The best way to make a difference against this nastyness realistically available to us is probably the "one star review".
And when you do, resist writing 10 paragraphs about all the times HP has ever wronged you or a long story about how much you needed the printout when it refused to print.
One star, one sentence. "Expires full inks after only x months forcing you to buy new ones when you don't need them."
I know for certain these short, sweet reviews change the buying behavior of my non-techie family.
Such behaviour is the reason I threw out a perfectly working HP OfficeJet one day and will never buy a single HP printer in my life.
In the OfficeJet in question I only used genuine cartridges, but every few year it would stop receiving black and white faxes because (the nearly full) color cartidge was passing its expiry date - forcing me to throw away the full color cartridge and buying a new one.
Slightly offtopic, but, I've been using a HP printer for the past years (Photosmart D7360) and am also VERY annoyed, one example: whenever one of my color cartridges is past it's expiry date i can't print in black and white. Even though the black cartridge is brand new. I first have to go buy a new color cartridge (which i don't use) and then i can print in black again.
The warning message says something like "if you print with an outdated cartridge it may damage the printer".
Can confirm, this happened to our HP 6830 printer on September 13. Extremely annoyed because we only bought this printer in June, and was working fine with a replacement ink. I was actually researching legal precedents to this, and learned that Lexmark has been fighting something like this in court for over a decade[1].
There's the Epson Eco-Tank series. Ink is in four bottles at the side of the machine, good for about 4000-6000 pages. Refill with Epson ink bottles or (a bit more messily) from bulk ink. The printer costs about $279.
You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That's the price of long life print heads.
Not sure if it was a time bomb, but HP does have an "auto update" feature that could seem like a time bomb.
We got nailed by this with our HP 8610. Were using 3rd party cartridges with much success for months. Last week my wife had a huge (for us) print job and encountered an annoying bug (prints blank sheets every other print). Updated the firmware hoping it would fix the problem. Next thing we know, cartridge error.
Spent 3-4 hours researching how to downgrade firmware with no luck.
No mentioned of new Sept 13 firmware on any HP driver website that I found.
3rd party is shipping us new cartridges for free, but it will be 2 weeks. Had to buy another printer.
I replaced my HP laser with a Brother laser a while back (just printing "stuff", not photos)
I replaced my black cart on the HP (2600n) with a 3rd party product, and got away with it. However, when I replaced the color carts (one ran out), which I was forced to, since it wouldn't print B&W at all otherwise, the printer detected the alien carts, and immediately refused to clean itself or something - I started getting black streaks on my black text, even though the black cart worked just fine for months the day before.
I think this calls for a cheap open source printer to be made. Nothing complex is needed initially, just black and white with low running costs. In reality, any liquid that stains the paper of a given consistency should be fine. It shouldn't be costing this much to replace ink.
All you need to do is buy from a business that doesn't depend on fraud. Samsung make very nice and cheap black & white laser printers. I've bought two over the last few years, around $70. I see one on Amazon for $75 that has wifi printing as well), comes with a cartridge that lasted me 2-3 years and some thousands of pages, and replacement cartridges are $60 for branded ones, less than half that for generics. The printer is tiny, quiet, fast, etc. I can't believe people still buy anything else, after all we don't print photos at home much anymore, do we?
There are other manufacturers that do the same kind of model.
Just avoid HP and (in my experience) Canon. Laser is the way to go.
You can buy separate inkjet printheads intended for industrial high-volume printing applications and build the rest from parts salvaged from other printers. Very low running cost, but also low-resolution, and those printheads are not cheap.
Alternatively, reverse-engineer existing printers to be able to use them with your own firmware that doesn't care what cartridges are in it.
I've had the same LaserJet 4000N for close to 20 years. These things were built in the late '90s (pre-shenanigans) and last. Toner changes are cheap and infrequent. Find one on eBay.
Ideally you would not want to start from scratch and instead purchase the rights to an old proven printer's design.
Anyone know of who you could approach that would sell this design to you?
Then you could probably get on Kickstarer and say "If we raise X dollars we will purchase the rights of this Y printer and open source all of the components"
I wouldn't doubt it for a second. Printer makers use the razor/razorblade model for consumables, where the printer's dirt cheap, but the ink costs an arm and a leg. This is just the latest tactic for getting people to go OEM only.
At this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon's cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.
I haven't really thought about it recently, but (parts of) Asia seems to have this whole printer ink thing figured out. Just about every printer I see in Thailand has the tubes coming out which go to bottles similar to this [1]. There are little refill stations in malls, and that seems to be the standard. No overpriced OEM cartridges, just a straight ink reservoir.
I never understood the razor/razorblade analogy. A razor handle without a blade is just a shaped bit of plastic or metal, without any working or moving parts. The precision engineering is all in the blade. It'd be weird if the handle wasn't cheap and the blades more expensive.
But a printer really is a non-trivial set of electronics and working parts, so it is more surprising that they're so cheap.
Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there's toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won't recognize it. And it's useless torefill it if you don't change some chip in each toner.
And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.
Life based on printed pages would be OK. If you actually print the number pages you promise, I can compare the total costs of cartridges and printers.
But I think some models also have timer. After 6 months or year, the printer starts to complain that the ink has "dried up". To prohibit you from saving up that unicorn blood by printing less.
By banned list is HP, Canon and I'm very cautious about Samsung.
I haven't owned and HP printer in a while, but this article will stop me from making an HP printer my next purchase if and when I need one. What a dirty, cheap tactic by HP! They'll fire some low-wage earner worker and a mid-level manager over this, while the real culprit stays at his job I'm sure. Definitely class-action, and even criminal, no? Consumer fraud, deception?
Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.
I'm pretty sure there are more open 3D printer projects, than open paper printer projects. Which just reinforces the differences between 2D and 3D printing.
HP and others have a lot of patents in that space with an army of lawyers to defend them unfortunately. It would have to avoid using anything coming close to these patents...
How I get screwed: My HP printer will occasionally print a black-and-white page using all three colors of ink. Discovered this one day when I rubbed a fresh page and it smeared three colors. They call it 'wear leveling' or something. But we all know it means 'using up your expensive color ink instead of your cheap black ink'. What a crock.
Stop buying dirt-cheap printers that are sold at a loss. These are designed to be paid off by expensive toner / ink. These are designed to make you waste the supplies if you don't use them up fast enough. They are designed to reject third-party cheaper supplies.
Pay a couple hundred more upfront for a no-bullshit device. I hope those still exist.
How can you guarantee that paying a couple hundred more upfront would save us all from this pre meditated corporate gluttony?
Stop buying printers from companies that build in mechanisms to purposely brick them. Buying a high-end HP is just as risky in my opinion, based on this story.
I bought a cheap no branded Chinese black and white only laser printer for $15. Best printer I've ever owned. It just... Prints! The firmware is totally unobtrusive and no problems with non branded toner. It prints whatever I ask it to print and that's it!
Unless you are running a business a couple hundred dollars is way too much to pay for printing once in a while. A consumer printer should not cost hundreds of dollars.
I agree. Another option is to research which printers can trivially have their bullshit disabled. I bought a $30 printer about 5 years ago that I refill with bottles of toner for $2. The 'modding' involved a piece of tape over sensor.
If this is affecting printers in Australia, then HP are going to learn a very costly lesson in ethics. The ACCC will have to do an investigation, but the instant they confirm this has occurred they will face stiff fines for third line forcing and anti-competitive behaviour distorting the market.
i'm in australia and bought some cheap fuji-xerox laser printer a year or so ago.
non-oem ink refills are far cheaper than oem ones. a large component of the cost of non-oem ink refills is getting a replacement chip that counts how many times you can print before it claims it needs refilling. you can buy more of these chips along with bulk ink refills. it's like DRM for ink or something.
Does this also happens with laser toner cartridges ? I really have no idea why people even buy those inkjet printers anymore, price per page is lower with laser printers and prices even for a color laser are in sub 200€$ range.
Yes. I was deploying our system in a physician's clinic when their HP printer suddenly refused to print with a cryptic error, even after all the toner was replaced it refused. Only when I stepped in & suggested they buy the brand name ink did things get resolved. Lucky for the busy clinic, they only had 1 HP printer.
I've had nothing but great success using third party ink with Epson printers. Every two-three years I buy a new epson printer and either a continuous ink system or refillable cartridges. I never worry about the kids printing too much or the print cartridge getting dry and clogging.
Epson gets used a lot as a base in the third party space - for things like T-shirt printers and other textile based printing. The print heads are reliable and accurate.
Had this one printed out (oh that irony) and taped it to our office wall when we had to deal with crappy printers on a daily basis working for a big DAX company.
[+] [-] noonespecial|9 years ago|reply
And when you do, resist writing 10 paragraphs about all the times HP has ever wronged you or a long story about how much you needed the printout when it refused to print.
One star, one sentence. "Expires full inks after only x months forcing you to buy new ones when you don't need them."
I know for certain these short, sweet reviews change the buying behavior of my non-techie family.
Make a difference. Write a product review today.
[+] [-] froh42|9 years ago|reply
In the OfficeJet in question I only used genuine cartridges, but every few year it would stop receiving black and white faxes because (the nearly full) color cartidge was passing its expiry date - forcing me to throw away the full color cartridge and buying a new one.
[+] [-] flyinghamster|9 years ago|reply
No more HP for me. Never again.
[+] [-] DavideNL|9 years ago|reply
seriously, will never buy a HP printer again.
[+] [-] brassic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azarias|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160214/16294133605/after...
[+] [-] PieterH|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That's the price of long life print heads.
[+] [-] josefresco|9 years ago|reply
We got nailed by this with our HP 8610. Were using 3rd party cartridges with much success for months. Last week my wife had a huge (for us) print job and encountered an annoying bug (prints blank sheets every other print). Updated the firmware hoping it would fix the problem. Next thing we know, cartridge error.
Spent 3-4 hours researching how to downgrade firmware with no luck.
No mentioned of new Sept 13 firmware on any HP driver website that I found.
3rd party is shipping us new cartridges for free, but it will be 2 weeks. Had to buy another printer.
Die in a fire HP.
[+] [-] Roboprog|9 years ago|reply
I replaced my HP laser with a Brother laser a while back (just printing "stuff", not photos)
I replaced my black cart on the HP (2600n) with a 3rd party product, and got away with it. However, when I replaced the color carts (one ran out), which I was forced to, since it wouldn't print B&W at all otherwise, the printer detected the alien carts, and immediately refused to clean itself or something - I started getting black streaks on my black text, even though the black cart worked just fine for months the day before.
Bye bye, HP, you ain't what you used to be.
[+] [-] bArray|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PieterH|9 years ago|reply
There are other manufacturers that do the same kind of model.
Just avoid HP and (in my experience) Canon. Laser is the way to go.
[+] [-] imaginenore|9 years ago|reply
There have been attempts at open sourcing inkjet printers:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:8542 (2011)
[+] [-] userbinator|9 years ago|reply
Alternatively, reverse-engineer existing printers to be able to use them with your own firmware that doesn't care what cartridges are in it.
[+] [-] yyhhsj0521|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryandrake|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mentos|9 years ago|reply
Anyone know of who you could approach that would sell this design to you?
Then you could probably get on Kickstarer and say "If we raise X dollars we will purchase the rights of this Y printer and open source all of the components"
[+] [-] dghughes|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sanddancer|9 years ago|reply
At this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon's cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.
[+] [-] reustle|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://lh3.ggpht.com/_bJKz4lWVpfo/S9p02XqXZqI/AAAAAAAADEI/Q_...
[+] [-] chrisseaton|9 years ago|reply
But a printer really is a non-trivial set of electronics and working parts, so it is more surprising that they're so cheap.
[+] [-] woliveirajr|9 years ago|reply
Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there's toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won't recognize it. And it's useless torefill it if you don't change some chip in each toner.
And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.
So OKI was in my banned list, now HP joins it.
[+] [-] vlehto|9 years ago|reply
But I think some models also have timer. After 6 months or year, the printer starts to complain that the ink has "dried up". To prohibit you from saving up that unicorn blood by printing less.
By banned list is HP, Canon and I'm very cautious about Samsung.
[+] [-] izacus|9 years ago|reply
Since I'm running my C301dn on 3rd party toners for awhile now.
[+] [-] eggy|9 years ago|reply
Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.
[+] [-] azarias|9 years ago|reply
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/12/hp-is-buying-samsungs-prin...
[+] [-] zanny|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|9 years ago|reply
I seem to recall some open hardware cell phone projects. No reason a similar effort couldn't be directed towards making an open printer, is there?
Also, it might not even require making a full open hardware printer, but just some key circuitry and maybe some drivers, right?
[+] [-] stephengillie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pipio21|9 years ago|reply
But there are not Open source inkject printers because it takes millions to manufacture the inkjet itself.
[+] [-] midnitewarrior|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_k|9 years ago|reply
Pay a couple hundred more upfront for a no-bullshit device. I hope those still exist.
[+] [-] jest3r1|9 years ago|reply
How can you guarantee that paying a couple hundred more upfront would save us all from this pre meditated corporate gluttony?
Stop buying printers from companies that build in mechanisms to purposely brick them. Buying a high-end HP is just as risky in my opinion, based on this story.
Cannon is another company to avoid. They just settled a similar potential class action: http://www.therecycler.com/posts/canon-faces-class-actions-o...
[+] [-] nommm-nommm|9 years ago|reply
Unless you are running a business a couple hundred dollars is way too much to pay for printing once in a while. A consumer printer should not cost hundreds of dollars.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kentt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shoo|9 years ago|reply
non-oem ink refills are far cheaper than oem ones. a large component of the cost of non-oem ink refills is getting a replacement chip that counts how many times you can print before it claims it needs refilling. you can buy more of these chips along with bulk ink refills. it's like DRM for ink or something.
[+] [-] supercoder|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdkl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toast0|9 years ago|reply
Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
[+] [-] josho|9 years ago|reply
I hope HP faces some major lawsuits over this.
[+] [-] clarry|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ne01|9 years ago|reply
We used to own the stuff we paid for! Now it's like you pay to be the product. I think this problem is worse in software.
Checkout fsf.org
[+] [-] Steeeve|9 years ago|reply
Epson gets used a lot as a base in the third party space - for things like T-shirt printers and other textile based printing. The print heads are reliable and accurate.
[+] [-] proctor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schlowmo|9 years ago|reply
"Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable"
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers
Had this one printed out (oh that irony) and taped it to our office wall when we had to deal with crappy printers on a daily basis working for a big DAX company.