Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 314 posts

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#111

Post by hedora »

mydogmuppet wrote: post #67

I recently looked at upgrading my two laser printers to models that were ethernet and wifi. I got burned so badly by Epson and Inkjet I'll never look at that technology again. Got the shock of my life at wifi printer hardware prices. Expensive. I've an ancient, tank like, Dell 5120cn that I bought new from Noahs Ark or was it eBay in 2005ish? Its lifetime page count has only just exceeded its monthly duty cycle. It w…

The top Amazon laser printers are monochrome Brother models. You can have wifi or duplex for $120. Both together costs $150. If you want color, duplex and wireless, it is $280. (Though I wonder if these have chipped toner or not.)

It was similar 10 years ago when we bought our Samsung laser. These prices seem very reasonable, especially if you subtract out the cost of included drums and toner. Am I missing something?

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#113

Post by hedora »

pdonis wrote: post #4
nawgz wrote: post #2

I'm amazed that this hasn't been regulated. Aftermarket commodities being turned into walled gardens based not on physical incompatibility but software checks is obscene. Does the EU have defenses against this kind of behavior? I feel like monopolistic is the wrong word. Creating captive markets?

> I'm amazed that this hasn't been regulated. The best way to regulate it is for people to stop buying HP printers. I haven't bought one for about 20 years.

The second best way is to only buy HP printers (without buying ink refills after the included set of supplies ran out).

The last time I checked, this was roughly the same price as buying ink refills.

Sadly, it is terrible for the environment, and probably wouldn’t correct their bad behavior.

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#114

Post by imgabe »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #85
esperent wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature We don't need an AMA, we already know the answer. Money. The company exists to make money. The fact that it also creates printers is a side effect, not its primary purpose. Once you look at it in this way, there's nothing confusing about user hostile features. They exist to further the primary purpose of th…

The thing is you'd expect companies should also compete to remove such anti-features in order to claim market share from competitors. It's strange how rare that is.

They do. You can see people recommending Brother printers right here in this thread. I also switched to a Brother black and white laser printer years ago and never had another printing problem. Later I found a Brother color laser printer at an estate sale and used that for years (didn't really need color, but it was a good deal).

I don't know what the actual numbers are, but if I had to guess I'd say Brother has been stealing market share from HP for a while now, because their products are better. It's one of the top comments practically every time there's a thread like this.

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#115

Post by zdw »

lchengify wrote: post #23

For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was a HP customer for decades . I had models going back to perforated paper dot-matrix printers. Finally last year I had a down-and-out fight to get my HP to do a basic task, and I bit the bullet and ordered a Brother at the recommendation of my friend. My mfc-l3750cdw Broth…

They tend to be repairable as well. I had to recap the power supply last year in my Brother HL-5250DN which is probably nearing the age where it's able to legally drive in the US, and after the output voltages were right again it fired right up and has been working great since.

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#116

Post by gigel82 »

Algemarin wrote: post #29

What I find notable whenever something like this is in the news, is that these user-hostile features don't just manifest through abiogenesis, or spontaneous generation. User-hostile features are created by people. Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature - whether it's locking down printers or any of the countless other examples that come up on a we…

I saw a PM during a large company meeting Q&A eagerly talking about how we're not leveraging our existing customers enough to sell more products and how we should have advertisements in product A for (largely unrelated) product B because we have a large enough user base. The VP's face lit up and our product has ads now :(

The PM got a promotion - I bet some metrics moved enough to "show impact", but no one asked themselves what the long term effect will be (the PM since moved off to another team to continue innovating). This made me angry and sad, but most of my peers didn't care at all, and some even expressed interest to "work on the high impact feature" to get a promo for themselves as well :(

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#117

Post by dv_dt »

kube-system wrote: post #88
freakynit wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this open up the space for a "framework laptop" like company to open up? For "open" printers? If yes, what other product categories is this applicable?

Printers are pretty difficult to manufacture compared to a laptop. They have specialized high precision parts and a lot of mechanical parts that have to work together for a particular design. A laptop can be pretty much made from off the shelf parts aside from the chassis and PCB, which you can easily have made by any number of contractors. And I’m sure printers are probably a minefield of patents.

HP LaserJets that were considered tanks were sourced from Canon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_LaserJet

So it makes it not impossible for a new manufacturer to incorporate interface electronics with a core from an experienced manufacturer. The most difficult part might not be the engineering, but getting one of the old line print companies to do business at some reasonable cost with a smaller startup company.

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#118

Post by [deleted] »

lchengify wrote: post #23

For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was a HP customer for decades . I had models going back to perforated paper dot-matrix printers. Finally last year I had a down-and-out fight to get my HP to do a basic task, and I bit the bullet and ordered a Brother at the recommendation of my friend. My mfc-l3750cdw Broth…

[deleted]

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#119

Post by fy20 »

mydogmuppet wrote: post #67

I recently looked at upgrading my two laser printers to models that were ethernet and wifi. I got burned so badly by Epson and Inkjet I'll never look at that technology again. Got the shock of my life at wifi printer hardware prices. Expensive. I've an ancient, tank like, Dell 5120cn that I bought new from Noahs Ark or was it eBay in 2005ish? Its lifetime page count has only just exceeded its monthly duty cycle. It w…

My parents have a Dell color laser print from ~10 years ago and it's amazing. It has ethernet and can scan-to-email with an auto document feeder. A full set of toners on Amazon was under $50 last time I bought some (they don't go through it much). I actually wanted to buy a new one for myself, but Dell are long out of the laser market and it doesn't seem like there is anything equivalent.

Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges

#120

Post by gotorazor »

grecy wrote: post #90
Algemarin wrote: post #29

What I find notable whenever something like this is in the news, is that these user-hostile features don't just manifest through abiogenesis, or spontaneous generation. User-hostile features are created by people. Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature - whether it's locking down printers or any of the countless other examples that come up on a we…

> Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature I worked for a large Telco and wrote and maintained the software and system(s) that calculated internet usage, and charged overages monthly. (The home internet plans sold by this telco that service a massive landmass all had hard usage caps. There is no competition). I saw many, many monthly internet overag…

Bell Canada or Telus? 2nd most massive landmass.
Post reply on HN