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HP "software timebomb" disables 3rd party ink cartirdges

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Watevaman

Member
So my girlfriends HP Envy printer does this crap but it's been doing it for a long time. Is there any way to get around it and print or would those methods be against GAF rules?
 
Has anyone got a direct link to amazon/ebay for these cheap black and white third party toner cartridges for their model of laser printer?

Like the one you use.
 

John Blade

Member
Have use Canon, Lexmark, Samsung, and eventually Brother and would say, if you just doing normal black and white document, just stick with Brother. They don't fuck with the consumer and the printer are good for what it's design for. For me, I got myself the printer below.

71jDL8euV7L._SL1500_.jpg

Work like a charm and get the job done when I need to print stuff either from computer or on my phone (yay wireless printing). Ink isn't cheap but based on the one I got, it last for me on average 3 to 4 months as I print tons of document at home for work (for average joe, this can be easy 6 to 8 months or a year).
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Have use Canon, Lexmark, Samsung, and eventually Brother and would say, if you just doing normal black and white document, just stick with Brother. They don't fuck with the consumer and the printer are good for what it's design for. For me, I got myself the printer below.



Work like a charm and get the job done when I need to print stuff either from computer or on my phone (yay wireless printing). Ink isn't cheap but based on the one I got, it last for me on average 3 to 4 months as I print tons of document at home for work (for average joe, this can be easy 6 to 8 months or a year).
I probably print a couple of pages per day. I recently had to change the toner cartridge that came with my Brother after a decade or so. It costed me €20.

Inkjet is a scam.
 
I probably print a couple of pages per day. I recently had to change the toner cartridge that came with my Brother after a decade or so. It costed me €20.

Inkjet is a scam.

Yup. I have an old HP (I know) Laserjet that I can buy $9 refills for from Amazon, and they last around 7 months each.
 

clav

Member
Funny to read a business book called Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies and then see all the contradicting modern day information.

What a shitty company.

Switch to a Brother printer if you haven't already.
 

LCGeek

formerly sane
That's ok, I'm not buying anymore of their printers and am taking one of them back soon. Fuckers took the ability on some of them to control when it uses color ink from a driver level. They can keep their shitty policies and profit mongering for all the suckers that want to keep using their shit.

Can't stress what others are saying myself.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Re: laser printers.

If your printer starts giving you the old "empty cartridge" message, take it out and shake it so whatever remaining toner moves inside and resets. I easily got around 50 extra pages or so from my previous cartridge this way.
 

ShirAhava

Plays with kids toys, in the adult gaming world
I have an HP from like 15 years ago that works amazing the ink lasts for-ever. I honestly think they goofed and didn't mean for it to be this good when/if it breaks I might cry.
 

clav

Member
Re: laser printers.

If your printer starts giving you the old "empty cartridge" message, take it out and shake it so whatever remaining toner moves inside and resets. I easily got around 50 extra pages or so from my previous cartridge this way.

Avoid printing pictures and stick to b/w text when possible.
 
I just bought a Canon color laser recently.

I got weird cartridge errors in my old HP inkjet, even went out and bought official ones and the piece of junk still won't accept them.

Never again.
 

clav

Member
What's funny (I don't know if still true).

Back in the 90s, HP and Canon laser residential printer cartridges were cross compatible. A lot of replacement cartridges matched many models.

Brother Laser printers stay winning.
Literally 14 bucks for the generic giant ass drums that last forever.

Do any of you manually refill your cartridges? Business printers typically have toner exposed in a fill valve for easy refilling.
 
The original sin was self-inflicted, by buying an HP printer in the first place.

Brother for life.

For large format plotting HP used to be the best. They made fucking tanks that lasted forever. Of course, that led to people never upgrading so they started making overpriced shit. Our office switched over to EPSON for large format a long time ago and Canon for small printers.
 

daviyoung

Banned
I'm guessing their logic would be that third party ink cartridges might not deliver the same quality as their own therefore damaging their brand.

Still a douche move tho

Their thinking is that they make most of their money from the cartridges and not the machines so 3rd parties are stealing all the long-term sales.
 
Since I don't have to print often (especially if you can just do it at work), I now only buy a fancy scanner/printer/copy machine multi device that is cheaper than buying all the ink cartridges it contains.
Then when one of the inks is empty (after several years mind you), I throw/sell it and buy a newer model :p

Mostly I want the scanner function.
 

kami_sama

Member
I can also vouch for Brother. Replacements can be had for very cheap, and the printer itself has been working like a charm since we bought it.
 

John Blade

Member
I always wonder who this people buying HP printers. Are they mostly for color printer and if so, are they really good? I just don't see myself getting any HP product unless it's those business line laptop but even then I would look at ThinkPad or Dell business laptop over HP.
 

Iadien

Guarantee I'm going to screw up this post? Yeah.
I bought a Brother printer last year and have been happy with it. I ended up replacing a few relatives HP printers with Brother printers, and have had no complaints so far.
 

Jacobi

Banned
Ink printers should be outlawed or taxed heavily... This shit is too crazy and laser printers are perfectly serviceable for 97% of the people
 

studyguy

Member
What's funny (I don't know if still true).

Do any of you manually refill your cartridges? Business printers typically have toner exposed in a fill valve for easy refilling.

There are refill kits for the generic drum I have, but it's so cheap to just buy another it's sorta moot to me. Like the kit is stupidly easy to do though, it's like 8 bucks for a bottle of ink you just shove into an easily accessed spot and boom.
 
There was a time when HP printers were built like a tanks and could survive years of reffiled cartridges but that was 15 years ago.

Current HP is overpriced garbage and I've switched to monochrome laser Brother and couldn't be happier.
 
I rock a canon ink jet for now, get generic carts at a localshop works great. If it craps out I think ill end up going with a brother laser printer for the 5 times a year I actually print.
 
I remember that I bought an used Brother laser printer several years ago and the first print gave me the message of that the cartridges are empty. But because EU antics they were forced to provide the option to ignore the message.

Several years later I'm still using the very same cartridges.
 

Korigama

Member
Like I didn't already have enough reasons to continue staying away from HP products (the last printer I had from them was crap, too).
 
Inkjet printers made perfect sense back in the day, because laser printers used to be very expensive and could only print black and white.
Probably the only reason Inkjet is still around is that people don't realize how much has changed since then and HP and others are obviously not interested in telling them that.
 

bionic77

Member
The original sin was self-inflicted, by buying an HP printer in the first place.

Brother for life.
This is truth.

Mine has probably done close to 20k pages and I am just getting to the point where I have to change the drum but man it always works and the price to operate is dirt cheap.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Inkjet printers made perfect sense back in the day, because laser printers used to be very expensive and could only print black and white.
Probably the only reason Inkjet is still around is that people don't realize how much has changed since then and HP and others are obviously not interested in telling them that.

They are very cheap, smaller, prettier, print in colour and come with cute little LCDs displays that nobody uses. Then, after a few cartridges, plenty of people realise that they rarely ever print in colour and move to a monochrome laser printer.

I'm dead certain that Brother owes most of their consumer sales to disgruntled injet users fed up with their previous printers.
 

pr0cs

Member
Another +1 for Brother printers. Had one for 3years now and I'm happy, replacement ink is reasonably priced and easy to find. Would never recommend HP printers especially since often the ink is more expensive than buying a new printer
 

7aged

Member
Inkjet printers made perfect sense back in the day, because laser printers used to be very expensive and could only print black and white.
Probably the only reason Inkjet is still around is that people don't realize how much has changed since then and HP and others are obviously not interested in telling them that.

While true to a large extent, at the top end of the market inkjets produce better quality prints.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Scummy.

I wonder if Canon printers had similar issues. One day I started getting "no ink" cartridge errors out of the blue. It was too soon after replacing it for it to be the case (I had used the printer maybe once or twice since replacing it). Worse, it wouldn't just print a faded output like sometimes when it's low on ink, it just refused to work completely.

Man, fuck printers. Seems like they all suck.

Edit: reading this thread with more attention, seems like Brother is the way to go? I literally never heard of them before, but I'll be on the lookout for those once I finally get off my lazy ass and replace my stupid Canon. Lexmark, HP and Canon all sucked, this one better be the real deal dammit. xD
 
So don't update your HP printer software, I suppose.


..why would anyone ever update their printer software, anyway?
Stability. Also in this internet of things (if it's connected to your router it could potentially be online at any time) security is a real concern.

I have an HP from like 15 years ago that works amazing the ink lasts for-ever. I honestly think they goofed and didn't mean for it to be this good when/if it breaks I might cry.
Like others have said HP were amazing back in the day. I find out now 22 years on that the HP Lasterjet 4P I use is apparently an absolute legend (you see ones on the used market these days with like 500,000 pages printed). I find it funny how that test sheet says quality printing at an affordable price, seems HP could learn from themselves a little...
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Scummy.

I wonder if Canon printers had similar issues. One day I started getting "no ink" cartridge errors out of the blue. It was too soon after replacing it for it to be the case (I had used the printer maybe once or twice since replacing it). Worse, it wouldn't just print a faded output like sometimes when it's low on ink, it just refused to work completely.

Man, fuck printers. Seems like they all suck.

Edit: reading this thread with more attention, seems like Brother is the way to go? I literally never heard of them before, but I'll be on the lookout for those once I finally get off my lazy ass and replace my stupid Canon. Lexmark, HP and Canon all sucked, this one better be the real deal dammit. xD

Brothers (specially laser monochrome ones) are huge in corporate for a reason. Not only they are very affordable and rugged, but they are also ridiculously cheap to run and the toner lasts forever. They are not the best if you intend to print photos or lots of graphics, though. Plain resumes, movie tickets and walls o'text? You'll be fine.

Stability. Also in this internet of things (if it's connected to your router it could potentially be online at any time) security is a real concern.


Like others have said HP were amazing back in the day. I find out now 22 years on that the HP Lasterjet 4P I use is apparently an absolute legend (you see ones on the used market these days with like 500,000 pages printed). I find it funny how that test sheet says quality printing at an affordable price, seems HP could learn from themselves a little...
Old school business HP printers were legendary. Same for plotters. We had a huge ass motherfucker of a plotter at the electronics lab in my school that had to be like 15 years old or so and kept chugging out plans like a champ.
 
Pretty shitty of HP. I remember a time when Hewlett Packard was synonymous with a quality product. But it has been years since I bothered with an inkjet. I rarely print stuff out so my printer can go months at a time without being used. As you can imagine leaving an inkjet that long leads to blocked heads. I kid you not most of my ink never ended up on the fucking page it just got wasted trying to unblock the damn print heads.

As soon as Lasers hit the sub £100 mark I picked one up. I didn't even care how much the replacement toner was. I bought my current Dell 1350cnw (colour network laser printer) a couple of years ago. It is still rocking the same toner it came with (still about 90% full). The beauty of it is I can leave this thing for months on end and KNOW that I can just switch it on, send the print job and bang page printed.

Unless you have specific photography or printing needs (needing to print on A3) then NO ONE should be considering an inkjet printer in this day and age. Go Laser the minute you do you will think "fuck why the god damn hell didn't I do this before".
 

sgjackson

Member
yeah seriously if you mostly print black and white documents brother is where it's at - i got a laser printer for less than 100 bucks like four years ago and the fucking thing has been a tank through thousands of pages with absolutely zero bullshit.
 

Morrigan Stark

Arrogant Smirk
Brothers (specially laser monochrome ones) are huge in corporate for a reason. Not only they are very affordable and rugged, but they are also ridiculously cheap to run and the toner lasts forever. They are not the best if you intend to print photos or lots of graphics, though. Plain resumes, movie tickets and walls o'text? You'll be fine.
Sounds good, b&w documents are all I ever print. Are there smaller models than the big one you mentioned? I don't have a ton of space, sadly.
 

KDR_11k

Member
I'm pretty sure this is against EU law (preventing cartridge refills violates recycling laws). Get the lube ready, HP, you know what's coming.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Sounds good, b&w documents are all I ever print. Are there smaller models than the big one you mentioned? I don't have a ton of space, sadly.

Look into the HL-L23xxx line. You can probably find them for $80 including a small toner drum.

Multifunction ones (scanner/copier/duplex printing) are obviously larger and more costly, although the DCP-L2520DW seems more or less compact.
 
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