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Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

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

#231

Post by skjoldr »

alerighi wrote: post #18

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've got two A3 inkjets, an older Epson Stylus Photo 1410 with 3rd party ink tanks installed and externalized waste ink container mod, and a newer Epson L1800 with built-in ink tanks, at my workplace. Both are 6 color photo printers. I've kept them running for years with few problems. Long-term maintenance consists in keeping the nozzle clear of dried pigment, chaniging the rubber paper feed roller every couple of years, and keeping an eye on the ink levels in the tanks and the waste ink container. The 1410 had printed over 110,000 pages by now and is stil going strong. Printing with 3rd party inks is incredibly cheap, I use Korean Ink-mate ink with these two and it costs a fraction of a cent per page.

Now, it is true that inkjets are fussy and you need to keep printing with them to keep them operational, but I managed to clean out a very dry nozzle twice with nothing more than a pack of lint-free paper, some specialized cleaning fluids, a pack of syringes, and a thin rubber tube, simply using guides found on the Internet. And I haven't had any mechanical failures yet that weren't caused by the paper feed roller being worn out (which is expected) despite both printers being used daily for years.

Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe Epson did really good with these two models in particular, I don't know.

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

#232

Post by b0afc375b5 »

marcodiego wrote: post #214
slim wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condescending is used when you describe someone who thinks he is superior to others.

TIL! False cognate. I'm not a native speaker. In Portuguese there is the term "condescendente" which means "indulgent, one who doesn't imposes discipline". What is the equivalent term in English?

Greedy, perhaps?

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

#233

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

marcodiego wrote: post #214
slim wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Condescending is used when you describe someone who thinks he is superior to others.

TIL! False cognate. I'm not a native speaker. In Portuguese there is the term "condescendente" which means "indulgent, one who doesn't imposes discipline". What is the equivalent term in English?

Considerate or Accepting both work in English.

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

#234

Post by ChuckMcM »

alerighi wrote: post #18

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 think that not buying printers is the correct answer, difficult to get everyone to do it, but it is the metric most likely to change behavior.

Inkjet technology is fine, it was the exploitation of it by HP which lead to copy cats that really made it ridiculous.

I've got an HP inkjet wide format plotter (36" wide) that was built both before HP was all in on ink as a profit center and built by a different division (plotter division). It has been a reliable workhorse for over 20 years now and while I don't use HP ink any more (they don't sell it) third party ink works fine.

I replaced my desktop printer with an Epson Eco-tank printer. They claim it comes with 2 years of ink (at my rate that is probably 4 years :-) and they the ink is not expensive. So there are people trying this model of "let's not bother screwing people on ink" and I'm trying to reward them by buying their printer.

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

#235

Post by madengr »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #52
dv_dt wrote: 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.

Brother also makes machine tools and high-end sewing machines, so some of that quality mindset must flow into their consumer products.

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

#236

Post by quickthrower2 »

egberts1 wrote: post #47

Brothers LaserJet. No malware, no adware, no funky drivers; just colored, WiFi, LP-protocol, multi-tray PCL and PS support. Best thing since sliced bread.

Brother sells overpriced refills but there are off brand replacements about half the price. They also report ink run out on starter cartridges when it hasn’t. I think the only ethical printers are 3D ones.

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

#237

Post by hungryforcodes »

jader201 wrote: post #146
alerighi wrote: post #18

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…

Funny enough I had bought my fair share of inkjets and had been disappointed for the obvious reasons stated here. However one day somewhere around 2005 I found an HP LaserJet III on garbage day near my house and took it home. To my surprise it worked fine and even had toner. I was STILL using it without a toner change 10 years later when I moved cities, and gave it to someone. I could leave it off for a year and print 50 pages. Never a problem. Pretty good for free.

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

#238

Post by jSherz »

skjoldr wrote: post #231
alerighi wrote: post #18

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've got two A3 inkjets, an older Epson Stylus Photo 1410 with 3rd party ink tanks installed and externalized waste ink container mod, and a newer Epson L1800 with built-in ink tanks, at my workplace. Both are 6 color photo printers. I've kept them running for years with few problems. Long-term maintenance consists in keeping the nozzle clear of dried pigment, chaniging the rubber paper feed roller every couple of ye…

Any tips on choosing an ink supplier? It seems to be a bit of a crap shoot.

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

#239

Post by BeFlatXIII »

ghaff wrote: post #103
sillyquiet wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Have had a Brother HL-2270 (b&w laser printing) for years, and couldn't be happier with it, especially coupled with a PI-based CUPS server for AirPrint capability and the like. The only thing I miss about not having an inkjet is color printing and at-home photo printing, but there are so many on-demand online print shops nowadays, I can't say it's a big deal.

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…

Occasionally needing to print musical scores on large-format papers is what keeps me chained to inkjets. The price bump from inkjet to laser is significantly steeper for wide-format printers compared with letter/a4 printers. IIRC, instead of $90 vs $150, it's up to $200 vs $700.

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

#240

Post by saidajigumi »

alerighi wrote: post #18

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 are fine, so long as you don't need or buy the terrible low-end consumer offerings. As an occasional-use around the house printer, I agree they're absolutely terrible, even without the scammy behavior of virtually every manufacturer. Just inkjet head clogging alone is enough to put anyone off. Inexpensive laser printers have been cheaper, more reliable, and much faster for a decade or more. Pay a bit more these days and you get a nice color laser printer with duplex printing. It's worth noting that even low-end lasers aren't immune to scammy behavior. Manufacturers have pulled sleazy tricks like hard page counts for the toner cartridges, so that even if the cart is still good it won't print. At least in the past, there are often embarrassingly easy workarounds (e.g. a minute to Google, then another minute with a sharpie).

That said, once you get up into the (semi-)pro photo/art printers, they're fantastic for that application. i.e. very much not an office printer. The ink per ml in the bigger cart sizes is often one or more orders of magnitude cheaper. You still need to run them enough to keep the heads nice and clean, but they also usually have decent auto-cleaning support built in to help maintain the print head so long as it's getting used periodically.

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