HP Printers Have A Pre-Programmed Failure Date For Non-HP Ink Cartridges (myce.com)

An anonymous reader quotes some harsh allegations from Myce.com: Thousands of HP printers around the world started to show error messages on the same day, the 13th of September... HP printers with non-HP cartridges started to show the error message, "One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace them with new cartridges"... When [Dutch online retailer 123ink] emailed their customers asking them if they wanted to check if their printer also had issues, they received replies from more than 1,000 customers confirming the issue...

Consumers who complained to HP were told the error was caused by using non-HP cartridges. A day later HP withdrew that statement and explained the issues were a side effect of a firmware update, [but] printers without any internet access started to reject non-HP cartridges. Therefore it's very unlikely that a firmware update caused the issues and the only other logical explanation is that HP programmed a date in its firmware on which non-HP cartridges would no longer be accepted.
"Printer worked fine for nine months," complains one of many angry users on HP's web site. "Then on 9/13 HP uploaded without my permission a firmware update that caused a message 'damaged cartridge' for all my cartridges and then it refused to print."

Comments

Re:Other than Brother...

[xlsior]

IIRC the brother cartridge has a small peephole with a mirror on the far side, and if an infrared beam reflects back it means that there is no toner in between the window and the mirror. With the dark tape in place it won't see the reflected beam, the low toner won't trigger, and you can keep on printing.

While it perhaps triggers early, at least it requires a certain amount of toner to have been used at all. Some other vendors use a chip that simply counts the pages, and will claim that you're low/out after -x- pages regardless of how much or little toner you've actually used.

Re:Other than Brother... (Epson EcoTank)

[Memophage]

Epson makes an EcoTank printer which supposedly just has a "tank" of ink that you refill *gasp* from a bottle. They charge you more for the printer because they're not recouping costs by jacking you on ink, but once you buy it you can put in whatever ink you want.

For years now...

[wbr1]

HP has played shenanigans with firmware. I once had an early 2000s HP Photosmart. It printed well, had an optional duplexing unit and an SD card slot. Pretty advanced for its time. A couple years later, someone sent me a malfunctioning HP Office jet to look at. Different color plastic, no SD card reader or LCD screen, however the frame, head and paper transport mechanisms and duplxing unit were identical. I repaired this printer (just needed the head parking area cleaned) and ran print comparisons. The Photosmart blew it away in quality.

If you know printers, HP printers have the nozzles in the ink carts. Nozzles are the primary factor that determines DPI. This means that the Officejet's driver or firmware nerfed it to a lower DPI for no reason other than that it was a lower cost printer.

This was when I stopped buying or recommending HP..

When it comes to 3rd party ink, I can understand a manufacturer that has a separate print head being sensitive to the quality and source of ink. However HP printers have the nozzles/head in the ink cartridge. The nozzles are also extremely low voltage, so the chance of damage to the printer from 3rd party ink is very low. As we all know this is a money grab, as the consumables are where the money is in printing. Margins on the hardware have been driven to nothing or less.