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Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

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Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#101

Post by GiorgioG »

dgl wrote: post #77
rustyf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. Credit to Epson for taking this track. I wouldn't consider a cartridge printer again.

Sadly only applies to these high end ones; I got a cheap Epson one and found out after moving it to another country, that the cartridges are indeed vendor+region locked.

EcoTank printers don't use cartridges. You fill the ink tanks with ink bottles. They've come down in price, you can buy an EcoTank printer for ~$229. A couple of other companies have followed Epson in offering these kinds of printers. Sadly Brothers' version requires a proprietary cartridge tank.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#102

Post by pessimizer »

gpvos wrote: post #53
yreg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to print something once a month you can buy a cheap printer for like €40 – which is probably subsidized because the manufacturer thinks they will earn it back on selling you overpriced ink. But they won't since you will buy a single toner and cover all of your printing needs. Anyway, I don't have a printer. I always just take my pdf and take a walk to a local printing service.

As long as it's not an inkjet printer, since the ink will dry out or the printer will just think the ink is too old after half a year or so.

And the ink will have cost you £41.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#103

Post by christophilus »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #96
carpenecopinum wrote: post #13

I 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 can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage. Its a commoditized market where they only make money when you buy their supplies so naturally they will engineer the product to work well with their supplies only. This might be an opportunity for open source printer componen…

> There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage.

What? A hackable, OSS printer whose manufacturer puts time and effort into reducing waste and creating the best, longest lasting ink on the planet would crush it.

Well, maybe not. But anytime anyone has said: “That’s it. There’s nothing more to do here.” It tells me there’s a complacent market ripe for disruption.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#104

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #96
carpenecopinum wrote: post #13

I 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 can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. There's no room left for innovation or competitive advantage. Its a commoditized market where they only make money when you buy their supplies so naturally they will engineer the product to work well with their supplies only. This might be an opportunity for open source printer componen…

No, you're right. There's nothing particularly magical about a printer. The PCL and Postscript specs have been in place for decades. Writing a driver to take that output and drive a print head to put it to paper should be pretty straightforward. (Needing to mark each print at the behest of the Secret Service to prevent counterfeiting is a question mark to me. Is that spec public?)

It SEEMS like you could make printer "kits" for people to assemble themselves, which would take bulk ink, and escape all of this nonsense. But then you'd have to sell it in stores, where HP, Epson, and Brother would act like any other large corporation to block chains like Best Buy and OfficeMax from carrying it.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#105

Post by PaulHoule »

GiorgioG wrote: post #33

I have an epson eco-tank printer. I buy 3rd party bottles of ink once every 2-3 years. The upfront cost of the printer (multifunction model ET-4550) was high in 2015 ($500) but I've spent maybe $60-70 in ink to print (as of this morning) 19,536 pages (13,954 in color, 5,582 in B/W). I can't see a good reason to keep buying printers that are locked into proprietary cartridges or toners.

I have an ET-4550 which I use for photo prints and art reproductions, mainly in small sizes like 4″x6″ and 8″x8″.

I am happy with the quality of the output with two caveats: (1) the ink is by no means lightfast. In the room I am sitting in now (bright sun, high humidity) I can perceive fading in prints after just six months. (2) it lacks a rear tray that feeds straight-through so I am at the mercy of the pick roller when it comes to printing on particularly thick, thin or slick papers. Since I always print both sides of the paper, paper that is slick on on the "good" side is often a problem.

Epson has two higher lines in the Ecotank range, one aimed at "creatives" that has 6 inks (still dye-based) and another "pro" line that uses pigment based inks (which typically last 70 years or so.)

Even though my material costs are super-low and I can afford to replace faded prints, I don't like spending my time to make ephemeral objects so I've had ET Pro printers on order from two different vendors for six months. It seems they've all been eaten by the supply chain monster.

I'm not a big believer that I need six inks to get good quality output, but I am thinking seriously about getting an ET Photo if I can since the ink used for that should be more lightfast, although these things are unfortunately terribly documented.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#106

Post by pc86 »

pid-1 wrote: post #80
danpalmer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. This is the dying gasps of an industry that is mostly irrelevant in the modern age. When I was growing up we always had a printer, and while ink wasn't cheap, it wasn't too bad, so we used it a lot and printed everything we needed. The industry grew to expect this, most households with…

IDK, I'm in my mid 30s and I really can't remember printers being alright.

I am the same age as you; when we were young the printers themselves were garbage. Constantly breaking, ink cartridges drying out quickly if you weren't printing regularly. Do they still have that damn ribbon thing inside of them? I seem to remember that being a constant source of pain for 13-15 year old me.

Now the printers, mechanically, seem pretty good. Some still feel cheap but not necessarily low quality. But all the firmware and software around them seems to be geared at whatever it takes to get you to spend a little more money. Stories like this one are exactly why I don't update my Brother TN-730 firmware.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#107

Post by balabaster »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #98
balabaster wrote: post #95

Earlier 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.

In the U.S. maybe those options work, but in Canada they don't. If by chance the goods were shipped via a courier that will scan the barcode to return, that works - UPS for instance, but 90% of the time you need to print a return label because the goods aren't returned via a carrier that supports that.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#108

Post by JasonFruit »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #20
carpenecopinum wrote: post #13

I 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.

Office stores have exactly like that in the Midwestern American city I live near. I like paper, so I have my own printer, but for occasional prints in 11x17 I use this and it's great. Quick, cheap, easy.

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#109

Post by johnatwork »

GiorgioG wrote: post #33

I have an epson eco-tank printer. I buy 3rd party bottles of ink once every 2-3 years. The upfront cost of the printer (multifunction model ET-4550) was high in 2015 ($500) but I've spent maybe $60-70 in ink to print (as of this morning) 19,536 pages (13,954 in color, 5,582 in B/W). I can't see a good reason to keep buying printers that are locked into proprietary cartridges or toners.

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

Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia

#110

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

Spooky23 wrote: post #71
colechristensen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. Rent. You are effectively renting your printer, supplies are the payments. The hardware is expensive, sold cheaply, and supplies have high margins to make up for it. It is often investors forcing this model.

I don’t think so. Nobody likes paying up front for equipment. People lease cars, which is also a bad deal. Same motivation.

I'm not convinced that leasing is a "bad deal," per se, any more.
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