Oh no
Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
181–190 of 297 posts
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#182Wow, if this comment is to be believed, the quality of Brother printers has seriously gone downhill:
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...
Incredible.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#183Earlier 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…
Once again the "market" is abusing everyone in the pursuit of endless economic growth. Our economic system forces successful businesses into enemies of the consumer once they can't keep momentum. Coupled with the concentrating monopolisation of the economy, this creates a phenomenon where helpless consumers are held at ransom: the ultimatum being that they either continue to be exploited in ever more devious ways, or…
> Coupled with the concentrating monopolisation of the economy,
There is no “monopoly” in the printer industry and it’s definitely not holding the economy “hostage”.
We do not need the government to break up “Big Printer”.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#184I 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.
Anyone remember about a decade ago when Chrome had a "Print to FedEx Kinkos" setting in the print dialog? I used that so much. It was the most convenient thing. It was only available for a year or two? Then suddenly the feature vanished and I had to go back to using USB sticks. And now these days there aren't as many locations to print as there used to be.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
My early laser printer in 1992 was great - the LaserWriter 300.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#186Buy an EPSON. Apart from the fact they have separate ink cartridges for each colour, they also don't act like satan.
They don't let you change the waste ink pads. Once that counter is up, either into the trash or to a service center. https://epson.com/Support/wa00369
Epson is refreshingly frank on that page.
> Why not just make the Ink Pads a user-replaceable item?
> Implementing this type of a design would result in more expensive printers. Most users would not benefit from such higher costs because their printers will never reach the Parts End of Life message.
In other words, if the pads are done, then chances are the rest of your printer is worn out.
Thanks for posting that link. It makes me feel better about Epson.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How often do you print? I have read those things need to be run very often to keep them from clogging or breaking down.
Rarely. Like a few pages once a month - if even then. And sometimes I need to print pages upon pages, which need to be in color.
Was thinking of getting a color laser printer.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uh... Pretty sure the printer industry is holding literally no one hostage. As mentioned in several comments—this industry is dead.
My point is a general one - the printer market is doing exactly what all elastic markets do.
It's what they do if there is not a healthy market with lots of innovation and competition. It is a dieing (of maybe stagnant and on the decline) market where the few remaining are squeezing out the last remaining drops of revenue.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
IDK, I'm in my mid 30s and I really can't remember printers being alright.
Printers became garbage when we switched from dot-matrix to inkjet. Then they were horrible for 20 years until I decided to buy a Brother laser printer, and suddenly everything was right in the world.
I had a inkjet (bought for an Atari 1020?) printer in college. Four years plus graduate school, and all I needed to pay extra for was 2 ribbons which were cheap.
I was concerned my instructors might question wether I typed it, or used a dot matrix printer. None had a clue.
I was one of the first people to have a computer and printer, and I was embarrassed. It felt like cheating.
I will never understand why we as a society go from a device that works and is built well; to overpriced gadgets that are constantly trying to trick us to giving them more money.
I would like to see a ratings system, like that one we had here from I believe the EU that rated items on repair, but include any other shinaggigans after sale.
It's too bad Brother's caved in to greed. I was one of their unpaid promotional guys up until today.
I like to give credit where credit is due. I throw this in.
If you need a plumbing fixture buy Moen. I have two faucets that I have gotten free parts with for 15 years plus. I fill out a simple form, and send my receipt to them via email, and the parts arrive in the mail. In all honesty, I need to change my pipes to copper, or pex, but have procrastinating for years. Hence, I always buy Moen, and tell people just how good the company is. Moen recently changed up their lifetime warranty, but most products are still lifetime. If I was CEO at that they would go back to a simple lifetime guarantee on every product. It's free word of mouth advertising, and it's honest customer advertising. Once a company has word of mouth fairness on their side; they will actively have to make stupid decisions to not attract new customers. They should teach this in MBA day school. Just be fair, and honest.
Re: Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
#190My pretty old DCP-L2540DW has a new firmware update: 06/16/2022 Main: V / Sub: 1.06 Improvement to help with the performance of the machine. I think I'll pass.
Wouldn't they have had to put the chip in the printers years ago prepping for this? A firmware update isn't going to necessarily enable this 'feature'.
The printer is probably programmable enough to implement any behaviour with a handful of code in the firmware; the maker doesn't need a specific "chip in the printers", just the capability to read data from ink cartridges (some wires and ports) and the trivial capability to not print or degrade quality.