I have the feeling this would make for an easy claim in small claims court, for anyone willing to spend the time on doing that.
HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
81–90 of 314 posts
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ideally, and by that I mean the average consumer is well-informed in every product they purchase, yes. But the average customer really doesn't know any better. You can't expect people to know an alternative exists when and unregulated market will always promote marketing over quality. >I haven't bought one for about 20 years. Just the fact that you are commenting on HN shows that you aren't the average consumer when…
> unregulated market There is no such thing as an unregulated market. The only meaningful difference is between a free market--a market that is regulated solely by the voluntary choices of market participants--and a non-free market--which is at least to some degree also regulated by rules dictated and enforced by entities who are not market participants (the most common such entities, of course, being governments). B…
Or, you know, you could shoot the wolves.
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#83For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was a HP customer for decades . I had models going back to perforated paper dot-matrix printers. Finally last year I had a down-and-out fight to get my HP to do a basic task, and I bit the bullet and ordered a Brother at the recommendation of my friend. My mfc-l3750cdw Broth…
Does this open up the space for a "framework laptop" like company to open up? For "open" printers?
If yes, what other product categories is this applicable?
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#84How is this even legal?
it’s not
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#85What I find notable whenever something like this is in the news, is that these user-hostile features don't just manifest through abiogenesis, or spontaneous generation. User-hostile features are created by people. Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature - whether it's locking down printers or any of the countless other examples that come up on a we…
> Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature We don't need an AMA, we already know the answer. Money. The company exists to make money. The fact that it also creates printers is a side effect, not its primary purpose. Once you look at it in this way, there's nothing confusing about user hostile features. They exist to further the primary purpose of th…
The thing is you'd expect companies should also compete to remove such anti-features in order to claim market share from competitors. It's strange how rare that is.
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#86Fwiw even their Android App has gone from Meh to Worse.
It used to work well. Then they introduced mandatory user sign up/in. For local printing/scanning! And then started the white screen bugs.
HP Smart is the only app on my Android that i pinned to a very old version and am never upgrading.
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#87Guess I'll just have to ban HP printers from my home or office.
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#88For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was a HP customer for decades . I had models going back to perforated paper dot-matrix printers. Finally last year I had a down-and-out fight to get my HP to do a basic task, and I bit the bullet and ordered a Brother at the recommendation of my friend. My mfc-l3750cdw Broth…
Does this open up the space for a "framework laptop" like company to open up? For "open" printers? If yes, what other product categories is this applicable?
Printers are pretty difficult to manufacture compared to a laptop. They have specialized high precision parts and a lot of mechanical parts that have to work together for a particular design. A laptop can be pretty much made from off the shelf parts aside from the chassis and PCB, which you can easily have made by any number of contractors.
And I’m sure printers are probably a minefield of patents.
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#89For those of you who haven't already, I highly recommend just biting the bullet and switching from HP to Brother for your home printing needs. I was a HP customer for decades . I had models going back to perforated paper dot-matrix printers. Finally last year I had a down-and-out fight to get my HP to do a basic task, and I bit the bullet and ordered a Brother at the recommendation of my friend. My mfc-l3750cdw Broth…
I have fought so much with Brother (multi purpose machines) back in the early 2000s that I can still get reminded about it by ex-colleagues or users I helped back then, so this is certainly a huge change, but I have seen the recommendations for Brother so many times now I am seriously considering it.
Re: HP have updated their printers to ban ‘non-HP’ cartridges
#90What I find notable whenever something like this is in the news, is that these user-hostile features don't just manifest through abiogenesis, or spontaneous generation. User-hostile features are created by people. Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature - whether it's locking down printers or any of the countless other examples that come up on a we…
> Just once, I would like to see an AMA by someone who was directly involved in creating a user-hostile feature
I worked for a large Telco and wrote and maintained the software and system(s) that calculated internet usage, and charged overages monthly. (The home internet plans sold by this telco that service a massive landmass all had hard usage caps. There is no competition).
I saw many, many monthly internet overage bills that were $5k+. Hundreds a month that were $1k+. That system alone made many millions in profit per year.
Why did I do it? It was my job, I needed to pay rent and buy food.
Longer term, I decided to "stay on the inside" because I genuinely thought I could improve things. Over the years I had meetings with basically all the VPs and even the CEO, and sent many a passionate email on behalf of customers that many told me were "Career Limiting Moves".
I'm not there anymore, and it's many years later, but that Telco does now offer unlimited internet plans (introduced very recently). I was the first at the company to run the numbers on what it would look like and start to push for it at all levels, so I like to think I did actually make things better.
FWIW, there was one guy in my department who refused to work on/with that usage system, and made it clear that from a moral standpoint he would quit if they forced him to.