After years of dodgy HP printers and their very expensive inks, I brought an Epson EcoTank. It cost a lot more but it prints are amazing and the Ink lasts forever. It took 2 years to get through the included ink.
HP brings a broad new meaning to Dodgy. Shotty and shabby. Its wholly unethical how hey manage their affairs, but now to hear they are disabling their own printers, oh my how unfortunate, and I shall decline the gift of any, and inform potential buyers of their ... unwholesomeness. I was going to limit myself to brothers, but I hear they are now on the 'short term profits over everything.' type of CRM. Customer Relation Managment: Screw you.
I have HP Smart tank budget printer and it sometimes drives me mad that it stops printing, you have to restart it and whatnot.
The colors are not great either.
However the tank lasts few years before it dries out and we do print with it quite a lot. For kids, for school, for coloring - usually I set low quality prints. But the printing is cheap.
But when I change the printer, I want hassle free print experience. And a tank based printer.
Please remember to print once a fortnight to prevent the tubes from drying (at least in this hot and humid city). Apparently the head/printer cost ratio is at magnetron/microwave levels.
This problem is what made me ditch inkjets entirely in favor of laser printers. You don't have to remember to do occasional "maintenance prints" with laser printers.
I purchased a HP laser printer instead. I don't print that often and it has been complaining since a few packs of paper ago that the black toner is almost empty but it just keeps printing.
My decade-old HP laser has complained about very low toner for some 2 years now. Buy spare toner but don't replace until you actually see the print fade.
I wonder whether HP will get its comeuppance, for years of jerkiness, when an LLM is involved in most printer purchasing decisions, and that LLM will have been trained on Reddit, HN, etc.
Or will consumer "AI" services offer "integrated placement" for brands, which also has the effect of neutering valid criticism of the brand?
People have to keep buying new HP printers because their old ones keep breaking. Consumers are not rational or well-informed.
In contrast, my Brother HL-5340D printer from 2008 is still working fine to this day.
There have been been zero required firmware updates that could have, as HP said in their release notes, "improved firmware update and cartridge rejection experiences." It doesn't reject cartridges, it still takes the same TN-620 toner replacements made by Brother or a hundred other vendors. I'm unconcerned about security because the only connections are a USB type B 2.0 input that presents a PCL/CUPS compatible driver... and also a DB-25/Centronics printer port, of course, as a printer should have.
I gave Brother like $250 of my limited cash as a sophomore engineering student in college, and a nominal $50 for a remanufactured toner cartridge every 3000 pages (several years) and then haven't bought a replacement printer for home since then. I don't know if I've ever replaced the drum, but I should probably do that - it's old enough to vote and deserves to be freshened up. I suppose I have bought a several of their printers for work and I've recommended Brother lasers to a bunch of family members for who I'm 'the tech guy', so that's some revenue in their direction, but probably less profit than if I'd bought a new HP inkjet and a couple HP cartridges every 2 years.
Also consider that not only have I spent less money on printers than an HP buyer, I've encouraged far less inventory turnover for the vendors: Why would HP/Staples/Wal Mart/wherever normal people buy printers devote sales attention and shelf space to keeping a Brother printer in stock when a 36yo adult within driving distance only needs to buy one such printer in their lifetime, when they can turn over a pallet of disposable inkjets on a weekly basis?
HP's many failures keep them from going bankrupt, not the other way around. This does not mean that their business practices should be imitated.
I know it is not what you meant, but what you wrote becomes funnier if one reads it as saying “the fact that [buyers of HP printers] aren’t bankrupt at this point is beyond me”.
HP is the worse but most printer makers have or will come to the same conclusion sooner or later.
Successful consumer electronic brands right now make money with either simple or "premium" looking but wallgardened products you need to throw money at at every turn. And HPs are available everywhere and will mostly work if you don't mind the running stream of money.
Probably never. The home printer market I imagine isn't anything anyone new wants to risk money in, and if they did, they'd just end up copying much what HP is doing anyway.
Also I doubt anyone is giving some LLM their credit card and all printer brands have bad reputations online. People post when motivated and they're motivated to complain, not praise.
In the meantime, I can still buy a Brother brand printer that seems to not have all the HP issues, or less so.
It doesn't take very much effort to look at ink costs when buying a printer, so this is on consumers. It might even be the rational choice for low-income consumers since it's cheaper in the long run than buying a more expensive printer with a 25% APR credit card.
If someone created and sold a printer that did not care about the ink that was used, the people of the interwebs would go crazy in the forums when the shitty ink they used did not work correctly in the printer.
This is not a defense for DRM'd cartridges, but just an honest look at how people will behave. The support for the company with a open ink policy would be astronomical for the complaints they will receive. Sometimes, people/users are the problem but there's no way to tell that to the customer without you being the dick. "the customer is always right" is such a bullshit fallacy that makes operating a business near impossible.
> If someone created and sold a printer that did not care about the ink that was used, the people of the interwebs would go crazy in the forums when the shitty ink they used did not work correctly in the printer.
There's no need for hypotheticals. Such printers do exist. People on the Internet tend to praise them (see this very thread). I'm sure people have had bad ink experiences, and if I search for it I will find them. But I highly doubt they'd blame the printer or the concept...
> If someone created and sold a printer that did not care about the ink that was used
Why would anyone do that. Sounds like a strawman.
All printers I've seen specify precisely what ink they need. And then you look up which 3rd party inks are compatible, so the printer gets what it want.
I feel like the overlap of people savvy enough to want re-fillable carts and people not understanding what "only fill with high quality ink" means so they jump to blame the company is pretty small.
> the people of the interwebs would go crazy in the forums when the shitty ink they used did not work correctly in the printer.
They definitely wouldn't, because this is a case of corruption being taken to the extreme. Official ink costs more than printers. If I bought awful bootleg ink three times and the last fake cartridge melted the printer into a smoldering pile of plastic, I could buy another printer and still break even.
Yes, years ago. People haven't used it solely to mean permanently broken for a long time, it now also means "temporarily inoperable" or "broken beyond the skill of one particular user to fix it". Much like how "literally" now gets used to mean "figuratively" the use of hyperbole has turned "bricked" into meaning "not actually bricked".
Nothing is permanently broken though. At some point you can start reflashing chips and replacing internal components. Bricked has always meant the device is inoperable and beyond easy repair.
> Much like how "literally" now gets used to mean "figuratively"
It is not used to mean “figuratively”, it is figuratively as an intensifier for other figurative descriptions. If it was meant to mean “figuratively”, then it would be used in senses which the audience would not otherwise understand as figurative and be the thing which told them that the other term used was figurative; that is very much not the case.
Ironically, the shift in usage is happening at the same time that embedded security is getting good enough that it's possible to brick something hard enough that you can't reflash it without replacing chips, if you lose keys or they get corrupted.
I would expect HN to maintain the distinction where "brick" means it won't work at all due to a software malfunction, and can't be restored to a working state via a hard reset button or software update via WiFi/USB.
Its technical meaning to engineers hasn't changed, and HN is a technical site full of engineers.
I don't see how this characterization is wrong as a shorthand. Until HP comes up with an update, these printers don't print. If they never do, then it is literally true. There was a home router manufacturer that issued a firmware update that permanently disabled their product, users had to physically exchange them.
For those who don't want to apply firmware updates like this, you might want to use Linux. No printer company is going to work with your distro to automatically install their firmware updates. If your printer works today it's going to work tomorrow.
My old inkjet recently gave me so much trouble with dried up expensive cartridges that when a super good HP offer came late at night from my next day delivery online shop for a newer generation laser at a ridiculously low price and I jumped on it.
I instantly regretted after printing 100 pages and discovered the evil move: they deliver the laser printer with "introductory" toners that print 1/2 of the normal toner, and 1/4th of the big capacity. A quick google search revealed that while I got the printer with a nice rebate for 140USD... the toners will cost 280USD for a whole set(1500 pages version), and 480USD for the XL(3000 pages) version which is quite insane.
It's sad because the quality of print of this laser outperforms most I've used in the past(the color printing is fabulous), and the software seems to run really smoothly on it. It prints fast and well, it just happens to have an extremely customer hostile company behind it.
Thankfully apparently there is now a technique to extract chips from your existing toners in order to transfer them to a new set of generic toners... and one can only hope that the "terrajet" chips will soon be RE'ed by someone so we can get normal generics.
For reference, the printer is a LaserJet Pro 3302FDW, that uses 219/219X terrajet toners.
Wat's your update strategy today, HN? Main possibilities seem to be 1) The faster, the better I am protected. 2) I wait a few days/weeks. The second mouse gets the cheese.
You can take different approaches on different things. A browser is probably the most exposed piece of software in your system, so maybe be aggressive with updates on that, but a printer is unlikely to be exposed to untrusted inputs so I would question whether there's any point updating it ever unless you have a specific issue you're trying to fix.
This is pretty much my take on it. Once I get a printer installed and working, that's the last time I look at the software for it. I'm also not a heavy printer, so my printer tends to be unplugged more than it's actually turned on.
My publicly facing servers get patched as soon as I'm aware there are updates available. If it borks anything, I just turn to the previous backup (not that this has ever actually happened).
The last time I tried updating an HP printer, it locked up and printed half a ream of jibberish before I pulled the plug on it. Now, I just put printers on a firewalled VLAN and call it a day.
IOT devices (including printers) get firewalled to have no access outside my LAN, and I don't let my PCs run the kind of software that would fetch a firmware update and push it to another device without prompting me. The first line of security should always be not connecting it to the Internet unnecessarily. This is especially important when the list of probable attackers starts (and ends) with the manufacturer.
Absolutely. Rarely do I need a device to have access to the internet. Printers, speakers, sensors, vacuum cleaners, dishwasher. Nothing gets to talk to the outside world.
They are appliances, and if they work they work. Unless something is broken, I leave them alone.
The only exception so far has been the robot lawn mower, that supposedly adapts to weather forecast. But it will be jailed soon, too.
Use parental controls at the router to prevent the printer from accessing anything outside our in-house network. If it acts like a child, treat it like one.
3) I use out of date hardware and software as much as possible, being rigorously paranoid to never expose it to anything risky, and keep it locked down as much as possible. (Which means little Internet use... which is arguably a feature of the process.)
If the manufacturer doesn't support the software anymore (or better yet, is out of business) the odds of malicious updates go way down.
> 0) Don't buy from companies that treat me like a criminal.
So don't buy printers, basically? That's sarcasm, but, non-sarcastically, do you know any printer companies that (make decent printers and) have basic respect for their users?
Update OS's regularly for everyday machines / Offline machines you don't want changes to affect. Update Phones regularly. Give work software a 6 month-1 year lead before updating because they will break something (Looking at you Autodesk & Bluebeam).
And never buy an HP Printer which should come before any talks of when to update.
Relatedly, I remember reading that it's unrealistic to build an open-source 2D printer because of how much research and very specific manufacturing that requires. But, what if someone designs an open-source replacement motherboard for some popular commercially available printer model? How much of the "secret sauce" is in the firmware, if any? How easy would that be to replicate independently?
I think it's unrealistic to build a cost-competitive open-source 2D printer. But it's relatively easy to just build your own printer. The parts that have the most R&D tied up in them (and so are unlikely to be replicated from scratch easily) are the inkjet heads and the ink's composition. If you can get those off the shelf then you can easily DIY everything else. There is a large existing industrial market for inkjet heads and ink. Many industrial inkjet heads are very easy to drive and have freely available data sheets. But they cost >$500 to a few $1k each and you probably want 4 for CMYK. I just built a custom printer in a few weeks for an art project with some of these (specifically, one called the Xaar128) driven by an RP2040. The experience definitely gave me a sense of awe and resigned respect for my humble desktop printer.
That's why I'm talking about a replacement motherboard for an existing consumer-grade printer (though not necessarily an inkjet one, I don't get it why people keep buying inkjet printers when they don't intend to print photos). Custom PCBs are very easy and cheap to get manufactured. All the maliciousness of these printers is in the firmware, and replacing the motherboard with an open-source one feels like the easiest way to get rid of that. The other possibility would be to write a custom firmware for the stock motherboard, but I'd imagine that printers these days would have some form of secure boot.
I don't know this for sure(conjecture based on other knowledge), but due to security functions mandated in printers(dot fingerprinting, preventing currency recreation, etc), I would assume other components besides ink cartridges are cryptographically paired. I'd love for this to not be the case though.
If this isn't the case, then it would still be a large effort to both design the control software that controls the intricate mechanical parts, as well as providing drivers.
I think it would be totally doable for a single printer or a family of like printers in the scope of an opensource project with enough motivated contributors, but 2D printers are some of the least sexy pieces of technology out there so the allure would be missing.
I for one love 2D printers. Anything that brings the digital world into our plane, so maybe I should look into this.....
Last I looked, you can fully avoid the security stuff by being monochrome instead of color, so that's an easy way out.
There's also no public mention of the logic being mandatory to implement -- literally, find me a law that requires it -- so you can probably start doing business without it just fine, and in fact the mechanism is patented so you can't just implement it on your own! At some point, some anti-forging governmental department or business lobby will contact you, and that likely won't happen until after you've already succeeded.
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Printer ink has always been hilariously overpriced. A gallon of IBM check sorting machine ink was $25. And that's magnetic ink.
Extract as much value from your users as possible I guess. If some subset of users figure out how to at least lube up, first, disable their hardware.
I also actually have a Brother color laserjet too (HL-L8360CDW).
Between those two, I get a LOT of projects done. They are both reliable workhorses.
I have HP Smart tank budget printer and it sometimes drives me mad that it stops printing, you have to restart it and whatnot.
The colors are not great either.
However the tank lasts few years before it dries out and we do print with it quite a lot. For kids, for school, for coloring - usually I set low quality prints. But the printing is cheap.
But when I change the printer, I want hassle free print experience. And a tank based printer.
Or will consumer "AI" services offer "integrated placement" for brands, which also has the effect of neutering valid criticism of the brand?
In contrast, my Brother HL-5340D printer from 2008 is still working fine to this day.
There have been been zero required firmware updates that could have, as HP said in their release notes, "improved firmware update and cartridge rejection experiences." It doesn't reject cartridges, it still takes the same TN-620 toner replacements made by Brother or a hundred other vendors. I'm unconcerned about security because the only connections are a USB type B 2.0 input that presents a PCL/CUPS compatible driver... and also a DB-25/Centronics printer port, of course, as a printer should have.
I gave Brother like $250 of my limited cash as a sophomore engineering student in college, and a nominal $50 for a remanufactured toner cartridge every 3000 pages (several years) and then haven't bought a replacement printer for home since then. I don't know if I've ever replaced the drum, but I should probably do that - it's old enough to vote and deserves to be freshened up. I suppose I have bought a several of their printers for work and I've recommended Brother lasers to a bunch of family members for who I'm 'the tech guy', so that's some revenue in their direction, but probably less profit than if I'd bought a new HP inkjet and a couple HP cartridges every 2 years.
Also consider that not only have I spent less money on printers than an HP buyer, I've encouraged far less inventory turnover for the vendors: Why would HP/Staples/Wal Mart/wherever normal people buy printers devote sales attention and shelf space to keeping a Brother printer in stock when a 36yo adult within driving distance only needs to buy one such printer in their lifetime, when they can turn over a pallet of disposable inkjets on a weekly basis?
HP's many failures keep them from going bankrupt, not the other way around. This does not mean that their business practices should be imitated.
Successful consumer electronic brands right now make money with either simple or "premium" looking but wallgardened products you need to throw money at at every turn. And HPs are available everywhere and will mostly work if you don't mind the running stream of money.
Also I doubt anyone is giving some LLM their credit card and all printer brands have bad reputations online. People post when motivated and they're motivated to complain, not praise.
In the meantime, I can still buy a Brother brand printer that seems to not have all the HP issues, or less so.
This is not a defense for DRM'd cartridges, but just an honest look at how people will behave. The support for the company with a open ink policy would be astronomical for the complaints they will receive. Sometimes, people/users are the problem but there's no way to tell that to the customer without you being the dick. "the customer is always right" is such a bullshit fallacy that makes operating a business near impossible.
There's no need for hypotheticals. Such printers do exist. People on the Internet tend to praise them (see this very thread). I'm sure people have had bad ink experiences, and if I search for it I will find them. But I highly doubt they'd blame the printer or the concept...
Why would anyone do that. Sounds like a strawman.
All printers I've seen specify precisely what ink they need. And then you look up which 3rd party inks are compatible, so the printer gets what it want.
Deleted Comment
They definitely wouldn't, because this is a case of corruption being taken to the extreme. Official ink costs more than printers. If I bought awful bootleg ink three times and the last fake cartridge melted the printer into a smoldering pile of plastic, I could buy another printer and still break even.
It is not used to mean “figuratively”, it is figuratively as an intensifier for other figurative descriptions. If it was meant to mean “figuratively”, then it would be used in senses which the audience would not otherwise understand as figurative and be the thing which told them that the other term used was figurative; that is very much not the case.
I would expect HN to maintain the distinction where "brick" means it won't work at all due to a software malfunction, and can't be restored to a working state via a hard reset button or software update via WiFi/USB.
Its technical meaning to engineers hasn't changed, and HN is a technical site full of engineers.
It is never used that way. Please do not say that. It is an intensifier.
HP broke the printers. It didn't brick them.
If something is bricked, it's permanent for a consumer at home. It can't be fixed with another software update, because the bricking prevents updates.
This can be fixed with a future update. Therefore it's not bricked. That's the definition of bricked.
They're currently broken (a temporary state). They're not bricked (a permanent state). The two words aren't synonyms.
https://fwupd.org/lvfs/vendors/
HP already uses this for firmware updates to keyboards and mice. Of course distros typically acquire consent before applying them.
Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges (tomshardware.com) 536 points by m463 5 days ago | 336 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261933
I instantly regretted after printing 100 pages and discovered the evil move: they deliver the laser printer with "introductory" toners that print 1/2 of the normal toner, and 1/4th of the big capacity. A quick google search revealed that while I got the printer with a nice rebate for 140USD... the toners will cost 280USD for a whole set(1500 pages version), and 480USD for the XL(3000 pages) version which is quite insane.
It's sad because the quality of print of this laser outperforms most I've used in the past(the color printing is fabulous), and the software seems to run really smoothly on it. It prints fast and well, it just happens to have an extremely customer hostile company behind it.
Thankfully apparently there is now a technique to extract chips from your existing toners in order to transfer them to a new set of generic toners... and one can only hope that the "terrajet" chips will soon be RE'ed by someone so we can get normal generics.
For reference, the printer is a LaserJet Pro 3302FDW, that uses 219/219X terrajet toners.
My publicly facing servers get patched as soon as I'm aware there are updates available. If it borks anything, I just turn to the previous backup (not that this has ever actually happened).
They are appliances, and if they work they work. Unless something is broken, I leave them alone.
The only exception so far has been the robot lawn mower, that supposedly adapts to weather forecast. But it will be jailed soon, too.
If the manufacturer doesn't support the software anymore (or better yet, is out of business) the odds of malicious updates go way down.
1) Manufacture's suggested update schedule.
So don't buy printers, basically? That's sarcasm, but, non-sarcastically, do you know any printer companies that (make decent printers and) have basic respect for their users?
And never buy an HP Printer which should come before any talks of when to update.
If this isn't the case, then it would still be a large effort to both design the control software that controls the intricate mechanical parts, as well as providing drivers.
I think it would be totally doable for a single printer or a family of like printers in the scope of an opensource project with enough motivated contributors, but 2D printers are some of the least sexy pieces of technology out there so the allure would be missing.
I for one love 2D printers. Anything that brings the digital world into our plane, so maybe I should look into this.....
There's also no public mention of the logic being mandatory to implement -- literally, find me a law that requires it -- so you can probably start doing business without it just fine, and in fact the mechanism is patented so you can't just implement it on your own! At some point, some anti-forging governmental department or business lobby will contact you, and that likely won't happen until after you've already succeeded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation