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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.
...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.
But the inkjet heads are in the cartridges.... If the dried ink destroys the head, you have to replace the cartridge anyway.
I don't care, but don't let that stop you from trying to tell me anyway.
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.
Not exactly the same. Epsons will stop printing when the ink recovery pad in the bottom of the printer is saturated (according to whatever calculation they use). The upside of this is that you don't have to worry about ink pouring out of the bottom of your printer because the pad overflows.
It's possible to reset the printer by pressing a combination of keys on the front panel. Of course, it's recommended that you remove and clean the ink sponge first (there are websites that show how to do this).
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
So does my HP psc 950 all-in-one.
I phoned and complained to HP directly and they told me about an undocumented feature: hold down the start button on power up and it skips the cartidge check.
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.
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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.
No, but part of the point is that all that crap is only there to gyp the customer.
The real purpose of the circuitry is to prevent refilling (for the "tell when it's empty" chips).
The integrated printhead/ink carts are also a scam. They use a thermal ink system which is guaranteed to break down in only 2 or 3 refills. Epson/Canon/(maybe others) use a piezo system with permanent printheads, and I've never had one wear out in thousands of printed pages.
I use a Canon printer, and the ink tanks are just plastic boxes full of ink. I've never bought one. I have refilled the ones that came with the printer dozens of times per color, and have never had so much as a clogged nozzle.
My first two printers were HPs, which were nightmares, even if I bought factory carts. I don't know why the hell anyone buys those on purpose, unless they assume all the others are just as bad.
My next was an Epson, which was OK but hard to refill, and one day just stopped working. Epson wanted more in a flat rate repair than a new printer cost.
Now I'm on Canon, and couldn't be happier. Refilling a tank takes less than 2 minutes, and I don't even get a drop of ink spilled.