Anytime a company reduces the functionality of a device through software or firmware they should have to offer to buy back the hardware. The depreciation rate should be set at time of purchase so you know how much you get if they neuter it a year from now.
Why allow depreciation? You wouldn't have bought it with the reduced functionality, and it's going to cost you time and effort to remove it and replace it with something else. Inflation will reduce the value more than enough.
Yeah, but that means they don't get your money anymore! Think of the ~~profits~~ ~~shareholders~~ children!
I must buy a printer soon. Thank you for reminding me to avoid HP products.
brother laser printer
This is the way. My brother printer is a hl2040, came out sometime in the early 2000s. It still prints. I've replaced the toner cartridge once since my Dad gave it to me back in 2016.
The other day I needed to print something out and this was after I had reinstalled linux.
Just fired right up, instantly recognized. Its one of the best pieces of hardware I own.
Are "brother" the nice guys at the moment?
relatively speaking
Laser printer and probably brother, it's worth the extra up front cost 10 fold
For an old color Dell Laser printer I got from a thrift store years ago I can find 4 color sets of toner for it for $40-60
brother is currently enshittifying right now.
Brother. The end.
My current bother printer is a pile of shit.
Which printer and why? I just bought three L8690CDW Colour laser printers for me and my family after calling Brother who were happy to talk me thought my concerns, they informed me that this model does not have chipped cartridges so it’s ineligible for their cartridge subscription program and they also can’t tell if the cartridge is genuine or not. They don’t care if you use 3rd party toner.
No idea. Some model I bought off Amazon.
The printer headers are constantly moving out of alignment. Every time I print I need to realign the headers.
Probably has something to do with the printer starting up every few days and making a bunch of noise doing who knows what.
I hate this fucking printer and will never buy brother again.
Edit: according to my order history it’s the ink jet MFC-J4335DW.
I realize that lasers are better from a printing consistency standpoint but the issue I have with it isn’t the ink. It’s everything else. Shitty design. It breaks down because it was poorly designed.
If you want reliability brother ain’t it.
That noise is the heads being cleaned, which needs to happen on all inkjet printers. It may be that your one was simply broken. I bet if you call Brother and ask for some advice they will help you.
I would. But a little research shows this is a very common problem with this model.
Even if I get it replaced it will eventually happen again.
Poor design.
After all of these years these people still can’t get it right. Fool me once.
Edit: it’s clear to me now that its “self cleaning” feature is responsible for why the heads get forced out of position. Wtf.
Still in warranty or less than 3 years old? I saw the Reddit post on this issue, might still be worth asking, they may have developed a hardware of software fix, and if not they may allow you to switch model.
Or they could like... just not be dicks and supply firmware updates without the lock-in, instead of having to trade off security to use your device however you want.
Even better, the whole HP printer is optional.
Oh BROTHER, not this again.
On a more serious note, I've been all about brother printers for a few years now and couldn't be happier.
My current brother printer is a pile of shit.
They apparently restricted 3rd party ink now too.
You got a source? Everyone else says it was debunked.
Oh didn’t hear it was debunked. Cool to know!
HP is like, "enjoy the security vulnerabilities"
laughs in CUPS server
did the cups vulnerability get fixed?
I have an epson eco tank. No more ink cartridges.
Ink jets are trash tho
Laser or nothing.
What about printing head replacement?
From my experience, those last years. But they are indeed a bit expensive... I have had my eco tank for the last 5 years, only had to replace the b/w printer head after around 4 thousand prints, and I'm almost sure it was my own fault for using expired low-quality ink that I had bought in bulk for super cheap.
As someone who's worked on printer firmware before, it makes me really sad that a company can get away with making a consumer decide between getting access to any of the actually useful changes that engineers — who have no say over ink cartridge policy — put effort towards making the best product they could, or not having said ink cartridge policies forced on them.
Simple fix here, stop buying the companies that do this. I bought a brother printer and I won’t go back.
This was in the related articles: https://www.tomshardware.com/peripherals/printers/brother-denies-firmware-blocks-third-party-toner-and-ink-use
And I believe them. The reddit post in Rossman's video was 3 years old. I have personally installed and updated 5 Brother printers in the last year and they all still run on 3rd-party toner.
Thanks for added context!
That sucks, I bought mine a few years ago and haven’t had any issues yet. 🤞
I bought a 15 year old second-hand Brother laser printer - works like a charm, operates under both Windows and Linux, still has all the spare parts you can think of readily available, and you can just load any toner into the official cartridge to use it again, and again, and again.
Love it. Simple, dirt cheap, just works and does it well.
Sometimes I wonder why there's no DIY Paper printer after seeing so...much shit in Printer Company ?
We had advance DIY 3D Printer that can made various objects with various size and materials and yet there's no DIY Paper printer until now
It's not really surprising. The demand for printers has fallen off a cliff due to wide acceptance of digital alternatives. People barely need printers now and as such aren't willing to pay much for them.
This is further exacerbated by the reality that a printer is actually a fairly high precision device and expensive to manufacture.
So you have an expensive to manufacture device that consumers aren't willing to pay much for. So what happens? They adopt a consumable based business with the printers being locked down to force you to buy their overpriced, high margin consumables that have a low absolute price so consumers don't think about it much.
Let's say that we regulate away this lock in. What will happen? Well the price of printers would have to climb to match their actual cost to manufacture. That price would likely turn off consumers from buying them at all. The end result would be the end of the printer business altogether. Maybe not a bad thing as not printing at all is likely a better ecological outcome.
"Settles" lol the lawyers got their payout
I've never interpreted settling to imply lawyers don't get paid.
Lawyers get paid either way, but that's about the most that comes of it. Settling means no legal precedent has been set, so businesses can pull this bullshit again in the future
Bullshittery aside, "HP Inc." Instead of just "HP" Is on the nose and has to be deliberate on the journalists behalf
The actual reason is because in 2015 "Hewlett Packard" split into two companies, one called HP, Inc, and one called HP Enterprise. The print and consumer PC business went to HPI, while the server and network hardware went to HPE. So, writing just "HP" could be interpreted as ambiguous.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
