Slashdot Mirror
Ink Cartridges with Built-In Self-Destruct Dates
Linker3000 writes "The Inquirer has an article about HP ink cartridges having a built-in expiry date that can cause them to become unusable even if they aren't empty! Another twist on the 'chipped cartridge' stories--and also another kick in the teeth (and wallet) for the consumer methinks." This isn't really a new problem - here's a good piece about the problem.
I don't have this problem, I'm still using a dot matrix from 1993! I have only replaced the ribbon once, and it still prints. (really light and grey/bluish)
If you don't like it, buy someone else's product.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
That Lexmark are using DMCA against a company that sells chips that allow third-party cartridges to be used...
This just adds to a list of reasons why I will never, ever, own a printer again...
Join the Free Software Foundation
With cars, it's illegal to do this (Brady law I think). Why is any other hardware different? Car makers tried to get the monopoly on parts, and then got slapped down by laws to keep them from doing this. Can that be used as a precedent to prevent this?
What about those that let their ink sit in their printer for years and don't care about quality? Or those that put in a cartridge that been in storage for years and the print quality is just fine?
I know what I'd do. I'd go down the shop and buy a new one. Then I'd return the old one with the receipt and explain that it's defective - full of ink but not working.
Since I'm not a subscriber (I know, I'm a llama), I get ads in the stories. The ad for this story is for an HP handheld device.
The tagline?
HP- Invent
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
The article says that the expiration date is 4 1/2 years after the cartridge is put into the printer. Surely, more than 99.9% of users will run out of ink well before the expiration date.
so you get 4 and a half years to use the cartidge after you buy the thing. if the ink hasn't dryed up by the time you get around to using it, the quality is going to be shit. expecally with those ultra high end ink jets from hp where you continually expect outstanding quality.
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
5...
"err... does anyone know how to change ink cartridges? Please"
4...
"Ok don't panic. It's probably under this cover somewhere"
3...
"shit, only 3 seconds to find the bloody thing. Why oh why didn't I read the user manual?"
2...
"Aha - that looks like it"
1...
"Just about got it out..."
BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP POP
"eeewwwwhh"
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
prevent this. A vendor can't sell after-market printer
ink cartridges for some products as they would be in
violation of the DMCA -- hence restraint of free trade,
not the original intent of the DMCA. This only serves
to keep prices higher and harms consumers, again not
the intent of the DMCA.
Can you purchase after-market products, new seats,
new engines, new spark plugs, new oil and gas for
your car? Imagine if GM did the following:
network, all using encryption (seats, radio, engine)
the car to start unless you had all the original parts
parts from them
up engines, no customized or replacement seats,
no super stereo).
What's to prevent them from doing that?
I learned a good while back (I think as long as 7-8 years ago) NOT to stockpile HP printer ink cartriges. I used to buy 1 color and 1 black cart at a time, but I found that the carts I bought and let sit on the shelf until I needed them often would not work if they had been on the shelf for a few months or so.
I appreciate HP's support of Linux and would like to support them, but I stopped buying their printers a few years ago. There's just too many little quirks. The last one I had ran the paper through at a slight angle. I don't think I've seen an HP printer I felt I really trusted since the original Deskjet and Deskjet 500.
Hal
No customer likes surprises, especially after they purchased a high-end product. If HP or another manufacturer implements a policy such as this one, there should be full disclosure so at least people are aware of it. Plus, HP has the resources to research not only the financial aspects of such a plan, but also the impact on customer loyalty, etc.
On a different note, I'd like to see a mechanism put in place to allow customers to "re-charge" their current cartridges - like a photocopier card - rather than sending them to the landfill only to be replaced by the exact same product.
They violate the buyer's-obligation-law, which forces you to buy consumables supplies for printers, even when you don't need them. So, wtf should we care about them?
I bought a Cannon inkjet recently precisely because they don't screw me for refills. There are no chips, prices for official cartridges are reasonable, and there is a large selection of 3rd party inks. Better yet there is one refill per colour so if I run out of cyan, I don't have to throw out my magenta, yellow or black.
Of course, the printers are a bit more, but if you're doing a lot of printing, they're cheaper in the long run.
Ah those old printers. I remeber I think I had a 2650 which took about 5 minute to print a page a letter quality. THe bumps of the back were a good replacement for brail
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
It is not a free market, thanks to the DMCA. Without the DMCA, we'd have the freedom to hack and bypass these limits.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"With cars, it's illegal to do this (Brady law I think)."
Does the Brady Law on cars mean that there is a 3-day waiting period if you want to buy a Chevy Beretta?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
There are a few companies in Taiwan and China that are working on Point of Sale ink jet printers. These printers tend to cost a bit more than a typical home printer but they must be cheap to operate or the merchants won't buy them. That's why you still see so many old 9 pin impact printers out there in cash registers. The problem is merchants want full color for receipts but they aren't going to pay much for it so it has to use cheap paper and cheap ink and still look good.
Once the POS market starts to take off again, these guys are going to ramp up their production and then its a matter of time before there is competition with larger bits of paper.
Remember Epson started out selling receipt printers and then went and undercut Centronics by a 1/3. I gives these guys about two years and the HP/Epson/Lexmark ink jet cartridge business will be dead.
Insightful?
1) HP bought Compaq.
2) Last Year.
3) The print cartridge was manufactured 4.5 years ago.
Synergy is your friend
Of course it is a scandal, however in practice it won't make much difference since HP ink cartridges have always become unusable when not used for too long: they dry out.
I print only very occasionally, maybe a few pages per week or month, sometimes not at all for 1 or 2 months. I was tired to throwing away 90% filled but dry ink cartidges and therefore switched to a laser printer. They work even if you print a page after months without use.
We've all heard and experienced horror stories with ink jet printing.
But is there anyone selling a decent printer now that lets you refill the cartridges, a printer that's reliable, at a fair price?
I'm not talking about a printer that can compete on price with the subsized prices that the ones with the expensive cartridges go for -- just a printer that's priced fairly, and cartridges that are refillable without going broke.
Even a suggestion for old models to look for on ebay would be helpful.
Expensive arrays from compaq and Sun have batteries that "expire" after two years. Wether or not they should. The batteries are cache batteries and once they hit the date they send alarms constantly. Do they really need changing? do you want to take a chance?
As always, YMMV.
comment directly in my journal
Grabbed a cartridge from the storage room, as the one that was in there seemed to be out.
Funny, it wasn't printing yellow. Ran some cleaning routines, still no luck.
Then grabbed another cartridge.
IT wasn't printing cyan.
Then another cartridge.
5 cartridges later, I got one that was printing all three colors correctly. Expiry date was Nov 2000.
I didn't get any error messages about expiration dates on the computer, but seriously, these printer cartridges were sealed. They shouldn't be malfunctioning right out of the box.
-- Bird in the Bush: The Renewable Energy Blog http://www.birdinthebush.org
For those of you who aren't familiar with business practices, HP is following the Gillette business model in their printer division.
This was thought up by Mr. Gillette himself (you know, the razor guy). He would sell razors at a loss, and then sell the refills at much inflated prices to make up the difference. Even today, a pack of 8 or so refills for a Gillette razor equals the price of just buying a new one.
HP is trying to pull this off in the computer world, and I don't know if it's such a wise thing to pinch your customers until they bleed dollars. Look at recent history:
1. HP inkjet carts used to be freely refillable, until HP modified the design to keep this from happenning.
2. HP printers generally stopped accepting third-party cartridge replacements.
3. Now the HP-only cartridges have a expiration date.
Now, since the first two steps haven't gotten the average printer user keeping up with ink cartridge consumption to keep the stock-holders happy; I guess just make the things stop working after a while! Perfect business plan, guys.
I really would love to see large companies use the good-ol sense of customer service to make a buck than bend-the-customer-over-because-we-can.
I know I'm not buying anymore HP stuff from now on.
-brain
But the cartridges expired in more like 9 months to a year. The kicker was that I never printed many things using color. HOWEVER, if after several months the color cartridge decided that it had expired, the printer wouldn't let you print in plain black ink unless you changed the color cartridge. So even if you never want to use color, you still have to replace the color cartridge once a year in order to print black ink only pages. What a racket.
That's a good question, though I'd take the more generic approach: It seems like today the major printer manufacturers are doing all they can to screw you on ink prices. Surely someone has already done the research for what printer manufacturers *don't* suck; which ones specifically design their printers to make it easy to refill their cartridges, etc... anyone wanna suggest one? ;)
Bought myself a S900 a while back, after doing some serious research. Has fantastic print quality, well built, looks good and as mentioned previously it uses single colour carts I can pick up for about £3 ($5) a pop. The printer wasn't cheap but worth the money.
Basically, companies that can manufacture ink jet cartridges (relatively small products) but cannot manufacture their own printers can be locked out of the market, eliminating consumers' ability to choose to buy from these smaller companies.
The cost of a ink cartridge is 90%+ of the cost of owning and maintaining a inkjet printer. The battery in an array from sun/compaq is much less than 1% of the cost.
Plus my bet is you'd put up with the cost of replacing cache batteries instead of losing whatever the battery is there to protect (transactions and such).
If you only need to print in black and white, you will likely be much better off with a laser printer anyway (i.e. better, faster, cheaper!). I did a quick calculation on my DeskJet 6xx series ink cartridge versus an HP LaserJet 1200 toner unit. The ink cartridge capacity is disappointing.
laserjet: $100 / 3000 pages = $0.03 / page
hp inkjet: $40 / 650 pages = $0.06 / page
Pretty much all laser printers result in a lower cost per page than inkjet. Do a calculation with how many pages you print a year, and you may find that the laser pays for itself very quickly.
Will the cartridge also be tied to the printer you initialized it in as well, or could you at least move it to another printer.. As long as your 30 day printing allocation hadn't been exceeded..
For home users this will be totally nuts.. cartridges may last 6 months at home..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Those of us who think occasionally were horrified at the idea that software and movies could be licensed rather than sold. You purchase the product, and should be allowed to have your own quiet enjoyment of the product, but the law doesn't allow this.
Now that computers are about to be in EVERYTHING, expect EVERYTHING you buy to be licensed rather than sold. Expect to start paying a license to drive your car, to keep your tires inflated, etc. Not yet, but it won't be long, I assure you.
Even worse, expect the same monopoly conditions that prevail in the software industry to prevail everywhere else, too.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
I was printing some activities for the kids, and suddenly the printer just stops printing, and the lights just blink. After some searching, I find out that this particular model, and the C42ux as well, has a drop-dead date.
Well, not a date actually... When you clean the print heads on these models, the ink has to go somewhere. So it goes into a little reservoir (you can see it on the right hand side when you open the cover and the print heads are out of the way). The printer keeps a count of how much ink is in this reservoir. But once the printer thinks that the reservoir is full, it STOPS WORKING COMPLETELY!!!
Ok, no big deal, right? Change the reservoir. No problem... but wait! You have to re-program the EEPROM to reset the counter! And guess what? The only people who can do that are licensed Epson repair centres! (closest one to me is 3 hours away, speeding, in another province). And how much does this cost?
The cost to simply reset the counter on the EEPROM is more than the cost of the printer! The printer ended up in the garbage.
Note that I am never buying an Epson printer again.
Cheers for taking the company that used to create those really good laser printers and turning them into another crap marketing company, just like you did to Digital.
Compaq didn't turn HP into a crap company, it was merely the final step in a multi-year process. Things went to hell the day HP made printers a priority over the good quality innovative test equipment they built the 50 years before.
HP, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling colored ink ?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
OK, I'll buy that. So why go to the expense of including an expiration chip in it then? Think about this for a second.
This also begs this question - Have they been testing this technology since 1999? Not likely. It is most likely a programmable chip. So maybe in the next batch of cartridges, they can change the expiration date to 6 months, and make it behave like it just ran out of ink. The end user will just think they ran out, and buy another cartridge.
I used to think I was a little paranoid, but then the DMCA gets passed, and greedy f'ing companies try to pull this kind of crap, and I think maybe I wasn't paranoid enough.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
One way or another, the consumer has to pay for the real cost of the printer, which includes the cost of R&D. There are two ways: upfront, or indirect. Now, you can ask consumers: would you rather pay $499 for the printer and get ink for free, or would you rather pay $99 for the printer and pay for expensive ink? The market chose the second option some years back, which is partly why HP took so much of the inkjet printer market from its competitors.
Now, having established that consumers prefer (and have chosen) to pay for the ink, HP is entitled to protect its ink sales. This just seems logical.
Look at it another way: paying for the consumables gives consumers much more freedom. If they don't like the printer, they chuck it. If you buy a more expensive laser printer that runs on cheap toner, you'll save money, but only if you run the beast for three years.
This is not a printer market problem. Do you buy regular lightbulbs or 'ecological long life' ones? Do you pay for your train and bus each time you get on, or do you buy a season ticket? Do you rent an appartment or pay a mortgage?
This really is a matter of the free market. If printer R&D costs were negligible, we would have already seen an invasion of cheap printers along with cheap ink. Look at what happened to scanners. There is no ripoff here, only people unhappy with the bargains they made.
This story keeps coming back to Slashdot, and every time it's "the poor consumer being ripped off by those bastard printer manufacturers." Does no-one actually bother to analyze the economics here?
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
First, printers and particularly inkjet printers, follow the Gillette 'sell razor blades, not razors' marketing model. They practicaly give you the printer as an ink burner. So they do all kinds of nifty stuff to make sure you have things to burn ink on, and you keep running down to CompUSA to plop down another $50 on an ink cartridge. The printer also comes with lots of nifty printing software to give you reasons to burn ink.
In our printers, the cartridge was intelligent, and would keep count (yes, the cartridge did) of the number of individual dots of ink for each color of ink emitted. Knowing the average dot capacity of the cartridge (for each color), we could predict when the cartridge was running low and (kindly) tell the user to go buy another cartridge, and would even provide a handy hyperlink to our online store. Better, we would track the printer's average dots/page and page/day statistics to tell them they had x days of printing left. Buy now!
So this comes to me as no surprise that they have put an expiration date on the printer cartridge. They will due it under the guise that its ensuring 'fresh ink supply' and to ensure 'highest quality printing'. But, in reality, its only another means to force the customer into buying yet more ink. Cha-ching!
My advice, shitcan the inkjet printer, go buy a good laser printer. The total cost-of-ownership is much less in the long run.
p.s. - giving the inkjet away is evil and rude and only perpetuates the problem.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
I picked up a LJ4+ with a +100k page count and a used toner about 2 years ago when my previous employer had a "fire" sale ;)
I found and added some old non EDO memory from my junk drawer and it has been trucking along fine after at least 5000 sheets.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
The reason for all the ink cartridge price fixing is due to the fact that the printer companies want to have enough money saved up to defend themselves in court when the MPAA sues them for providing "devices which can be used for the piracy of a single frame of copyrighted motion picture material".
Damn HP and their cirrcumvention devices.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Try to get one of those old 600dpi HP laserprinters like the HP LaserJet 4. These are often available used for $70 or less (often with 12000 or less total pages printed in the lifespan). These printers are ultra reliable. Toner cartridges are inexpensive (Good refilled ones can be bought for $20). These printers should work with almost any OS.
Honestly-- the witch hunts!
The ink has many chemicals in it, many that don't want to stick together. The lighter elements in the ink tend to evaporate, turning the ink into a thick sludge. The sludge, as you can imagine, has a hard time passing through the nozzles of the print head. This has always has been issue since at least 1996, when we got our first high-end inkjet printers. At that time, you could expect the shelf life of the cart. to be about 6-10 months. In fact, back in those days, stores would occasionally sell you old stock, and there were no date codes printed on the ink carts. You were SOL if you got an "old stock" cart, because HP said it was too old. At least now HP will warrany ANY non-empty ink cart that has a date stamp before the expiry date on the cart.
Think about it-- faster evaporation times on paper mean the ink doesn't soak the paper as much. You can get brigher brights, darker darks, etc. These chemicals in the ink don't magically want to evaporate only once they hit the paper. They always want to evaporate. Remember the $800 inkjet from not so long ago that had a halogen heater? It was to speed up the chemical reaction.
I could understand if the date codes started inching closer and closer-- to like just a month or two weeks. (Keep the ink in the freezer next to the t-bones, anyone? yeah, right)
I don't believe the ink has been engineered to have a shelf-life. It may be that they're in no hurry to improve their shelf-life, but it is nothing new. The date code is to help prevent customers from getting old stock. There may be better alternatives to this kind ink out now, but they're building on their ink research from 10 years ago.. which means it is probably also the cheapest technology. So if you want to claim that for the last decade, HP has been plotting this scheme to get more ink dollars out of people, we'd better put on our tinfoil hats.
Now, having established that consumers prefer (and have chosen) to pay for the ink, HP is entitled to protect its ink sales. This just seems logical.
It is however not legal. In the US we have anti-bundling laws. That is, you cannot make purchase of one thing contingent upon another. This is to prevent strange pricing scams.
But you say, ho, did you notice Gilette's Sensor and Mach III razors where the razor is virtually free and the blades are expensive? This is indeed a perfect example. There are aftermarket Sensor-compatible blades (I don't know why there are not Mach III ones).
So Gilette is free to embark upon their plan of charging you for the razor by pricing it into the blades, but they have no legal way to protect it. They have to hope the consumer follows along. And the consumer did, the Sensor was a success, people bought the on-brand blade cartridges either because of their better distribution or because people preferred a safer, more familiar produt. Enough people did so to make Gilette a lot of money.
Requiring the purchase of future replacement parts with a product makes it impossible to the customer to determine the true cost of a product. And is why this monopoly on cartridges must end.
Under a proposed EU law (WEEE directive), this would be illegal -- manufacturers are specifically forbidden to comporomise the recyclability of products. Protecting the environment is more important than protecting corporate profits.
.....
Under UK law, it's already illegal. If I have bought an ink cartridge, I own that cartridge and I have the right to use, abuse, enjoy or destroy it. If the manufacturers, or anyone for that matter, do something to it to prevent me using it, then that is criminal damage. No need even to call a solicitor, since it's a criminal act you should just be able to dial 999
Changing the subject slightly now. Me and a mate fished an Apple ImageWriter out of a skip. We found a power lead, cobbled up a serial cable and got the thing to print. Bit faint, but we got a new ribbon (purple!) and wound it into the cassette (it split open easily enough and the old ribbon was unlikely to stain much). No manual, though. So I found an ImageWriter II driver for the Amiga, stuck my faithful Citizen 120D [now that really was an excellent printer!] into Hex Dump mode, and rattled off a document with various text effects in it. Even managed to suss out bit image mode, and in the end we used the printer to print forged bus tickets. We must have had the best part of £2000 worth of free travel. We had to stop doing it when the bus company changed all their ticket machines, but the printer does still print, if a bit faintly.
Perhaps we should start a new forum for Printers We Have Known and Loved?
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Microsoft mice now to include odometer so users may not exceed the specified mileage limits as defined in the EULA.
If refilling is a marginal market, why are the printer manufacturers so afraid of the competition?
I don't think it's wrong that HP and others sell ink -- at whatever prices they think their market can bear. But I do think it's wrong to force the market to have no choice in whose ink they use. What's next, forcing us to print only on approved paper? It could be done, with a machine-readable strip in the paper (akin to what's used in money). No strip, no print.
That would be like Ford telling me I had to use only Ford oil in my truck -- at $5 a quart, instead of the usual $1/qt, even tho Ford's oil and everyone else's oil are functionally identical. If they can convince me that Ford oil is that much better, and worth that much more, cool. Making it less convenient to use another brand, fine. But making my truck stop running if I don't change the oil on THEIR schedule, or making it impossible to use another brand? No, that's not fair at all (nor is it legal under the Magnusson act someone referenced above).
And that's what the printer companies are doing with ink, using the cover of the DMCA to get away with it.
And just as I'd stop buying Ford trucks if they *forced* me to use drastically-overpriced Ford oil -- I won't buy a printer that has similar notions. They're cutting their own throats here.
If they'd sell rationally-priced refill ink, they could corner that market too. Keep the prefilled carts at the high convenience price, and sell "genuine HP ink" refill kits for those who care to take on the bother of refilling -- and they'd be competitive in the refill market (probably at a slightly higher price because of the "genuine" concept). In fact, ideally, they should partner with some existing ink refiller, which would expand the refiller's market as well as their own, and would make consumers happy to buy their printers, rather than pissed because they feel cheated by the current ink policies.
Cripes, if they'd spent 1/10th as much R&D on refill kits as they did on preventing refills, they'd have that market all to themselves already.
(I don't even use an inkjet anymore, and I still think it sucks.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Lots of items have expiration dates. In many cases, it may even be illegal (or leave you open to a lawsuit) for a store to sell an item past its expiration date (think meat) or to use an item past its expiration date (think sterile medical products). The difference is that in almost every case, nothing is forcing the end user not to use the item past the expiration date. You can always put those expired batteries in your MP3 player if you only want a few hours use. You are also free to eat expired meat if you so choose. If you are crazy (or desperate) enough, you can even use expired medical products on yourself.
HP, however, seems to have chosen to make the expiration date manditory. Don't care about degraded print quality? Too bad, buy a new cartiridge. In my mind, it would be perfectly ok for HP to do what you mention compaq and sun have done: Warn the user that the cartiridge has reached the end of its life-expectancy so the user can make an informed decision regarding whether to replace the cartiridge or to continue using it.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
And you damn well ought to have!
SoGA requires all goods to match the description on the box or in any advertising, to be of satisfactory quality - (ie. they must work and last a reasonable length of time), and they must be fit for the purpose they were sold under.
The company cannot claim that breaching the wrapping violates your rights as the goods were clearly not of satisfactory quality.
And it is the store not the manufacturer who must sort out the problem - your contract is with the store. Nor does claiming a problem under SoGA violate your warranty terms since the manufacturer's warranty is in addition to any rights in the SoGA.
It's an incredibly powerful piece of law (and far stronger than US legislation in the same area), just mentioning the words 'Sale of Goods Act' is usually a good way of getting a company seriously worried. They usually back down there and then, but if you then mention the local trading standards office (in the phone book), they will get VERY worried. Trading standards are the last people you want to cross...
Anyway UKers, read up on the Sale of Goods Act 1979, know your rights and use them. Don't take all the crap stores try to fob you off with about shrink wrap, misuse and 90 day warranties.
IIRC the only physical purchases not covered by SoGA are houses, which live in a legal minefield all of their own.
UK Consumer Rights
Best wishes,
Mike.
No, wait. A better analogy is if God decided the world had expired and made the Sun go supernova.
Or no, an even better analogy is if an ant is painting a masterpiece using Bob Ross oil paint and looks down and sees that the tube of paint has expired, and says "oh, no"
Or wait an even better analogy is if two people are arguing and one of them sees that the other's analogy has expired. Then he says, "Here, use mine"
I looked at this page and the advertisment at the top, just below the introduction, was one for HP saying "Exercise your freedom of expression."
Ok HP, you suck for doing this!
I have just bought an all-in-one from HP and am very pleased with it but I have this chip in my cartridge. The argument is that they want to ensure that you get top quality prints but I think that that is something that I should be able to decide for myself.
Kevin
"It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in" O. Nash
20 years from now US business and consumer practices will be condemned for the waste of natural resources. What makes profit in the short term is usually wrong for the environment and future availability of natural resources.
:( , but some of us took typing with the girls :) ) took drafting, electric shop, metal shop, wood shop, and plastic crafts. Those courses have helped me throughout the subsequent 45 years.
/.ers who feel HP has abandoned its quality tradition. Bill and Dave must be screaming from their graves.
I had an electric fan go bad because it had bushings instead of ball bearings. I then tried to deterimine which possible replacement fans had ball bearings - few retailers know or care. All sorts of rotating products which could last 20 years will fail in a couple because of this short-sightedness.
There are many more examples: poor tires sold with new cars, poorly-engineered plastic parts (plastic per se can be very good), dc motors without replaceable bushes, equipment poorly spot-welded instead of bolted or riveted,...
Of course, the typical consumer hardly knows how to replace a light bulb. When I went to junior high school in the 50's, we all (well just the guys
I worked one summer for HP, felt the pride of doing quality work, and bought their test equipment for the next 30 years as a physicist. Yet, I sadly agree with the
The sooner this tradition of waste ends, the better will be the future of civilization.
I tagged along with a friend this past weekend as he went to buy a sony video cam. On the way to the register, the salesman mentioned that the camera needed to be sent annually to the factory to get cleaning, for a $45 charge... and that this was enforced by a chip that prevented operation until this was done.
Had it been me, I would have refused to buy this cam. (total cost was $600, btw, so $45/year equals about 8%, to say nothing of the hassle of sending it in and waiting for it.)
My (non-technical) friend didn't seem to react at all. While standing in line I asked what he thought of the forced cleaning. His response was to ask whether I thought the salesman was giving correct info. I said "You bet. You'd be shocked at what companies are doing, and the reason is because enough consumers let them get away with it."
Case in point: he shrugged and bought the camera.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.