211–220 of 297 posts
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Region locked ink?! That's a special kind of stupid.
They do it for the same reason as anything else: to charge different prices in different parts of the world and still stymie the gray market.
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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 so…
It’s nice that they give lifetime warranty though.
Oh, this is bad. Brother has always, like for DECADES, been the non-shitty option. Had ipv6 before anyone else. Good Linux support, even for the scanners on their MFCs. Agnostic about third-party toner. This new firmware demolishes twenty years of goodwill. I was just looking at a new printer, and likely to replace my old Brother B&W MFC and Samsung color laser, with a new Brother color laser MFC, but it looks like I…
There's a discussion upthread about some epson models being mostly alright (with caveats; read the whole thread): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860555
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Not sure about the laser side, but for inkjets, the Epson EcoTank line is the best at not fucking you - it uses ink bottle refills, no cartridges in sight.
I bought one a few months ago, about £200, because of exactly this sort of crap going on here. I didn't want to go the compatibles route, and the cartridges are so small in capacity anyway. It's been good so far, and I've been printing roughly once a week so it has been ok. I have kids so I've been photocopying pages from their colouring books etc for them to colour in and keep the books themselves clean, which means…
Does the EcoTank do this too?
Ok... so if I need a printer, that won't fuck me with stuff like this, what should I buy now? Except HP of course, and now Brother
You'll have to buy a pen and use it to trace out the stuff on your screen by holding a piece of paper up to it. Until they see this hack and the system blurs the screen whenever it senses third party pens being used. If only there was some body that could pass laws that would prevent companies from doing such things. You know, like how phones have to use common charger cables.
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I bought one a few months ago, about £200, because of exactly this sort of crap going on here. I didn't want to go the compatibles route, and the cartridges are so small in capacity anyway. It's been good so far, and I've been printing roughly once a week so it has been ok. I have kids so I've been photocopying pages from their colouring books etc for them to colour in and keep the books themselves clean, which means…
I take it you have not heard about the waste ink pad counter? Once that is up, you either have to buy a new printer or take it to a service center. https://epson.com/Support/wa00369
Time for an open hardware printer manufacturer? Or more lobbying for right-to-third-party-ink protection (including not making the quality worse) ?
It is surprinsigly hard to move paper the way a printer does it. The easiest way for DIY would be to use a continuous roll of paper and a very thin pen on a 3d printer like stepper motor, like older dot matrix printers.
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There's an XKCD for that: https://xkcd.com/416/ Also, actual example of a smart TV connecting to an unprotected WiFI: https://web.archive.org/web/20210912135232/https://forum.dev...
I wish ours connected to any wifi? I have a strong feeling this is somehow related to our local office network, but... any wifi printers we have never 'wake on lan'. If I reboot the printer, it's connected. 30-60 minutes later, it will not respond to any network commands. It's on , and you can go insert USB stick to print, or make a copy on it, and it says it has an IP address, but it's essentially 'dead'. Although i…
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> 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.
So it sounds like a company like System76 should build a printer and partner with no-brand ink cartridge companies to supply ink.
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.
Well, Brother had never done this to date. That is the real shocker.