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HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
71–80 of 110 posts
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Continuing trend. https://www.gapintelligence.com/blog/home-printers-stay-esse... Since HN tends to be incredibly pedantic: "irrelevant" here is obviously not literal.
Not obvious. A simple "mostly" would have fixed the statement. Speaking as someone who still occasionally needs a print-out and will not ever see that need go away unless some kind of amazing e-ink technology becomes the norm.
Agreed. When there is paper thin and paper light e-ink tech that cost about as much as paper then I will consider going all digital. I tried going all digital with my business forms process with iPads. It didn't work out.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#73Printers suck. They should be awesome. But instead, the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999. The last notable feture: tabloid size ink jets came out a decade ago. Printers still have paper handling issues, and inkjets still waste tons of ink unclogging print heads. All the innovation goes into lock-in and marketing strategies for consumables. The silver lining is that most printers have a Linux drivers th…
Dunno. I've upgraded my brother mfc from 9020cdw to l8900cdw and both quality and speed are lot higher in the newer model. So the progress over 8 years is clearly visible in this case.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
People who need to print something now and reason with themselves that it's cheaper to buy a basic £29 HP printer because obviously they might need to print something again in the future(at which point the ink has long dried and new replacement is £39 for a cartridge).
I'm convinced that laser printers are the answer. Colour ones are now more or less affordable and last for many years and of course they have no issue with ink drying out.
Yes but it's harder to justify even a basic laser printer at around £99 when all you need to do is print some forms. A £29 printer which might be useful in the future is more appealing psychologically(somehow).
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#75I just bought an HP color laser printer this week. This despite knowing HP's shenanigans, but COSTCO has too good a deal and the wife really wanted a good modern printer (we have an HP 4Plus). I admit, it prints beautifully. In the settings, there's a way to shutoff automatic updates, which I set. But I don't trust post-Corina HP at all and I wanted to firewall it from the internet. It turns out my D-Link router is v…
Routers are similar to printers in that respect. I had a similar experience with a d-link. Got an Asus for about 3x more money and it does everything !
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#76I tried to read the article but my HP computer just turned off randomly and installed an unauthorized bios update bricking it. I'm on my phone now and outraged.
UEFI based computers can be unbricked. BIOS based ones are much hard to recover.
Bricked things can’t be unbricked. That’s why it’s called “bricking” - they are permanently as useful as a brick. If it can be unbricked then it wasn’t bricked, just borked.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#77Printers suck. They should be awesome. But instead, the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999. The last notable feture: tabloid size ink jets came out a decade ago. Printers still have paper handling issues, and inkjets still waste tons of ink unclogging print heads. All the innovation goes into lock-in and marketing strategies for consumables. The silver lining is that most printers have a Linux drivers th…
I thought it was Brother laser printers that are the benchmark? Inkjet printers are simply the wrong technology for occasional printing. The clogging problem cannot be solved. It’s like trying to use 12V DC for household mains power.
Get a black and white Brother laser. They just work. Leave the inkjet printers to the photographers who print giant glossy colour photos every day.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cat and mouse game of "cracking" the toner/ink chips has gone on as long as they have existed. It's been over a decade since I worked for Xerox on these kinds of chips, so they may have gotten much more complex and expensive since then, but it was always quite a delicate game internally as to what kinds of technology we would actually deploy as it's a very delicate balance from a legal standpoint. Lexmark has his…
The father of a childhood friend of mine was chief counsel during a previous Lexmark supreme court visit (the Static Controls case, I think?). He liked to paint and his basement was full of self-made art, copies of famous works and his own originals. I got the impression he didn't really believe in the corporate position on ink and toner DRM. That may be part of why he retired young.
Static Control Components was always fun to watch! They really seemed like the leader in terms of making 3rd party consumables chips, at least on the tech and legal side of things.
The chips on toner/ink started because there was a need to comprehend how much ink/toner was left in a cartridge and to make sure the right one was inserted. You could weigh the cartridge but that's quite expensive. It's much cheaper to count pixels or ink drops (and their size) and then write how many of those had been used up into a chip on the toner/ink. That way the printer always knows approximately how much ink/toner is left in the cartridge.
Clearly once you have a chip on the consumable, it's natural for a business to consider how this can be leveraged for financial gain. Lexmark was always VERY aggressive about this. When I was at Xerox we seemed to be much less aggressive in how we implemented restrictions.
I have an abandoned patent application from my time at Xerox for restricting a toner bottle to a specific customer. As far as I know, they never implemented it, but we did have the technical ability to do so if we had wished. The downside to an implementation like this is it kills the 2nd hand/resale market, which may or may not be legal. You cannot patent something illegal. I'm not sure if that's why the patent got abandoned or not.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#79Printers suck. They should be awesome. But instead, the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999. The last notable feture: tabloid size ink jets came out a decade ago. Printers still have paper handling issues, and inkjets still waste tons of ink unclogging print heads. All the innovation goes into lock-in and marketing strategies for consumables. The silver lining is that most printers have a Linux drivers th…
Printers suck the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999.
In 1999 I was using a £150 canon colour inket with 360x360 resolution. Lasted ten years with fake ink at £20 a year. Now I am using a £150 canon megatank with 1200x4800 resolution, scan,copy,wifi and print plus an official bottle of ink costs £10 and lasts 5000 pages. Downside, I doubt the modern build quality will last 10 years but fingers crossed.
So adjusted for inflation my printer is much better. But having been been tantalised by £50 allinones for 15 years if you can just get past the expensive cartridge chips I agree it doesn't feel like it...
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a problem not solved by the market, for many reasons, but the most important one is that they all try to do this sooner or later. Shareholder value must increase and be found somewhere. Only government regulations can keep capitalism in check, maybe an unpopular opinion on HN but it hurts startups too because the market is not penetrable for competition.
These printers are sold below cost so that money can be made from the ink. Naturally, this needs some form of DRM. Capitalism offers you plenty of alternatives for printing at the best cost, these printers are actually good deals for people who rarely print.
Just that ink printers don't really work well for people who rarely print, compared to laser printers, for example.