. I have gotten 2 used printers out of not wanting to generate e-waste, only to have constant printer jams and other frustrations leading to me having to just print at the grocery store instead. "That Brother printer" will cost you more (and be Yet Another Plastic Thing To Go To A Lan…

I got a Brother laser printer (HL-3170CDW) and in terms of economy it's hard to beat. (Never buy an ink printer though. That advice holds.) About the random bricking though… While this printer doesn't actually brick itself, it does have a very curious failure state where if you leave it off, but plugged into the mains, it will eventually refuse to boot up until you unplug it, wait for ten minutes, and plug it back in…

> Never buy an ink printer though. That advice holds.

With traditional ink printers, yes.

With the new tank-based printers? No. That advice no longer holds.

Tank-based printers separate out the tank that holds the ink from the nozzle that sprays the ink. This allows the printer to fully seal off the tank when the printer is not in use, preventing the ink from drying up. The traditional ink cartridges are not able to do that, which is what causes so much frustration and wastage.

I have a few clients with the tank-based printers, and these products seem to have solved the last major objections against inkjet printers. FWIHS, they tend to work quite well.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. We moved to another country and changing everything from my location in the google play store (requires a form of payment from the new country) to opening a second PayPal account with another email was painful. I still think the change of cell phone numbers was the worst. It seems the assumption with all applications is that we will be born and die with the same number now. I will have to memorialize…

How would you expect global number portability to work when each country more or less has their own country code and unique numbering plan? A US to Canada or vice versa move would work since they’re on the same system, but a UK number, for instance, doesn’t even have the same digits of numbers necessarily, and even if they’re both 10, they’re completely different formats.

Not OP, but I think they mean changing their mobile number setting inside of their online accounts is impossible. When they moved, they got a new number format but their existing account won’t let them change the format.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#86
post #19

This story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. I can print in the library. Since Covid started I needed to do that twice: The first time they had stopped accepting cash because of the infection risk(!). And I loaded 2 Euros on my library card for 10 pages but obviously did not use all of them. The second time they were surprised that I had money on my library card. To be fair I have printed…

I never get why people get so angry about this. I’m a stupid consumer with printers. I have a HP office jet and pay like $5/month for their ink subscription. I print 30-80 pages a month. The economics work. I have a cheap capable inkjet MFP in the same cost envelope of a bigger, lower toner cost laser. The printer talks PCL and works with anything I’ve tried including Linux.

It works for you because you print a lot (1-3 pages per day!). OP prints fewer than 10 pages per year.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#87

HP products are now such crappy/broken products, it is incredible. Their printers are probably the worst. All the ones I had to touch had problems: scan pages bent, adf adding a blue line on scanned documents, configuration messed up in windows because owning 2 times the same model or one of them being setup both by cable and wifi, huge software bloat on PC or android, thing that should connect but is not detected de…

>I'm quite sure that they would have died a long time ago and not have this market share

They are riding on their legendary reputation during the 20th century.

Once upon a time, Hewlett-Packard was the industry leader in precision electronics and their printers in particular were built to withstand World War 3.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My laserjet 1020 is messed up and gets jammed up if put more than one sheet into the tray. So I need to print the pages one by one by waiting until the status led flashes orange, then load the next sheet and click next / briefly opening the top lid. But I rather keep just doing this than dealing with any of that modern drm crap.

Sounds like you need to purchase the laserjet 1020 maintenance kit. It has these replacement pickup rollers that are supposed to be replaced after x number of years/x number of prints.

Another thing I've been told by a manufacturer: paper quality is apparently the biggest factor in longevity of a printer. To the point they custom order "the worst paper" for testing purposes (which apparently a speciality paper mill agreed to do, but absolutely refused to put their name on).

I don't know the specifics of this, beyond if you buy the cheapest paper you can probably expect your printer to jam up sooner.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#89
post #37
post #31

HP printers are absolutely awful now in terms of their PITA setup, obtuse smart setup exe’s instead of drivers, stupid drm or subscription lock stuff like this. We do not supply or recommend them any more (IT company).

Can you recommend a printer or brand? Or else enumerate all the bad ones? ;)

I recommend Brother Black & White lasers. (Brother seem to want the business and don't try to abuse their customers.)

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#90

I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (with built in scanner) for £250 and it was bundled with 6 spare toner cartridges. That was two years ago, we’re still on the first cartridge. The printer before that was also a monochrome laser printer and that lasted nearly a decade (only got rid of it because it didn’t support wireless and I couldn’t be bothered running cables anymore). Basically, I think monochrome lase…

I have a Lexmark E232 that bought back in 2006. I’ve printed like 90k pages and still works like a charm.
Post reply on HN