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Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

bleepingcomputer.com

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Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#151

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…

And even inkjet vs laser doesn't matter since many companies may do like HP and require you sign into an HP account just to print.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#152
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was going to cost me $100+ to refill the inks on my large format HP inkjet photo printer. I took it up to the attic a few months back from whence it will likely go in the trash in a few years. I have the same Brother printer and it just works for occasional B&W printing. The rare color photo prints I want are easily handled (better) online and, while I'd like to print a color map or something now and then, it's no…

For that purpose a color laser jet works just fine although are are much more expensive.

If I were in need of a new laser printer I'd probably consider color at this point, but it's not worth replacing my existing B&W printer for a once in a blue moon color print.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#153

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…

Inkjet printers can do a fantastic job of printing photos and color documents, and maybe four times a year I would really like to do that at home. Unfortunately nobody seems to have built an inkjet printer with nozzles that don't gunk up, and cleaning the nozzles doesn't work very well and uses more ink and time than the document you wanted to print in the first place. It's probably possible to design an inkjet print…

If your only color print needs are for photos, look into dye sub printers. You can go years in between printing, and use the same roll with no issues. These are pretty much what you get when you order from any brick&mortar store printing from digital files or any modern photobooth kiosk

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#154

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…

I got my first printer in high school, around 90-91. It was an HP laserjet printer, when they were first going mainstream. I loved it, it always printed well, and the toner seemed to last forever. Of course, it was B/W, but that was all I needed. Fast forward to today, I have never owned an inkjet printer. Over the past 30 years I’ve owned a total of 3 laser printers. The second was in 2005, because I wanted a scanne…

Fed a diet of the necessary consumables-- toners/drums, fusers, rollers, separation pads, etc-- a 1990s LaserJet will outlive us all. For me, "peak LaserJet" was probably the LaserJet 4 w/ an integral JetDirect. The 4000 that followed was pretty solid and faster but more plastic-ey than the 4.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#155

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…

The last time I bought one, a new printer and ink cost less than just refilling ink. That was a very long time ago.

I print infrequently, but need to have color prints available at any time for family, so I got a color laser printer something like 15 years ago. It has wireless so it's on our wifi and I've never had any issues with it, nor have I even run out of the original toner.

It was definitely worth it, I never want an inkjet again.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#156

Not to be meant snarky, but I think the office world should strive to print much less at all. Working at a University it is mind boggling to me how much paper is waster because someone internally decided they need a real signature. Not all my colleagues are savyy enough to paste a scanned signature into a pdf.

Architects design buildings with the heaviest load being paper. Paper is the heaviest thing in a building.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#157

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…

I got my first printer in high school, around 90-91. It was an HP laserjet printer, when they were first going mainstream. I loved it, it always printed well, and the toner seemed to last forever. Of course, it was B/W, but that was all I needed. Fast forward to today, I have never owned an inkjet printer. Over the past 30 years I’ve owned a total of 3 laser printers. The second was in 2005, because I wanted a scanne…

HP LaserJet print quality these days is worse than their laser printers back in the early 2000s. It’s quite sad. The products are flimsy and under engineered. The prints aren’t as sharp and the inks are as expensive (sometimes even more than) as before. They rev versions of printers and make them incompatible with previous cartridges that technically fit, but are no longer in the supported model list. Scammy as hell.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#158

I stopped buying inkjet printers. They are a scam, the ink costs a fortune and they are built as cheap as they can, meaning that they will break and you have to throw them away because they are impossible to repair, they are slow and when you need them they don't work because they were not used for too much time. After having 5 broken printers in the garage I said enough, that is a useless waste, and invested some mo…

Yeah I badly want revenge on the whole industry, or at least a way of banishing them from my life forever, but the local maximum I've attained thus far is to buy bottles of ink, drill small holes in the top of the cartridges, inject ink and cover the holes. The printer still complains of low ink (i.e. it's lying and probably always was), but you can suppress the warning. So it costs me one sheet of paper to find out the truth about my ink levels, and I haven't bought a cartridge in years. I have two color & two black, so I can swap a full one in and refill the empty one at my convenience.

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#159
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After similar shenanigans from HP, I went to Brother laser printers and haven’t looked back since.

I do not understand how the other printer brands are even in business when Brother is an option. I feel like their reputation for being the best in the consumer space would have spread far and wide by now. I have been able to scan all of my documents with their MFC line directly to my Dropbox (or box or drive or onedrive) account for over 6 years now, AND Brother Web Connect automatically OCR’s them.

Isn't Brother agressive in it's constant unclearable warnings about using generic toner?

Re: Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of jurisdictions where "pasting a scanned signature into a pdf" doesn't produce a legally valid signature. Germany requires some signing software for pdfs - though printed-signed-scanned documents are also legally valid signatures

Show me someone who can tell the difference between pasting a signature in a pdf vs printed-signed-scanned? There was a legislature in America that tried to define pi as 3 so irrational laws are not surprising.

Aside the point but I can generally tell. With PDF signatures they’re either too smooth on the lines (that’s what mine is) or there’s some artifacting on the signature.
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