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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

#121

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

leetrout wrote: post #4

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…

Until they stop making the fusers for your model in 3 years... Ask me how I know.

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

#122

Post by _jal »

danpalmer wrote: post #50
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. 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…

No, this did not go bad recently in a declining market. There were never good actors - inkjet printers were physical malware in the 90s, too.

The cheap printer market has always been an abusive, anti-user shitshow. Arguably bad for the sellers, too - I've heard an argument that making cheap printers was the catalyst that ruined HP.

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

#124

Post by nicoburns »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #104
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #96

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. 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…

I believe it's the print heads that are the bottleneck. I don't think they're available to put in your kit.

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

#125

Post by Aeolun »

sithadmin wrote: post #74
kalleboo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live convenience stores (7-11) and most larger supermarkets have this. Basically a combo photo printer + office copier with a touchscreen and USB/memory card readers. Some of the are also loaded with postcards (for xmas cards) or even sticker paper to make your own stickers. I also like to print out A3 posters for my kids and these printers can do that, whereas I'd never buy a huge A3 printer to have at home.

Japan? US 7-11's absolutely do not have this service, and you're lucky if you find a grocery store that has a photo copier these days (was somewhat common in the 90s).

I remember this being kind of common in Dutch supermarkets, but there are no convenience stores there.

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

#127

Post by baxuz »

colechristensen wrote: post #38
joshuajill wrote: post #34

Is there a printer that isn't a proprietary ink dispensing jail? I'm with current knowledge and tech it should be possible to print your own printer?

Epson EcoTank, pretty hard to lock out other vendors when your supply is delivered as a liquid.

Problem is that the heads clog up quite often. I had to replace mine recently. Oh, and they spew so much ink in the cleaning cycle that the pad got soaked up in 2 years.

The service would cost 1/3 the price of a new printer so I visited some shady sites to find a one-time service mode reset code.

As soon as the ink starts spilling out I'm tossing it in the garbage and never buying another printer again.

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

#128

Post by Spooky23 »

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.

You’re a different category of consumer. One of my teams responsibilities is end user print for a sprawling global enterprise. The market is segmented in various ways to meet the needs of different consumers.

We have tiny facilities where a prosumer HP 9000 series MFP is appropriate. Other places with have big $10k copy machines that print for like $0.02-0.04/page

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

#129

Post by choward »

booleandilemma wrote: post #111

Why hasn’t the printer industry not been disrupted by a company that isn’t hell-bent on fucking over their customers?

Because if a company like that starts to emerge they'll be bought out by a larger company. At which point everyone around here will congratulate them on their "exit".

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

#130

Post by leetrout »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #121
leetrout wrote: post #4

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…

Until they stop making the fusers for your model in 3 years... Ask me how I know.

Kyocera was recommended below...

I will either buy epson or kyocera I think. Do you have a recommendation?

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