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HP Secretly Rendering Printer Cartridges Unusable?
Momoru writes "Looks like a woman is suing Hewlett Packard, claiming that their "smart chip" technology, besides giving information about ink usage, is also secretly programmed to not work after a certain certain date." From the article: "HP ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But the suit claims those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty." We've reported recently on printer companies making questionable business decisions.
Meanwhile, people may try this trick to hack expiry date on ink cartridges, which might have been proven to work.
Do these cartridges have expiry date printed on them?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Just... Wow. This is lunacris - first the good news that Fiona is leaving, now this? HP hass lost it in the modern market, and unless they wirry more about the customer and less about the bottem line than they currently do, let's just say the market will respond. (It has already to an extent)
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
...it just quotes people who sometimes have agendas.
Does this woman actually have proof of this or is she just angry about having to pay HP's prices for replacements?
It wouldn't surprise me at all, but I'll believe it when I'm able to read the alleged expiration date off of my own HP cartridges. I've had an HP printer for 2 years--some of the cartridges are original and some have been replaced just once. I can't say I've ever had them stop working or falsely report empty. The nice thing is the cartridges are even a clear case so I can easily optically verify whether they are empty or not.
1: Design a modchip that makes the cartridges work forever
2: ???
3: Profit!
So much for my pro-HP rant yesterday....
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I'm sure dried ink can reek havoc on printer heads. This is not necessarily an attempt to screw over their customers
I know they say its good to replace the nozzles every once in a while, but with every ink tank???
HP/Lexmark/etc. need to learn that consumers aren't willing to pay these taxes anymore.
There arent too many details on this, but i ran the cartridge in my HP printer (Photosmart 1110) bone dry. This was long after their software was telling me my cartridge was empty.
SYSOP ('sih-sop) n.: the guy laughing at your typing.
For years, I've noticed that on HP printers, it leaves a great deal of ink in the catridge while saying that it is out of ink. Controversly, I have a slightly older printer of the same that KEEPS PRINTING FAR TOO LONG, and actually prints even when there is hardly any ink left. I guess they realized how much money they can make from these overpriced cartridges?
I believe this issue previously came up with HP plotters. People were installing "new" ink cartridges in their plotter, only to discover that the cartridge had expired. HP's explanation was that old ink cartridges could cause expensive damage to the plotter by clogging up the ink system with deteriorated ink.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
HP and Lexmark are discussing a merger.
...that this is true. My trusty older HP2000C business color inkjet still sees regular use with both Windows XP and OS X. Anyways, the cartridges (HP 10, and also HP 11 which work fine) have an expiration date printed on the foil package. I had occasion to install one of these once and the printer configuration software told me it was expired and refused to use it, even though I could shake it and hear it was full.
Why does a printer even know what date it is? Why would it need this. It seems like the kind of 'feature' the typical ink-spray (i.e. no frills cheapo) wouldn't need or use. Can the date simply be fooled? Can the real time clock be disabled?
But I'm not hopeful - I think the problem goes one level higher (the board that kicked out the Hewlett kid and hired her)
Since this seems to be the first major suit announced, it'll be interesting to see how it works under the new law. Will there be real limits on attorney's fees? Will it be tied up in Federal Court even longer than it would've been in State Court? Will customers see something other than a coupon to buy more ink?
Stay Tuned to find out!
"Might have been proven to work"? Um, yeah, whatever...
HP Secretly Rendering Printer Cartridges Unusable
and Canon, Epson, Oki, Brother,... They all slowly render my printers unusable by selling me ink at $38000/gal, which slowly makes my wallet thinner and thinner until eventually I have no money left, I have to sell my home, put my wife on the street, dress my kids in rags and send them to beg at street corners, and get me a cardboard box to sleep in at night, and protect my (now useless) printer during the day...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
... but FWIW: That was funny.
Another class action lawsuit whereby the lawyer gets a third of everything plus expenses and we get a coupon or some vague opportunity to get a small fraction of the money we have been cheated out of. The RIAA was sued for price fixing and hence stealing about 500 million dollars. They only had to pay back about 40 million + another 40 million worth of CD's no one wanted to buy. If you factor in the tax deduction (approximately 35%) and their savings in warehouse space due to dumping a few million CD's they could not sell anyways they are basically out the cost of the plaintiffs legal fee.
That seems to be the CorpGovMedia theme.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Having been locked into HP proprietary UNIX, a victim of their abondoning of Tru64 UNIX, forced to sign NDAs to receive information regarding constant failures of SAN firmware, it comes as no suprise that HP has sunk to new lows.
Inkjet was always touted as the 'razor' for any company coming up in the ranks. The problem is ... much much much research $$ goes into finding pigments and dyes that are permanent and light fast... as well as fit the receiver requirements.
/pill thats been in a bottle for 4 years. Ink's not a drug (tho as expensive as cipro!) but it is used to print a photograph that will, if said photo should fade, be lambasted as a "cheap ass company" for producing a bad product (See http://www.wilhelm-research.com/ ... mind you I dont have a very high opinion of his work... but it's still a consumer 'start' ... he'll be re-inventing quite a bit of knowledge because he's refused help)
e gory=1246&item=6746041397&rd=1 - note I am not endorsing this seller or product, only that I'm currently contemplating buying it...)
And companies want to recoup that cost as fast as possible.
I worked on some yellow dyes and can tell you it's a very difficult process. Very expensive- you might have 6 months of failures.. and the floor lab might be stained a million colours.
But when it's done (and your scale up engineers have done it right) you'll get the cost of your ink way down.... I seem to remember some were down around 30$/kg. Pretty cheap. But that was the 'cost' of making the ink, not including all the $$ into research.
And being a chemist I can tell you inks in suspension aren't good after sitting for awhile. Yes, it's in a dark cartridge, but I don't know many people that will tell you it's safe to take a drug
Anyways.... this shouldn't surprise anyone that works with inkjets. The high-volume people will never see the problem, only the low volume people. And those that know will probably do something like this instead http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cat
I'm sure dried ink can reek havoc on printer heads. This is not necessarily an attempt to screw over their customers
nah, hp just trying to gouge their customers. I've known about this for a few years. Yes, indeed, they are programmed to STOP WORKING after a certain amount of time REGARDLESS of the status of the ink.
HOPE IT TURNS INTO A CLASS ACTION
Wow, a lawsuit said so? It must be true!
Don't get me wrong, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. But this entire article is based solely on a "Yahoo! News" article saying a woman filed a lawsuit. Hardly up to the level of content needed for a Slashdot discussion. What exactly are we supposed to post about? "So, a lady is claiming this. It wouldn't surprise me if it was true. Um...yeah." It's just a lawsuit claiming this. There are endless lawsuits each year claiming all kinds of things.
Come on, Zonk. After editing my Star Wars Episode III submission to link to IGN instead of ThisIsLondon, and then posting an insightful and timely review of a three-month old game called Halo 2 in order to pimp the XFS in the article, you're beginning to turn into the next Michael...
If you don't take spoiled milk off the shelf, soon you won't have any customer....
Yeah, hacking the carts to remove the expiration date is a good way to get some lawsuits sent at you. After all, they have a big legal department and have a lot of extra money for a legal fund.
What if you saw a pack of razors at the store for like, $1 for a decent quality brand? You'd probably buy them if you're the shaving type. Now lets say that these are made from some revolutionary material that biodegrades in three days. The expiration date on the package is set for three days after sale. You buy the razors and think you're getting a good deal. Three days later, the razors are a puddle of nondescript goo in the package you bought them in.
You do some research and find a way to 'deactivate' the degrading mechanism.
You've just destroyed this company's business model. Their 'good idea' is now a disaster that it might take them months to change. Of course its a stupid idea for the company, but they're more worried about those who oppose them (you) than making good ideas.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Epson apparently does a similar thing with their printers as my brother fount out the other day.
At a predermined time (On time? Date? Droplets fired?) the printer shut down with the equivilent of an "Engine Check Light" and refuses to print. The driver brings up a generic error message about "serviceable parts are past their usable lifetime" even though the printer was working perfectly.
The printer is so old now that having it serviced is completely out of the question and given that new printers of much greater quality only cost $50, well...
Welcome to the peak of the throw away society! You no longer have to wait till normal, planned, obsolesence kicks in, electronic devices are now programed to fail!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
..you ever try to print on a printer with an ink cartridge that's been sitting in it, unused, for over a year? The quality is terrible, and I've had to run head and nozzle cleaning routines 5-6 times before getting a servicible (not great--servicible) print back out.
Once an ink cartridge is installed and in use, I'm not terribly suprised that it has a shelf life before it's considered bad or unreliable. Kind of like the spaghetti sauce after you open it--you can't just leave it sitting on a shelf at room tempreature indefinitily anymore.
Now, if it's not LETTING you keep using your old cartridges, that's bad. If it's telling you you're out of ink when you're not, also bad. But if they're just telling you "we recommend you change this cartrige" because you've had it 18 months, well, there's some reason to say that's a GOOD thing to let you know...
Is there a list of companies that also do this or something similar?
Me, I buy Canon inkjets. They've gone off in a completely opposite direction: Imagine a world where ink refill cartridges were little plastic containers that hold only ink, no 'chips', no replacing jets each time you run out of ink, no corporate attempt to dictate who you shall buy your ink and/or ink refills from. That's Canon Think Tank.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
If you don't like what the company is doing, don't buy their printers. Vote with your wallet; it's the democratic way to show 'em you are displeased. Lawsuits, on the other hand, are backed with guns, and are the way of tyrants. Take your pick.
The HP Board of Directors must have found out about these unethical business practices and that's why Carly Fiorina was fired. The real answers always come out on Slashdot.
Do all new and recent HP printers do this? I have a HP PhotoSmart printer (forgot the model number) that I got a few months ago.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
However, there are far more important things than exiry date for the useful lifetime. If you use the printer in a very dry area then the ink is far more likely to dry out quicker. If we're really to believe that HP is doing this to be nice to us, then I'd expect to see a humidity sensor.
It might be OK to tell the user that their cartridge has expired and let them choose to use it or not. Surely the choice is the customer's. Analogy: Milk has an expiry date. If you use old milk, that's your business. The milk company don't prevent you from using milk that's a couple of days past expiry (though maybe if they could figure out technology to do this they would).
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I used the word *NORMAL* I did not say all.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The only reason I can think of is cheap color, but nobody's been able to tell me what color is so critically important for (photos? c'mon... burn a photo-CD and get it developed at the store for less money than new inkjet cartridges over time).
This happened to me with my HP Business Inkjet 2200. The cartridge was reported as half full before suddenly it began to say "Cartridge Expired" and refused to print until I replaced the cartridge. Now a cartridge costs over 30 bucks each and supposedly last for about a year before it "expires" (and if they all expire at once you're looking at over 120 bucks to replace a plastic box full of ink). Well If I had known they were this grimy I would have avoided them like the plague.
I would feel better if instead of them fucking my wallet up the ass they would sell REPLACEMENT INK! Why replace the whole cartridge when all you need is liquid? Oh now I get it would be too easy for someone else to come around and give them a little competition. I liked the idea that the print heads are separate from the ink reservoir because it would make sense to fill the reservoir with ink. But no; money over common sense.
Also if you think about it is very wasteful to throw out plastic boxes just because they have no more ink in them. I know your supposed to recycle them but who really does? Sounds like they also don't give two shits about the environment either but what else is new.
However, it may not be so much as noncommitment, which is merely a lack of commitment, as an anti-commitment.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If the vendor makes it clear on the product that there is an expiration date, then there would seem to be no reason that they can't also enforce it by technical measures. I mean, when you buy a one year license key for a software product, you read and agree to the license that says that it will stop working after one year. If the consumable actually says that it will expire and stop working after 2.5 years (or whatever), then that's what it'll do, and this is what you are cogniziant of when you make the transaction!
There are some complications.
Firstly, if the time-expiring consumable is tied to the product and not available from any other vendor, there may be some sort of anti-trust issue here with "product tieing"; i.e. the vendor is trying to control the market more than is allowable: this is anti-competitive.
Secondly, if there are objective reasons for time-expiring, then the vendor may be okay: for example, if it can be shown that the the quality of the ink degrades to the point that after the expiration date, it would actually cause damage to the product it is used in. In this case, the vendor is making a fair and reasonable attempt to reduce damage caused by the item, which seems fair enough. Note again, there would need to be a provable reason for this, not just some kind of marketing spin.
Thirdly, it's a free market: if one vendor wants to offer a consumable with time-expiration built in, then there's nothing stopping other vendors from offer non-expiring products. As the consumer, provided you are given the knowledge up front (i.e. product labelling), it's then your free choice about which product you want to choose. There's no reason for the government or courts to step in and regulate this behaviour.
So without knowing a lot more facts, it's hard to understand what the exact position is here.
Accuchek has been doing it for a long time with the code chips you have to put into your blood glucose monitor to identify the batch of strips being used. Go past the expiration date and the meter refuses to operate....
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
I used to install HP Printers twice on machines. One for B&W and a second for color. HP drivers now prevent you from printing greyscale only. I spent hours on the phone with HP support, there is no way to do it on HP's newer printers. I am sure that this is to force people to use more expensive ink.
I recently bought a heavily-discounted HP Photosmart 7350 at a department store.
The reason it was cheap? It'd been sitting on the shelf for years and years...
Needless to say, both of the included print cartridges were expired.
The machine was perfectly willing to try and use them, with the only problem being that the Light Magenta color was inoperable. At no time did the printer, or its software, complain about this arrangement.
And at any rate, HP was more than willing to give me a new set of cartridges in exchange for a faxed copy of the receipt.
Non-issue, anyone?
Kid-proof tablet..
Is the date, by any chance, April 1?
I can see a page count cutoff as a QC measure. No one is gonna bitch about streaky prints if the thing shuts off before it gets to the, 'I can still print but it will look like crap' stage.
Date expiration makes sense only if the ink itself is lifetimed and if this is the case should be spelled out on the package. Again, the only justification would be QC and the packaging should make this clear.
i.e.
"If you eat this fermented squid we will not be responsible."
When inkjet ink cost more than Dom Perignon champagne by volume, it pays to put in date-expire logic chips in the cartridges and tell the consumers that "it's for the good of the printer heads not to be exposed to dated ink."
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
If you'd read some of the linked-to articles, you would have discovered that HP provides an externally visible (outside of package), displayed expiration date of 2.5 years after "build" date and an internal "hard" expiration date of 4.5 years after build date. With the 2 years of HP printer ownership you've had, it's unlikely you would have run into the hard expiration date.
To reek is not generally nonsensical (but doesn't make sense in context, granted): it means to smell strongly of something. e.g. "She reeked of gin".
Don't buy HP.
No company--especially one who had a troubled (and now dumped) CEO like HP--would want to spend money on products--like ink--after it has stopped working reliably. They shut off the carts because they don't want people suing HP for bad print jobs from 10-yr-old (or less?) carts.
No well-known corp wants to spend money supporting something that can't be fully guaranteed. To them it's like having a bastard child--no parent would be too proud of that; they want to be able to support their creations without legal risks like tired old ink.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Hey buddy, you may want to consider a larger hat band size, your tin hat is cutting off important brain blood flow.
"The smart chip is dually engineered to prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer," the suit said. When are the good ol' days when things were just said to be out of date and we can't be responsible after that date? FORCING a consumer to buy a new cartridge when it MAY be good even though this date is passed is basically forcing someone to buy a product that they already have. What if someone buys a bunch of these things to stock up and not worry about running out? A cartridge runs out, and the replace it, but the chip pops up claiming it's empty.. WTF?!
Empathetic-- 94% You tend to walk in someone else's shoes a hundred miles before pointing a finger.
Chris, Chris Griffin is that you?
My HP plotter has a "plot stamp" feature on it, that sticks the date, time, and our company name on every sheet we plot. Very handy when tracking things down.
In the context of Western business in the early 21st century, decisions like this aren't "questionable". In fact, it's considered "questionable" to question them! We've seen many companies do things like this to screw over their customers, and we will continue to see much more of the same, until the fundamental philosophy of business has changed.
Look at, for example, how the price of printer cartridges, per unit of ink, has remained obscenely high. You pay more for the tiny amount of ink in that cartridge (and yes, I know, they contain print heads too... how much do you honestly think those cost HP to make?) than you would for an identical amount of fine vintage wine. I'm quite sure HPaq's shareholders love this! Everyone else hates it, of course. The problem is that, although every company goes out of their way to talk about how "[Companyname]'s mission is to improve the lives of its customers, one innovation at a time" (or similar meaningless rhetoric), the reality is that the days of "the customer is always right" are long dead.
To you and I, these decisions are "questionable". In the context of business at present, if you'd question them, people would think you're insane! When something is profitable and at least theoretically legal, any businessman worth his salt would say you'd have to be completely off your rocker to stop doing it. Angry customers get easily trumped by high earnings-- every single time.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
... user to use old inks thus degrading print quality!" Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
So if we had an open-source alternative driver, things would be rosy? I don't know jack about building drivers, so is it even possible?
I'm almost certain APC does this on their batteries as well.
- OrbNobz
Slashdot mods have broken their collective funnybone. Bastards...
What? As opposed to an uncertain certain date? :)
cLive ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
The HP kill-the-cart.-after-one-year ploy bit a buddy of mine last year. Supposedly, the install date is burned into the cartridge chip when it is first used. Lexmark is rumoured to do the same thing. Changing the PC date won't work after the fact.
My friend was furious as his cart. was still half full and (was) perfectly functional the day before. He called HP and chewed a$$ mightily, to no avail. Neither one of us will ever buy a HP product again.
It was my understanding that the Lexmark lawsuite was peripherally in response to a 3rd party cartridge that had this feature bypassed or removed. Also - hacks do exist. Removing the offending system date calls from the driver (I think) is supposed to work.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
"I guess now we know why printers are HP's last profitable division."
And, as soon as ink can no longer be sold for $8,000 per gallon (mostly cheap solvent, bought in tank car loads), HP will go out of business? (Also see this analysis about Epson ink: Comparison of ink in bulk to prefilled cartridges.)
If so, then HP has not been a real business for a long time, but has been merely piggybacking on the ignorance of its customers. And that means that Carly Fiorina was not a businesswoman at all, but merely good at giving the appearance of competence. And that, in turn means that people who write for the business press are completely incompetent, too.
Slashdotters should have a mission in the world, to provide at least minimal education to their friends and family and neighbors and political representatives:
Don't buy anything from a spam email.
Buy ink refills from Costco and refill Canon cartridges. (See this comment: 54 cents per refill.)
"If you'd read some of the linked-to articles, you would have discovered that HP provides an externally visible (outside of package), displayed expiration date of 2.5 years after "build" date and an internal "hard" expiration date of 4.5 years after build date. With the 2 years of HP printer ownership you've had, it's unlikely you would have run into the hard expiration date."
I didn't see anything about this in ANY of the linked articles in the summary...even regarding the Lexmark case (And since Lexmark != HP it would be irrelevant anyway)
Anyway, after checking my cartridges do indeed have a date printed on them which is in the ballpark of 2.5 years after I purchased them. My next question would be--where is the printer getting the date from? I'm not going to tear my printer apart looking for an independent battery but being a cheap printer I'd be surprised if one exists to maintain an internal clock of some type.
If it's getting the date from the computer, simply setting the date forward a few years would reveal whether or not there is a "hard" expiration date. After unplugging my printer's power and usb cable and setting the year to 2010, plugging it back in, and printing yielded a surprising result--a full color printed page!
This explains a lot. My DeskJet 970cxi hardly ever got used and eventually, when there still should have been ink, one of the colours in the colour cartridge stopped work. I assumed that since it had sat there so long, that it had simply clogged up, but no amount of cleaning the nozzles with distilled water would fix it.
Eventually I begrudgingly put in a spare unused cartridge I had which was bought at exactly the same time. Without the printer being attached to any computer, I printed the alignment sheet and it all worked perfectly, all colours were okay.
I then hooked the printer up to my Aiport base station and tried printing something from my Mac, at which point one of the colours immediately stopped working. Even when I disconnected the printer from the Airport base station and did a standalone test of the printer, one colour still wouldn't work.
Up till now I had been thinking that the HP driver in the Airport base station might to be blame as it is a generic driver and not for that specific model, although I couldn't see how the cartridge itself could have been stuffed up.
That there is a programmed date in the cartridge now makes a lot of sense. I will be interested to see what happens if I go back and adjust the date/time in the Airport base station (if possible) and whether that unlocks the cartridge again or whether once locked it is stuffed for good.
Anyway, these days I use a laser printer, the ink cartridges were always too expensive.
"...client settled out of court for an undisclosed number of free ink cartridges which turned out to be expired..."
They're doing what? That's an outra...
Yes, but you don't have all the facts. It is HP, Lexmark, and Big Jim's used car lot that are merging.
Excuse me, but it's a fairly well known fact that most consumer appliances have an engineered lifetime, that is, they're designed to last a specific duration given normal use and work load. Warranty periods are designed to be just short of this (it's not a coincidence). It's perfectly within engineering ability to design appliances/cars/etc to last for decades, but this would drive up costs and lower corporate profits. Corporations are in business to make money, not to supply the world with products that will last forever. You don't see the appliance industry labeling their toasters, washers, TV's with warnings about "expiration dates", why should we expect the same from printer manufacturers?
Instead of buying replacement toners when your cartridge run out, but a replacement printer. Hell, it's cheaper.
I'm a signature virus. Please copy me to your signature so I can replicate.
Although, his mis-spelling brings up another dirty tactic like this, in the book industry. Calculus really hasn't changed that much in the last 50 years, probably more... yet there's a new Calculus /Bio/Chem book for freshmen every year or so. Chapters are usually just shuffled around and questions changed slightly, so that students can't easily follow along with the teacher using an older book, or worse, can't even complete their assignments if the questions are assigned from the chapters. Planned obsolescence at its worst.
The book publishers even want to make it worse, with electronics books or books with CD-ROMs and companion software that expires after the school year, forcing renewed purchases and killing the used book market.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
I doubt that what you suggest will have any effect. These printers are microcontroller based and can have cheap on-chip or standalone embedded real-time clocks. Even without that, as long as you has a few bytes of EEprom, you just could do a cycle count that you update each time the unit is powered off.
Canon is the only company I can buy a printer from now. Everyone else has pissed me off in some inexcusable way. HP: ridiculously overpriced ink, all colours in one cartridge, chipped cartridges Epson: ridiculously overpriced ink, all colours in one, chipped cartridges. Also, my previous printer, an Epson Stylus Photo 820, was an appalling piece of shit. Lexmark: ridiculous overpriced ink, all colours in one, chipped, demonstrated willingness to resort to barratry to protect their monopoly. Canon: ridiculously overpriced ink I got so pissed off with my Epson clogging every two days, I went and bought a Canon i960. It's been great. Quiet, fast, never once clogged on me, even after sitting idle for a month. Ink is still crazy expensive, though.
The older ( perhaps current ones too ) used to lock up with a 'service' error after a certian number of prints was reached.
It could be cleared if you knew the codes, but thae were not given out to mere 'consumers'.
Its still a scam, but its not new.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Yeah, but that article's past its expiry date, dontcha know? ;)
HP should label these things to say "Cartridge Expires 30 days after use" or "Cartridge Expires after 11/25/05" to meet the truth in advertising ethic. If not, they are being unethical.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I experienced something similar with my Epson Stylus 9000 Color. The printer will report the cartridge as unusuable if you let it there for too long. Epson indicated that the ink degrades over time, yada, yada, yada. I discovered two solutions to this situation:
1. Short term: remove the offending cartridge, wait about 30 seconds, then re-insert the cartridge and run the head cleaning routine. The cartridge will probably work fine.
2. Long term: buy a printer that's on the Laser Monk's list (http://www.lasermonks.com). I've been buying their ink cartridges for a couple of years without problems. I'm about to buy an Epson Stylus R200 -- but I didn't spring for it until I checked that the Monks have the cartridges.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
like condoms.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Consumers have a choice. They don't have to buy products that are engineered to prematurely become unuseable. Slashdot ran a similar story not too long ago about Monsanto offering seeds that were only useable for crops for a single season. If you want to become a subscriber/minion for a corporation, then you patronize their shit and their controlling schemes. Or you don't.
I urge EVERYONE to make sure they see the movie The Corporation and everything is put in proper perspective. (Torrent 1, Torrent 2.)
D'oh! -- the Monk's is a lot cheaper; that's why I posted that.
Long day, sorry.
Cheers,
Eugene
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Products aren't licensed. They are sold.
You started off on quite the wrong foot. Ever lease a car? Ever rent a carpet cleaner? Two parties are free to enter into many kinds of contracts. If they agree to exchange a certain amount of legal tender for the use of a product that will cease to work at a certain time, who are you to intervene?
This evil device has 4 ink cartridges (black, cyan, magenta, yellow) and it will refuse to print if one of the cartridges is deemed empty. Now I never really print any color printouts, and yet, I keep running out of colored ink. I cannot seem to be able to print black and white without replacing the color. It goes through some sort of cleaning process every so often, and I think it just wastes the ink or something. Anyways, it claims these cartridges are empty even when they aren't! They haven't even been used to print anything! HP aren't the only thieves in the business. Something must be done, and I am glad to see this suit.
A few years ago, I got an HP Laserjet 1200 for a price that was practically a steal (Store mismarked it, I verified the ultra-low price with a clueless manager, and they sold it to me for $54) and never expected to buy another inkjet printer, ever. Well, I spotted a Canon i2000 printer at Target for another steal of a price ($29.99 price dropped from $79.00) and due to it having borderless photo printing, decided I'd pick it up.
I'm completely happy with it. The only downside is that it doesn't use the multiple tanks for each color, but at the same time the ink carts are very simple. Just ink, seperate printhead, and they look easily refillable. And even if I don't want to screw with that, the price on replacement cartridges isn't even all that bad. The print quality seems great, price was amazing, and it doesn't try and screw me.
Canon's got my business.
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
I recently had to bloody throw out 2x50$ AUD colour cartridges for the 9XX series of deskjets because the yellow simply didn't work. (both cardtridges)
Admitedly they were a little old but I wouldn't be surprised if this had something to do with the problem.
I was most un-impressed.
The US Army studied this because they were throwing away millions of dollars worth of medicines each year because of the expiration date. Results? They throw away far, far less meds now:
(From the cached version of Recycling expensive medications- why not?)I have a 6 or so year old 720c. After I finished college, I didn't use my printer as much. I didn't think about this at the time, but now it makes sense. I bought two ink cartridges at the same time(so if one ran out, I would have one on hand, didn't have a car back then sux0r3d.) Anyways, One color stopped printing, I assumed that it was out of ink and switched it (after a few years now, it coulda been the 2.5...), the other cartridge did not print at least one color (maybe magenta).
I thought I ran out of ink in one, and got a bad cartridge with the other. I now realize that I dealt with a cracker-jack group of fuckers at HP. Waste of money! I like that printer too.
So who is honest in the printer world? Or at least not abominable? Cannon?
You can imagine how I feel about the pie now. So where's my class action suit?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Would running ink cartridges over a very strong magnet (library/department store desensitizer) do anything?
My newer Epson all in one will refuse to SCAN documents if it is out of ink.
WTF??
I have an HP 2000C (That I bought in 2000) and 2230C (bought in 2003). The 2000C had this problem with the original ink cartriges. The newer cartriges don't have and expiration date in them. The 2230C doesn't have any expiration dates to begin with. With office printers, they tried this and stopped. Not sure about the consumer ones, I have never owned one.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
This may be just another lawsuit, but you're ignoring the fact that probably most of us have put up with this crap from the printer companies, and I sure would like to see them suffer.
I have been using the HP PSC 1315 for a semester or so of college. Haven't needed to switch catridges yet (Engineering school allows us to print for free). I was wondering if someone know if this is a) even true, b) hard coded into the printer or c) hardcoded into the printer drivers. I'm assuming that B would make the most money for HP. However, maybe if it is true, they might just stick it into the windows driver, as I think that the drivers for cups are open source, or atleast viewable with a text editor and not binary (someone correct me if I'm wrong).
So much for claiming Linux has full HP driver support! Pah! No GetDate API calls! Pah! (-:
New computers have "Smart Chips" to work with the newest version of Windows. The "Smart Chip" will prevent unauthorized operating systems from running on these machines. Windows has the smart key to bypass this protection, but it will automatically expire after a period of time.
By then, MS will have a new version of Windows for purchase.
There are quite a few printers with internal batteries. I have no idea what they are used for, but I've seen them in more than one printer.
My i960 is a very nice printer, but it holds 6 ink carts, and they cost around $12 each.
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I wonder which printers are affected by this. I have an HP Photosmart 1115, and I've had the colour cartridge in for about a year and a half, and it's still printing fine, with no 'expiration' date. I might print 1-2 pages a month in colour (and the odd digital pic), so it hasn't ran dry yet.
It's better to burn out than to fade away
I'd pay MORE for a printer if the ink cost less. If they stop taking such a huge loss on the hardware (and perhaps, I dunno, make a profit), they could decrease profit magins on the ink and stop wasting money developing this insanity...
Ok it's pretty underhanded and something Lexmark is currently being sued for. But you don't have to get your NGO black flag doo-rags out just yet. While I feel your pain, I replace all 4 carts on my Epson C86 once or twice a month so I never experience ageing carts. Frankly it would amaze me if your inkjet printer doesn't get clogged and clotted when it's used that infrequently.
Anyone still storing information on dead trees ?
Let the manufacturers raise ink prices so that I can get a 3-in-1 printer/scanner/copier for free and use only the scanner function.
Or maybe people are worrying that they can't stockpile printers and cartridges before inkjets start tracking everything we print too.
Damnit your post caused me to buy a canon printer...no im serious
The on-cartridge chip in question is internally called the Acumen chip. It's really just a tiny ROM + FLASH combo storage device containing a few dozens of ROM bytes and a few dozens of re-writable FLASH bytes.
Encoded in ROM, among other info, is a "shelf life" or freshness date -- this is effectively the date of manufacture of the cartridge. If the cartridge is not unsealed and put into service within a certain number of months (something like 18-36 months I think), it will be deemed too old. The printer will refuse to use it.
The cartridges' ink reservoirs do lose moisture over time (osmosis and all that) and will eventually be unable to print as the ink's viscosity rises.
In addition, as an in-service cartridge is used, its osmosis rate becomes much higher. (It's factory applied nozzle tape has been removed, it sits docked in a relatively more porous "garage" when not printing, it prints sometimes and the nozzle then contact open atmosphere, etc.) The freshness date is thus shortened significantly once a cartridge goes into service. This new info is written to Acumen's FLASH area and checked from print job to job.
-----
In HP's defense, it is possible muck up the print head if old or sufficiently dried-out ink is passed thru the nozzles. For printers with permanent or nearly permanent print heads (you replace the ink supplies only, not the print head each time), this is a real problem. Using sufficiently viscous ink will actually kill the printer.
The reasons to do this on devices that use combo printhead+ink cartridges are less strong: you're typically not gonna kill the printhead (and thus the entire printer) because you throw away the printhead each time you run out of ink. You get a brand new printhead with each ink replacement cycle; this occurs [typically] well before the onboard ink becomes viscous enough to kill the attached printhead (unless your printer sits unused in an Arizona school house all summer...). You are, however, going to reduce the user's effective print-quality (PQ). PQ is something HP and competitors care dearly about. They basically don't want you to ever get a "bad" image. So they punt the cartridge when the ink is deemed old enough.
These design requirements lead the manufacturer to "freshness date" cartridges. I'm pretty sure Canon, Epson, Lexmark, and Tektronix (oops, Xerox) do the same thing.
Thank you.
That was easily one of the funniest things I've read on here in a week.
Karnal
I thought, "Wow. This whole thing is a big, stupid scam. I want a printer where I can buy straight ink and just re-fill the machine. Buying cartridges is for chumps. This is a big, giant rip-off and in a few years people are going to be screaming."
Then I thought:
"Of course, there are two levels at which people will put up with this bullshit; the business level and the personal level. --The business level is tighter; they can't afford to be pushed as far as individuals, and so they won't be. --The average office simply couldn't function if they had to replace ink cartridges every sixty pages! So it's better to buy whatever a medium-sized office would use rather than what Joe and Jenny Average want to put on their hallway desk. Spend the extra four hundred bucks and get a half-decent laser printer."
Boy was I ever right on that count. I go through maybe one toner unit every two years, (2500 pages, approx). --This is still a stupid rip-off, but it's better than having to replace a thirty-five dollar ink cartridge every month, (before tax!)
Back when the home office computer equipment market was still establishing itself. . . (Make good stuff to establish market share, then slowly start to suck.)
The HP Laserjet II was one of the best pieces of hardware I've ever seen. I miss that indestructible, ultra-reliable monster. Sigh. Back when HP was a good company which had ethics. I'm sure glad I don't work for them now! Their Karma is sinking fast. Must be a misery to be there today.
One of the worst things in the world you can do for your mental and physical health is to work for a company you don't respect. Imagine, a million people silently cursing you. .
-FL
So, my Epson R300 has ink cartridges that are just ink. However, it meters use, and assumes that a cartridge lasts for so many seconds at such-and-such coverage. Therefore, the cartridge can still have a fair amount of ink in it before it tells you to replace it, OR it can go empty before it tells you to replace it. I'm guessing they build in a pretty good fudge factor to ensure that it never goes dry.
Here's the stinker: most Epson printers will NOT let you replace the cartridge until it says it needs to be replaced. So if it tells you it needs to be replaced, and you just pop the old cart out and put it right back in, it will assume that a new, full cart is installed. Then when it DOES run dry, it won't let you replace it because it doesn't think that it's empty.
There's a workaround though: turn off the printer. Then look under the printhead carriage, there'll be a plastic tab that prevents you from sliding the carriage out to where you can change the cart. Just flip this tab forward, and replace the cart. Slide the carriage back, and turn on the printer. It won't even know that you've just changed the cartridge.
Since the cart is separate from the head, and the head isn't replaceable, it's probably a good idea to NOT let it run truly empty, as then you'll end up with air in the head that you'll have to purge.
I've got another gripe about inkjets, and they all seem to do this. If, say, your cyan has a blocked head, you can't just clean the cyan. You have to clean them all. This wastes ink from colors that don't need to be cleaned!
It's not cleaning the heads, it's cleaning out your wallet.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
What refill kit do you use?
So I literally threw the printer away and purchased a Canon Pixus iP 4000 which is not only a brilliantly designed piece of kit but it's transparent cartridges tell the truth and will keep on printing until totally drained. The rest of the printer industry is corrupt. We don't really need to print that much anyway do we? I mean, why print photos when you can view them online and/or on your phone, on your PDA, on your portable media player, on your DVD player, on your laptop, on your TV/Media Centre, on your electronic picture frame etc etc. Let's destroy HP and Epson by ceasing to use our printers for anything but contracts and other legal docs.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
That's hilarious!
There is no need to use a SlashDot sig for SEO...
I use it for short runs of 11x17 color posters.
I've had it for 9 months and run hundreds of pages, including a good number of 90% coverage 11x17 posters, and I've only had to replace the black, cyan and just tonight the yellow ink tank.
It's still on the first set of print heads.
I should also mention it was amazingly cheap by mail order. Like less than half of original list.
Some day I may even go crazy and get a Continuous Ink Flow System for it.
I have an old HP DeskJet 697C which sat unused since March of 2001 in storage. I recently pulled it out, and wiped off the bottom of the old ink cartridges with a paper towel wetted with a bit of rubbing alcohol, and have now printed almost 100 pages with it on those ~ four year old carts.
Clocks are cheap. Pennies. I wouldn't be suprised if they even put the clock in the chip on the cartridge.
It's not very hard to take an ink, purify it, dissolve it in Methylene Chloride, toss it into a powerful NMR ... and come up with a structure.
Then quick jaunt to the patent literature will help pinpoint any patented routes that are 'protected' to produce similiar compounds.
Finally, set up any graduate in chemistry to come up with a synthetic route.
Retool a pharmco plant or use (*if you care about quality*) some form of purification (membrane, recrystallization, solvent exchange, chromatography) and you've got an ink with no upfront costs.
I just pointed out that a company will try to make as much money as possible. That ink design wasn't just one person- it might be 10 years of ongoing research (different generations) and different classes of compounds. I know of individuals that screened 10,000 ink compounds a year... which meant a hell of alot of purification and whatnot. You hit some winners out the door, you lose alot tho.
As for measuring ink in Kg, heh, how do you think it's made? Dyes are recrystallized and then dissolved. Pigments are nano-milled *typically*. pure 'dyes' aren't found very often (such as food colouring) because they aren't stable.
Look at the balance sheet all you want- if they didn't make a profit (sold their inks at cost) just how would they develop new technologies?
I've been dealing with this problem for a while.
Some of my clients (generally small to medium buisnesses) use HP inkjets. More then once they've called me saying that they had just opened a new ink cartridge only to be told by the printer that it is expired, and every time the cartridge in question had been one that was kept on hand for a couple of months.
Also, this happened once with a computer that had the date set wrong. A perfectly working printer was plugged in and immediately the cartridges expired. Even setting the corect date wouldn't bring them back.
This is something that HP put in to the cartridges to combat all the ink refill kits. It's a real pain, too, since it means you can't keep any extra cartridges around as spares.
Doesn't suprise me at all, in fact I always had a conspiracy theory about it as well as most people who buy the crap.
Um... So guess what aisle makes or break a Best Buy store. Home Theatre?? Nope. A close second for mark up though... It's the printer aisle! If it weren't for ink and USB cables stores like that wouldn't exist.
You know that USB cable that the average Joe pays 26 to 41 bucks for??? I can get it for $2 with my discount. ZING!
I've been refilling HP ink cartridges for a couple years now, and for a couple different models. When I first started the color carts were easy to refill but on the current printer, which uses the #78 color cart refills have been a hassel. I realy think HP is designing the cartridge to fail when opened for refilling.
I like to hang some of them up... *shrug*... I still like Epson. They and Cannon I say are close in quality.
Forina didn't quit, she Expired, eh?
Table-ized A.I.
I can only hope HP comes down on this woman with the full force of the DMCA. Once consumer defiance begins, even in these small ways, if is not promptly stifled it is impossible to gauge the devastating repurcussions it will have on the economic market.
I've got an HP 970 at home hooked up with USB and I routinely print for sometimes months after the "low ink" warning comes up: I change cartridges when one of the inks runs out.
Certainly the *manufacturers* of medicines will tell you to throw away all meds the instant they hit the expiration date (which is the lesser of the manuf.'s expiration date or 1 year from dispensing the med).
If you could get sued for millions of dollars if your product went bad, you'd hedge the expiration date too.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
As The Times wrote in the wake of Carly's sacking:-
"Here's a little-known fact about the computer business: if you filled an Olympic-sized swimming pool with printer ink from Hewlett-Packard's inkjet cartridges, the bill would come to $5.9 billion (£3.2 billion). It would be cheaper to fill the pool with Dom Perignon, or petrol."
My Canon bubble jet (came free with an old Dell) went through cartridges like candy. Eventually I stopped using it. It gathers dust on the far left corner of my computer desk today. These modern printers sure are frail compared to my old daisy wheel and dot matrix printers. They could print reams of paper before they dried up and sit silent for months at a time.
I can keep ink from drying up in my 50 year old Esterbrook fountain pen. Apparently doing the same thing in a computer printer is beyond the capabilities of modern science.
I've run this printer dry many times. The "low ink" indicator usually comes on way before it needs to (that is probably marketing strategy). I just ignore it and replace the ink when the ink begins to fade. Like I would do with a printer without the fancy I-know-when-your-ink-needs-changing indicator.
My mom buys ink cartridges by the dozen at Costco to print her embroidery patterns, at least she did until I bought her a Konica color laser printer last Christmas. It set me back about C$700, but I was tired of seeing her spend C$60 or so a month on ink and the laser printer paid for itself in one year.
Even after printing nearly, what, a thousand color pages she still has 90% of her original toner. It's probably safe to say that she may never buy toner again. At this cost, it just doesn't make any sense to buy an ink jet printer when you can go years or decades between toner replacements. Hell, the printer will probably fail before the toner gives out.
Even HP sells a sub C$1000 color laser with individual color replacement packs.
That is no defense whatsoever. As the one doing the printing, I decide what is an acceptable printout. There are a million reasons why you might print something and not give a crap whether the the quality matches the printer's theoretical maximum or not. You certainly don't subject my wallet to additional assrape to get that theoretical maximum either.
Incidentally, I've got a Laserjet 4M+ with more than a few miles on it. The last (used) cartridge I put in lasted three years before something failed in the cartridge and started dumping toner on the paper. I had another (used) cartridge handy and it has lasted over a year and a half to date. Needless to say, print quality (PQ) remains great.
These shady inkjet printer manufacturers can take their $30,000/gal ink, their half-filled chipped cartridges, their plasticky disposable printers, their business models, the lawyers they use to enforce said business models, and shove them where the sun don't shine. Sideways.
Crap like this is a natural result of printer manufacturers selling the printers themselves as loss-leader prices like $40. They gotta make a buck somewhere, and they've not unreasonably decided to make the money in the cartridges.
What I'd like to see is some also-ran like Lexmark zag while everyone is zigging but taking out two page spreads in newspapers and magazines all over the country that went something like this.
==================
Our Printers Cost More Because We Make Be Fat Profit Margins on Them!
And that's good for you! Those bigger margins mean we can afford to give you better instructions, tech support and warranty service. But most of all, we can charge you a fair price for ink cartridge refills.
Don't buy from unethical scum like Hewlett-Packard. Do business with a company that respects your intelligence and your wallet: Lexmark.
==================
But alas. It will never happen. If Lexmark doesn't already pull the same crap as H-P it will probably will soon. And it has no balls at all.
Insert witty sig here.
does the same shiat with their ignition modules.
Hello! I have this problem with a HP CP1700. Is there a way to by-pass this "protection"? Thanks,
The April 30th 2003 Slashdot article links to a more technical, well written Dr. Dobbs article about the HP 2000C's date-exiry chipped carts from...September 2002! Oh, what the hell, here's a link for the lazy:
http://www.ddjembedded.com/resources/articles/2002 /0209k/0209k.htm
i'm like, wtf? That's was bloody brilliant! Excuse me while i go blow my nose now...
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
Either the print company is magnanimously trying to ensure that your printing experience is the best it can be ... or it's just a grubby way to force cart refillers to buy new carts and users of old printers to purchase new printers when they stop making new carts.
-- Howto: Get +5 (1) Whine about M$ (2) Namedrop Gentoo (3) Casually Abuse Mods (4) Namedrop Early Computer Model
i just went to print something, and i got a dialog box that simply said "I want more life, fucker!"
All companies could do this. Have that intel chip fail in a year. Have that Sony Monitor go boom in 2 years. Have that Microsoft Mouse wire get loose and detatch (Oh yeah they did pulled that one already)
I got tired of the constant gunking up. So I went with a laser. So much better.
Looks like the expiry dates weren't secret. just obscure.
btw, the page 58 is the page 58 in the manual, which is page 64 in the pdf due to the cover and front matter being counted.
ceasing to use our printers for anything but contracts and other legal docs.
If you do that, ditch the inkjet. Get a laser printer. It's ink doesn't streak when wet.
The truth shall set you free!
I for one welcome our new secretly programmed ink cartridge overlords.
I just bought some refurbished cartridges at Staples for my HP printer, and they work fine. So, wussup with that? I don't see a date on the packaging anywhere...
Where do I sign up? I'm not going to miss this chance to get a coupon (mailed out in 2007) for 10% off my next printer cartridge purchase!
aren't they now required to print hidden info in very tiny yellow print on all documents printed so that they can be traced back to the printer that was used for it and thus to the shop that sold the printer and ultimately to the customer who bought the printer... that could explain why they refuse to print now if the colour cartridge is empty or missing even if you only want to do simple black and white only printing.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The suit, which seeks class-action status, asks for restitution, damages and other compensation.
Damages? I can understand the part about restitution, maybe giving new cartridges. And the compensation could probably include the travel expenses. But damages? I know this is the US where you can sue anyone for anything (or so it seems - i'm obviously not a US citizen), but this seems pretty ridiculous.
Well, the cat is out of the Bag.
But before worrying about printers, please remember that MS has built time bombs into some of its software before.
Software time bombs only have one purpose - to increase revenue - full stop. Keeping this secret, is well, underhanded. The question is, what other nasties are out there??
They all look simply gorgeous.
But do they work under Linux?
Canon have a name-is-mud reputation
in the Linux world. What's the score?
What is the OPC? The company who made robocop?
That would be Omni Consumer Product, or OCP. Of course "Robocop" is not the first movie to imagine a single company taking over the market, IIRC there was Central {Services, Banking,...} in "Brazil".
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
...seriously, you can get a decent samsung B&W laser printed for next to nothing these days (and even less off eBay), toner lasts a long time (plus can be refilled once or twice if you don't mind making a mess outside somewhere), print quality is higher than on a ink-based printer - you'll be looking at spending a couple of cents a page (if that) compared to 20-30 cents a page with an ink based printer.
You can then keep the ink printer around for the rare times you need colour.
The other added bonus is that laser printers are invariably faster, so you'll waste less time printing as well.
I am NaN
HP used to seem that it was getting the clue: Bruce Perens was called as Linux advisor, and HP also collaborated with OSS for drivers (nearly all HP printers are supported now using Cups/Foomatic, whereas ironically Stallman started the GNU project slightly after having been pissed for being unable to find HP colour printers manuals for free).
Now HP started this fscking chip challenge, and is progressing in pissing customers off with stuff like this... why?
I still have a loyal HP Laserjet 4L on my desk working after 11 years, and I would like to buy a new HP if this one breaks down... but if HP supports fucking chips I won't buy them. Long live HP!
The content checking on HP's toner cartridges is similarly dodgy.
Our printer stopped working shortly before Christmas, informing us that the yellow toner cartridge was empty. I searched the internet for a fix (eventually ended up paying $2 to a guy on eBay for it).
Applied the fix (just a matter of pushing buttons) and the printer is still happily printing full size photographs now, 3 months later.
It's a huge con and must be illegal when the printer stops working with over 1000 useful pages remaining. The fix, if you pick up this article through Google, can be got by emailing me. I can't remember it to post here!
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you know,i totally think the legal system is insane and people have to do crazy things to protect themselves from lawsuits.
But.
Thats not what the quoted article is talking about. Medicense that last 30 years past their Exp.?? Thats not hedging, thats is a lie.
To bring it back on topic, all HP could do is give you a warning every time you print. They could make it nice and scary ("if you print now there is a chance you dog will explode!") and alot of people would by new cartidges anyways. The rest of us could just ignore it. They cover thier asses (if thats needed), the sell more insaely exspensive ink and those who are "brave" dont toss out perfectly good ink. Istead HP wanted to make money for nothing, not even a gentle white lie.
What do you say to the man that has nothing? Cast it away!!
I stopped buying HPs when they modified the drivers to force you to clean the head of both cartridges at once, not the one that needs it.
Many folk won't remember that it used to be possible, at least on HPs to clean one head at a time.
That rort seems pale compared to the date rort. Does anyone know if using a print server can prevent the date test from working?
I don't get it... how does the printer sync time with the cartridge? As far as I know I've never set the time on my HP printer... how does it and the catridge talk about time?
> Looks like a woman is suing Hewlett Packard...
What is this woman's name ?
Carly Fiorina ?
Mmm...
I provided NMR as only an example. There is GC-MS, LC-MS, HNMR, C13NMR, etc.
:P
There are quite a few tools to reverse engineer compounds. How do you think they do it?
And just because something is difficult doesn't mean there isn't software out there to predict what compounds will look like under that magnetic field. Given some educated guesses provided by generic structures and patent literature and there isn't much that can't be discovered.
It's not necessarily a lie. The medicine buissness is a very competitive one. Companies simply don't have the time for long tests. Or would you want to wait for a new life-saving medicine 25 years longer just because the company wants to check if its still good after 30 years?
I also want to advise people that you have to be very careful with medicienes. If one medicine was proven to be still ok 30 years after expiration, some others may not. Not only may they loose their beneficial effect, but the may also get adverse effects (Comaparable to the Contergan affair. Not a cause of expiery, but it shows how only a small chemical change can turn a perfectly working medical agent into something completely bad).
Saying all that, I completely cuncur to your statement about the inkjet cartridges. A warning is ok, rendering them useless is not.
Who are the bigger set of cunts ?
1 Microsoft
2 Printer Manufacturers.
Personally I think it's too close to call.
This is not a dupe. This is on the same topic definitely, but none of the articles you linked to say anything about a lawsuit. The lawsuit, seeking class action status, is definitely news worthy, especially if you have bought an HP cartridge within the last few years!
given the price tag on most newer printers I am not really shocked. Somehow they have to make money jasd@dts-security.de
As others have explained in other comments, some HP printers have separate print heads, and ink cartridges that expire; these are the ones designed for higher usage. The cheaper HP printers aimed at home users have heads in the cartridge and these do not expire (but they may dry out unused and fail to work - which is why every HP ink cartridge I have seen has a use by date printed on the outside of the box).
The quoted news story is written to imply that all HP printer cartridges have programmed expiry; without seeing the court papers, we can't know if the suit itself is like that. This looks to me like a dirty trick to get a public outcry from people who are not affected, and who will not actually be eligible for any reward from a class action suit. This is the kind of dirty trick I expect from lawyers who are hoping that HP will settle in order to avoid the cost of going to court.
Not trying to defend HP or anyone, but when nozzles start dying from lack of ink, they tend to do so en masse. Not saying it is ok that they kill the cart, but you probably have about 20-40 pages (or one or two full color photos) between when the head starts to die due to lack of ink to a point where less than 10% of print nozzles still work.
:)
Not really an excuse, but I can imagine the "oh no, it just says low, why does it look like shit" tech support calls - I called years ago about a inkjet for that exact reason, so I'm sure that many others have called. Of course, there are a ton of other benefits for the manufacturer.
Oh, by the way, toner dumping on paper? Scratch on the imaging drum (*cough*)/ fuser causing a repetitive defect?
Call HP
They will be glad to send you a newer toner cartridge next day air...
(Personal laserjet support can LJ 4+ stuff out, even if their systems crap out when you give them a "short" serial number and they put you on hold 50x because they don't know what to do - don't let the call directors bully you and charge you for the calls, you don't have to pay for an in-warranty consumable (any toner cartridge with any amount of toner in it, any fuser with less pages than the replacement period, etc)
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Regardless of the legitamacy of this story, I don't worry. I don't trust HP for printers, and I never have. I refuse to pay exhorbant amounts for disposable/depletable cheap commodities, and if you do, it's your own fault. Get a Canon. Not a plug for them, I don't work for them, but I've had HP (horrible horrible drivers), I've used Lexmark (messy messy printing), and I just don't trust Compaq. My Canon uses 4 tanks and I only replace what I run out of. To throw away ink tanks when there's still juice left is just ridiculous and these companies deserve any kind of lawsuit they get for fleecing their consumers.
Parent is the most important comment in this thread. Has anyone an answer please?
Please make sure you dispose of all old batteries properly.
UPS batteries tend to be lead based, and you don't want that in your ground water.
Other batteries have other heavy metals, which are also toxic.
As mentioned in the Inquirer's article, "Something has to be done about these companies who virtually sell dust for a fortune. No wonder cheaper ink refill alternatives are becoming more and more popular. I'm sure the big guys already know about the cheap inks, but they're just trying to hold on as long as they can to their current prices to maintain their balance sheets."
This is a huge epidemic that has taken the nation, if not, then the world by storm! Squeezing every nickel possible out of your customers is NOT the way to do business and there is one person I can think of who earned historical recognition for doing the unthinkable - Henry Ford. Not only did he bring the assembly line into the picture, but he suffered 40-60% turnover every month! He then decided to DOUBLE the hourly wage and his workers benefitted from $2.50 to $5.00 a day!
In this case, HP could salvage its name by cutting prices on its cartridges to half of the typical price, removing its expiry, and down-charging it's costly photo paper. There's a new name running HP and it would be wise to take a risk by doing this to win more market share and get a "leg up" on the competition.
"My transfer roller SHREDS faster than your transfer roller!"
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
> HP and Lexmark are discussing a merger.
Is that how HP finds a new CEO?
A couple of years ago I ordered an HP9000 laser printer for our department. Fast, I mean, FAST printer. The users loved it..until, 3 weeks into the eval, it said the toner was low, then a day or two later, the printer said "toner out" and it just stopped. Refused to print anything more. The brand new cartridge had something like 35K pages on it.
I get on the phone with HP and pitch a bitch at them. They said that the cartridges are metered and that to ensure print quality, they stop at 50K pages. Ok..they why has it only printed 35K pages. The guy explains to me that the cartridge is rated for 50K pages, but really it's 50K rotations of the drum. There's one rotation for the warmup cycle..then a rotation for each page, then one rotation at the end of the print cycle to clean the drum.
So I say, "you're telling me, that the cartridge is only rated for 50K CONTINUIOUS pages, (well, 49,998) and that after 16,666 single page jobs, i'd have to replace the cartridge". That's true he said.
"And there's no way to override this?"
"Nope"
So, I asked how to go about returning the printer. I ended up getting two slower HP 8150's for the cost of this single HP9000.
HP has now changed their tune and said the cartridge has a average yield of 30K pages for $269. We get refurbished HP8150 cartridges for just over $100 and they last at least that long. Run them till they are dry or till they start to suck and we still get close to 25-30K pages out of them.
A good friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body.
My understanding of the new law was that you could still file class-action against a company in state court as long as it was on the company's home turf. HP is a CA-based company. California courts are decidedly not friendly to class-action defendants.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I have the (laser) Brother MFC-9700 and I am very happy with it. For those rare occasions that I actually need to print something in color, I just go to kinkos.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Imagine a world where ink refill cartridges were little plastic containers that hold only ink, no 'chips', no replacing jets each time you run out of ink,
... do another ...
Except that sometimes replacing jets is a good thing. I used to have an Epson "tub of ink" printer that I used sporatically. One time, the print heads got clogged. Do a cleaning cycle
Turns out I went through over a cartidge and a quarter of ink, and the print head *still* wasn't all the way clean. So when I bought a new printer, I bought an HP specifically because replacing the cartridges replaces the print head.
Don: Hello
: Hi
: I just read that HP ink cartridges have a smart ship in them that disables the cartridge after a certain date.
: Is that true? Because I purchase many cartridges months in advance.
: sorry. I meant to say smart chip.
Don: , Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. Name is Don.
Don: , we do not have any chips involved with the cartridges.
: so my ink cartridges will not be disabled after a certain date?
Don: Yes, exactly, we do not have the mechanism of such.
: Thank-you very much.
Don: As long as the Cartridge is full.
Don: You can use the cartridge.
: Very good. That is all I need to know. You have been very helpful.
Don: Have a nice time.
Don: I hope you have found this session helpful and informative.We will be sending you a copy of our Chat session shortly and a Survey Questionnaire within 24 hours. Please do take your time to tell us what you think of our service.
Those cartridges are years old. I came by a couple of "bad" 4M+ printers with cartridges. A Jetdirect and exit roller swap made for one good printer. The first cartridge lasted over three years before the component responsible for removing excess toner from the imaging drum failed. Hence my crappy printouts. I just chucked in the other cartridge and all has been well.
I have no expectation of warranty service with this puppy. I'll be more than happy to buy my next cartridge when (if) I ever run this one dry.
This is why I don't use inkjets.
Not for anything but photo printing. For 2-dimensional CG and presentation graphics, the best thing is a color laser. Aside from these two cases, a standard 9-pin dot matrix is all you need. Dot-matrix quality has really improved. They're much quieter then they used to be, and the text is actually quite nice and sharp with my Epson LX-300+
If you really want to splurge there's also the FX-890.
If it's still not crisp enough for you, you can pick up an old-model lazer printer at a used kit place like RE-PC here in Seattle for as little as 20 bucks, with a starter toner cartridge included.
If you're ABSOLUTELY bent on going the Inkjet route, my reccomendation would be Dell inkjets. They're designed off of Apple's old StyleWriter printer technology, which was used in the earlier members of Canon's BubbleJet line. Dell acquired the technology from Canon and set about improving it and the result is a brand new line of snazzy high-quality inkjets. They're quite durable, and the ink cartridges are easy to find and available from multiple manufacturers including Nu-Kote. They're a little noisy for 'jets though.
I'm not officially endorsing these products or anything, just saying that I've tried them and in my experience they do a good job.
I ran into the problem of having 100's of expired cartridges, HP 10's. All ya gotta do is have one good cartridge that doesn't expire for a little while, when it gets empty, just pop the bottom of the cartridge off and pop it on a cart that has expired, and voilla. more ink. The only problem is that the printer will not recognize it as a full tank, but it will print fine. Another way is to just keep the date rolled back before the cartridge expires.
I wised up to the printers' game a year or so ago. I quit buying new ink cartidges at inflated prices and instead bought a new printer every time. Why spend $50 on ink when I can spend $50 and get a brand new printer with ink?
My department had a large format HP printer installed a few years back. The installer told us to NOT stock up on cartridges. If we don't use them before the cartridges expiration date the chip will keep the ink cartridge from being used. I thought this was common knowledge?