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Dell Takes the Low Road Regarding Ink Cartridges
Anonymous Coward writes "Dell released a line of printers today, manufactured by Lexmark. As covered by by Yahoo they '..contain a chip that disables the cartridge if it is refilled and replaced in a Dell printer..' and 'The cartridges are different sizes than cartridges from other printer vendors, including Lexmark, the spokesperson said. This will limit the amount of knockoff cartridges available, but only until someone figures out how to reverse engineer Dell's cartridges.'" In the interest of full disclosure, note that the poster sells knockoff carts.
New cars' gas tanks will not be able to be refilled. If you need new gas, you will have to buy a new gas tank from Ford, GM, etc. This will ensure you get the highest quality feul that will ensure the maximum life of your car. A smart chip will prevent manual refilling.
Yeah, yeah. And it isn't even *slightly* deceptive to drop the cost of the lead in product and then force the purchase of specific stuff later. Not at ALL. Its not necessarily a 'low road', but anyone who calls it even remotely 'high road-ish' is talking out of their distended ass.
At least it doesn't require that you have to print exclusively on Dell paper. I bet someone is inventing that right now.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
My dad ran a laser printer cartridge recharge/refurbish business for a while several years ago. IIRC, a lot of printer manufacturers would also collect these old cartridges to do the same and resell them as used. What's preventing Dell/Lexmark/whoever from doing something like this? There's obviously a market for it, they'd save on manufacturing costs and empty cartridges would stay out of the landfills for a while.
This "feature" in Dell printers reminds me of what Epson does to its entire line of ink jets. Personally, I own an Epson Photo 1290 that I use very regularly in my studio to print photos to be framed for sale. Buying loads upon loads of Epson OEM ink is certainly not very economical. So instead, I bought a continuous inking system. Basically, several large bottles of ink are piped directly into a modified ink cartridge, essentially providing a cartridge with mega-capacity. It's economical, it's more convenient, and most of all, it's more versitile. Instead of standard Epson ink, I can choose from inks with different characteristics and color gamuts. You haven't seen beauty until you've seen 4-tone black and white photos from a fairly-standard ink jet printer!
Unfortunately, the chipped Epson cartridges poses a problem. Not only will the chips tell the printer when the cartridges run out of ink, it will also disable the printer until it is replaced. Moreover, the chips don't even check the level of ink remaining. Instead, it counts the number and size of pages printed, and guesses when the ink is gone. With a continuous inking system and it's near-infinite capacity, this is not ideal.
As a result, several groups have developed workarounds. Some have made write-protected chips that are "reset" when the printer is turned off. Others have made devices to alter the ink-level information stored on the chip. And last I heard, there was work being done on a software workaround. Certainly, there are bypasses, and they have already been used for other printer manufacturers.
If anyone is interested in printer-mods, check out CIS and Chip Resetter.
If these workarounds were not available, I would certainly have no bought an Epson printer. But at the same time, I can understand the manufacturers' position on third-party carts. Ink cartridges, not printers, are where the money's made!
Actually, Canon printers are somewhat more expensive that their Epson equivalents, but have much cheaper running costs due to lower cartridge prices. So some manufacturers are taking the higher inital cost/lower long term cost route.