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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

#241

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

layer8 wrote: post #231
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Reliable physical paper handling, e.g. supporting different paper weights, sizes. and thickness, duplex printing, avoiding paper jams, is nontrivial.

Well given that there are literally thousands of printers on the market that make it work, I'm guessing that can be replicated.

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

#242

Post by timrichard »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #5

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

> Except HP of course

Well, just as another data point... I've been using a HP LaserJet Pro M402dne for the last two years, and it's solid. I should point out it's not colour, and Ethernet (not wifi). Also prints fine from Apple and Android devices in the family through the network.

Before that, I struggled along with inkjets before finally giving up. I remember having an urgent document to print in mono, had a new black XL cartridge installed, and it refused to print until I went out and got some yellow too. So for a while, I've been telling anyone prepared to listen that inkjets are a scam.

Anyhow, the LaserJet came with a starter toner cartridge. I also got a 9000 page XL toner cartridge around the same time. Two years later, I'm still on the starter toner cartridge. For an intermittent user, it's really great. Inkjets have often dried up on me if there's significant time between prints.

Looking at sites such as this, the model that I use also works with compatible toner cartridges : https://www.tonergiant.co.uk/model/HP-LaserJet-Pro-M402dne-t...

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

#243

Post by a2128 »

meragrin_ wrote: post #145
alias_neo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> 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.

This reads like actual gaslighting. Most users will never reach parts end of life? How is that even possible? Do most users buy a new ecotank printer and throw away their old one every year?

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

#244

Post by billpg »

I'm old enough to remember buying a mouse and having to install the driver that came with the mouse on a floppy disk. Once the mouse market agreed to a single interface standard (and again when USB mice appeared) the world got simpler. Any computer you could buy would just work with whatever mouse you happened to plug into it. You only needed a custom driver if your mouse had lots of extra buttons that no-one really needed.

I'm a little surprised that the same thing didn't happen to printers. I could imagine around 2005, Microsoft including a generic printer driver with Windows XP. This way, you could plug in any printer and it would just work, as long as the printer implemented that generic printing protocol, even if it were alongside their own printer interface.

Plug in printer. Windows detects device with generic printer interface. User prints document. Document comes out. User happy.

Oh sure, the printer would come with a CD that includes software that enables the "special features" of the printer. Digital cameras did this too. (Rule #1 of buying a digital camera: Throw away the CD that comes in the box. Break the CD just in case you're tempted that something on CD might fix some trivial issue you're having.)

At the same time, I'm not surprised that never happened. Those "special features", like shouting at you for buying the wrong ink, are just way too important to not have installed on people's computers.

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

#245

Post by mikestew »

Hellbanevil wrote: post #189
Aeolun wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had a inkjet (bought for an Atari 1020?) printer in college.

Captain Pedantic checking in: the 1020 was the printer. Your computer was likely an Atari 800 or summat. The 1020 was also a plotter, and not an inkjet.

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

#246

Post by mikestew »

hnu0847 wrote: post #223
Hellbanevil wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. What does the material your pipes are made from have to do with what company's faucets, showerheads, handles, etc. you buy? Also couldn't you replace your pipes but keep your existing Moen parts?

I'm as mystified as you are. All I can come up with is a misplaced sense that there's crap in the pipes causing failures of lesser fixtures, and hence the pipes should be replaced. Of course, not only would that likely be wrong thinking, it's also just a SWAG on my part. I really hope OP comes back with an answer. :-)

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

#247

Post by thedougd »

DrudgeCorporate wrote: post #172
thedougd wrote: post #154

My 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'.

I thought about that after posting. I once had a week where I fiddled with the printer constantly after changing the toner, trying to get it to stop reporting it as empty. So who knows, maybe there's something to it. However, looking at the toner cartridge, I don't really see how they could do this.

It's also possible they have a unified firmware and this 'feature' doesn't impact my model.

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

#248

Post by davoneus »

_JamesA_ wrote: post #180
mc_woods wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public buy printers. Good printers last a long time. Printer company offers online services (drivers / patches / APIs - see original post) which have on gong cost. But revenue stops after printer is sold. Printer company's remaining income is ink, ink sales undercut. Printer company goes bust. Printer company, who make printer, force you to use their ink. Printer company does not go bust. Alternative (game console mo…

> drivers / patches / APIs It's a shame there aren't any open standards like lpd, jetdirect, postscript, and pcl for printers. /s The printer business model has been abused for a long time in an effort to squeeze every last dime out of the market.

I'd argue there is one, and it's been around a surprisingly long time: Internet Printing Protocol.

I've had to dig into this a fair bit at work, and it's rather amazing. Certainly not perfect, but basically printers which are certified for IPP Everywhere (Mopria for Android, Airprint for Apple) are required to have built-in format support for a set of given formats. For example, Mopria certification requires PCLm (a backwards-compatible subset of PDF, designed for streaming), PWG Raster and PDF. IPP Everywhere mandates PWG Raster, JPEG and PDF. Of course Apple being Apple, they have their own Raster format (urf). The printers can support more (and typically do), but they have to include the base. Also the formats (and capabilities) the printers support can be queried via standard IPP. (*)

That sounds complex, but it means that as long as the printer supports any of those standards, you have a good chance of printing to it). I've printed to some pretty strange, limited printers via IPP, and had surprisingly good luck doing so (mostly via raster-urf).

Apparently in Linux CUPS is going this way completely, and has recently added built-in on-the-fly conversion. So CUPS will query the printer, and then send documents in whatever format the printer supports. If it's an AirPrint certified printer, then it'll send raster-urf; if it's IPP Everywhere it might send PWG-Raster or PDF.

Certainly not perfect (as my testing has shown), but it's a heck of a lot better than what we had before. And I've heard that they now have a standard for 3D printing (3MF*) aiming to replace STL. Apparently developed with the Linux Foundation. I have no personal experience with it, but with the complexity of 3D printing, I'd not be surprised if it's still immature.

(*) https://openprinting.github.io/driverless/01-standards-and-t... (**) https://www.pwg.org/3d/

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

#249

Post by jerome-jh »

I thought that was well known. In EU printers cannot be sold "inked locked". They do lock themselves as soon as they have an opportunity to update their firmware. My Brother never had Internet access. I configured it with the Internet gateway unplugged and assigned it a static address to which I forbid Internet access. It is now running on compatible color cartridges. For black I stay on OEM ink.

It is funny that my venerable HP I had previously stopped working soon after I started using compatible ink. Since it was several years old, I was wanted to spare on ink. A gear broke soon after. Repaired the gear and something else broke. I did not do the second repair. Of course that could be a simple coïncidence, I'll never know.

BTW I would not recommend Brother either. It is very picky about paper. Have to use good quality 90g or more exclusively.

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