Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

91–100 of 208 posts

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

#91
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 wonder if Brother knows of its growing positive reputation over the past ~15 years, and whether there are internal pressures within Brother's C-execs to capitalize on this through 'successful' tactics that others are employing.

Its just the lasers though. I had a brother inkjet and it was a short lived disaster. I don't print much and the heads dried up a bit and then in 'cleaning mode' it blasts out most of the ink of the cartridges, but doesn't fix the problem. Other inkjets have the print heads on the catridges so you get new ones when they are replaced. Brother inkjet heads are part of the printer which means they can be a better quality head, but if there is a problem then its much harder to fix. In the end the printer didn't last a year because it heads got fouled and couldn't easily be cleaned/replaced.

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

#93

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.

Yes.. It is near impossible to change a phone number for most accounts. My US banks would not allow for the same amount of digits as my European phone number had. Wiring money from my own accounts wanted to send a 4 digit pin to my US number which would not work in France. You seem to imply that in 2023, we are not capable of making a banking application accept more than one format of phone number. And the fact that google cannot figure out I live in another country (and I have to enter a bank card with address in an app store or else I am blocked from certain apps) is laughable.

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

#94
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…

The article opens with a hint at another possible course of action: buy a cheap Brother laser printer, which currently go for about $129 in the US. Read the beginning of the article for the testimony, which many people have found for themselves.

What you actually need to avoid are manufacturers like HP, unless the idea of an “ink subscription” appeals to you. It’s also best to avoid ink jets both because of ink costs but also because they’re much less reliable especially if you don’t use them often - the ink dries up and the autoclean option never quite works right.

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

#95
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. If it's that easy for you, great. Fact is that desktop printers offer a service that is so valuable to some people/professions that manufacturers can be as outwardly customer-hostile as they please and still ship plenty of product.

I have a home office, and life without my printer would be terribly inconvenient. Driving to the library or copy center every time I need to print something is a nonstarter.

What're you printing? At some point I realised it was extremely rare that I printed anything other than a return label (and was doing so at the office while largely working from home, not that convenient), so I just got a label printer.

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

#96
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it properly grounded?

Perfectly. At least from the cable onwards. This seems to be a fairly common problem for Brother printers, oddly enough. I eventually figured out the issue from one of several Youtube videos addressing it.

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

#97
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Used to work for a BigCo printer maker. This is true. You wouldn’t believe the things people print on, there are racks and racks of weird papers from around the world. Tested at different temps/humidities (matters for the electrostatic process in laser printers).

Bamboo paper is a thing.

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

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes.. It is near impossible to change a phone number for most accounts. My US banks would not allow for the same amount of digits as my European phone number had. Wiring money from my own accounts wanted to send a 4 digit pin to my US number which would not work in France. You seem to imply that in 2023, we are not capable of making a banking application accept more than one format of phone number. And the fact that…

I mean, why would a bank care about phone numbers outside of the country it serves? Do you expect a US bank to recognize the number systems of every single one of the 195 countries out there when 99.9% of their customers live in one? Do you expect a French one? An Ethiopian one? Banks are explicitly not global businesses, they are generally national at the largest. It's not like they lose a whole lot of business if they don't support it; it's an edge case at best.

And Google certainly knows you are currently in a new country, but you could be there temporarily visiting, on a temporary residence, or have moved. How would you expect Google to know that? You likely also have to accept new Terms based on the country you move to, and there are more than likely fraud policies in place specifically to prevent people abusing a system like that to get lower pricing. The required step is there as policy, not a technical necessity.

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

#99
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommendations on travel routers that support VPNs, specifically either wireguard or openvpn?

Yes, google: "gl inet travel routers". Supports everything. And this: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/compare/ I have about 5 of these at home, each configured at different subnet and VPN for different country. One i always take with me while traveling to securely connect via shady hotel Wi-Fi's. You can even go crazy with it - install ZeroTier directly in the router by typing few commands and access low-level confi…

Thanks :)

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

#100

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 was issued a Brother by the US Department of Veterans Affairs and it burned through ink cartridges, I took a semester off and the ones in the printer went bad without me printing anything; when the yellow ink ran out it refused to print in black and white even though I had plenty of black ink. Eventually it stopped working because of something to do with the drivers even though I never changed anything.

I'm glad your experience, and the experiences of others here, seem to be better but I can't help but reflect on the variance every time I read an HN poster relating about their positive Brother experience since my own experience was so different.

Post reply on HN