HP has new incentive to stop blocking third-party ink in its printers
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Is EPEAT just a paper tiger? I can't see any printer manufacturers, who are dead-set on enshittifying consumer devices, voluntarily going along with such a scheme.
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I am. All of this is part of the reason why I have an Epson 3760 printer that takes ink bottles to refill reservoirs. Unless the printer gets an update to scan for officially badged nano-particles, it'll work with any refill ink.
I don't print all that much, but in the 2 years I've owned the printer, I am down to about 2/3rds left on the black ink and about 3/4s on the color inks. It ships with a LOT of ink and the refill bottles are pretty inexpensive. And the volume is several times that of the largest ink cartridges I have seen.
The only issue I found was the print head clogged a couple of weeks ago. It took TWO entire cleaning cycles to work properly again, but it does. I say that with some sarcasm. Other ink jets I have owned over the years (HP and Epson) a lot of times once the ink jets clog, it doesn't matter how many maintenance cycles I run, they often never clear up perfectly. Or they clog because the ink cartridge is going stale and needs replacing.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Inkjet? No way. But I've a 4001dn laser jet that's a champ. Toner cost though, for the highest yield, is more than the printer.
Friend has an Epson Supertank printer, no hassles, cheap as all, and prints labels, mailing, invoices daily. (you want inkjet for mailing labels since they rarely smear unlike toner...else you put packing tape over the label)
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My IT guy insisted I get an HP printer for my practice. Worked fine for a year, moved to third party toner and it was fine for a year, and then it updated itself without asking and would not longer work with the roughly 20,000 pages worth of third party toner I had and also destroyed the little chip reader so I couldn't use their toner either. HP can go play in traffic for all I care.
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HP has been doing this for years and years and they will probably keep on doing so. My clients, friends, and family have all at one time or another purchased toner or ink cartridges from a 3rd party only to find their effort to replenish their device economically/responsibly thwarted rather ignominiously by HP. As a friend said to me recently, the big tech companies simply don't give a shit anymore, they have so much money and influence that the can ignore anything remotely embarrassing such as this or software updates that wreak havoc (Mac OS Tahoe, SONOS fiasco).
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HP updated their firmware on my laser printer after buying a bunch of third party toner and now it's all a boat anchor. I bought a Brother which seems to be working fine, but just in case I have it set up to not update itself.
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It’s a shame that the company with the finest electronics 30 years ago has been reduced to figuring out ways to charge people for pigmented, dyed, colored water.
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Oh that's good to know -- I like the concept but I'd avoided the Epsons as I was concerned about clogs.
How often do you print? Are those ink tank Epsons machines that need monthly printing to stay healthy? Weekly?
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The first rule when buying a printer is: don’t.
The second rule is to consider just how much you print. If it’s not very much, just pay a shop for what you need to print; it’ll be cheaper than buying a printer.
The third rule is to consider just how much of your printing needs to be in colour. If it’s not very much, buy a black and white laser printer; it’s far cheaper to run than an inkjet. Pay a shop for the occasional colour print.
Finally, if you do print a lot, and most of it needs to be in colour, get a higher end printer that isn’t from HP. It’ll be more reliable than the cheapest printer you can get, saving you time and money in the long run.
I miss the old ink sublimation printers.
The second rule is to consider just how much you print. If it’s not very much, just pay a shop for what you need to print; it’ll be cheaper than buying a printer.
The third rule is to consider just how much of your printing needs to be in colour. If it’s not very much, buy a black and white laser printer; it’s far cheaper to run than an inkjet. Pay a shop for the occasional colour print.
Finally, if you do print a lot, and most of it needs to be in colour, get a higher end printer that isn’t from HP. It’ll be more reliable than the cheapest printer you can get, saving you time and money in the long run.
I miss the old ink sublimation printers.
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Yup, I'm one of those who have sworn off HP for life! My printer was never bricked, but I just got tired of their dictatorial approach. We're your customers, HP; you need us more than we need you!
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jonbob_newcastle
Ars Praetorian
I still clearly remember reading a review of one of the ALPS printers. Superlative picture quality, and you could even add a gloss coating or specialised inks like metallics. The downside was that the printer could only do one colour at a time and it had to suck the page back after each one so they were sloooow.
And they were eye-wateringly expensive.
If you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it.
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Unfortunately in this day and age, many people aren’t avoiding the measles.
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My old workplace had a 4 color one for printing the software manuals in house.
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Oh, indeed. The older high quality printing processes - including the solid wax printers that I was thinking about (ink sublimation is still a thing, but solid wax is dead; supplies are still being made, but there aren't any new printers) - had a whole bunch of problems that meant you'd only buy them if you really needed the advantages they brought. Solid wax? You needed to let the printer cool for ages after turning it off before you could move it, else the reservoir of molten wax would spill into areas it really wasn't supposed to go. And the amount of wax that was wasted was horrendous (in general, but especially if you needed to power cycle it for some reason). The energy requirement to run it was massive, as it needed to keep the wax heated above the melting point at all times. The print quality was amazing, though, and it could print onto just about anything.
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After much disappointment with HP and Epson consumer inkjets, I sprang for a Canon Pro-100 13 years ago, the cheapest (at $500) of their professional line at the time. With third-party inks and a chip resetter, a complete refilling costs me around $2 instead of $200 or so with OEM inks, it has never skipped a page when printing on two sides, and ink drying is a non-issue. I dread its demise.
Along with Windows NT 4, bought retail after Windows 95 self-destructed thrice in three months (what a rock-solid OS NT 4 was...), it's been among my wisest technology choices.
Along with Windows NT 4, bought retail after Windows 95 self-destructed thrice in three months (what a rock-solid OS NT 4 was...), it's been among my wisest technology choices.
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robert.walter
Ars Praefectus
I used to exclusively buy HP but haven’t for a decade and a half now.
Just Macs and Brother printers.
Just Macs and Brother printers.
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If your toner is smearing, something is badly wrong. I worked on printers and plotters for most of a decade, and loads of my customers used laser-printed labels without problems.
Now, because of the way laser printers work, it really does matter what paper setting you’re using. Load labels or card stock and tell it that you’re using plain paper, and you will have problems because the fuser will be too cold and/or feed too fast to properly fuse the toner into the paper.
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HP wont get the message. My brother (as in sibling - you'll see why its important) bought an HP printer with ink bundled.
He needed a quick, "quality" print of a document and the in was already in the box. It was on sale for $99CAD (~72USD)
Meanwhile the main printer in the house is an old Brother MFC. Now I don't know how much Brother changed over time, but all I know is, it got software updates for over 10 years, and while they recommend genuine toner cartridges, the cheaper ones are 1/3 of the price and has served us very well over a decade. They never blocked 3rd party toner, or anything else stupid.
He needed a quick, "quality" print of a document and the in was already in the box. It was on sale for $99CAD (~72USD)
Meanwhile the main printer in the house is an old Brother MFC. Now I don't know how much Brother changed over time, but all I know is, it got software updates for over 10 years, and while they recommend genuine toner cartridges, the cheaper ones are 1/3 of the price and has served us very well over a decade. They never blocked 3rd party toner, or anything else stupid.
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Certainly we can go on leaving these things up to whoever can afford to bribe the most legislators. Or, perhaps… Ars could run a permanent section, perhaps Veritate Potestas, listing tech companies which exploit their customers and employees, linking to less immoral equivalents of their most abusive products. I dunno.
Americans more than anyone live in the land of might equals right where money is god. In terms of serving its people, their government is a poison pill they're pathetically powerless to purge. Perhaps that's insurmountable. Perhaps it's all going down into darkness and taking most of the world with it. In the meantime, at least we could all stop buying products that spit in our faces even as we type in our credit card numbers.
Americans more than anyone live in the land of might equals right where money is god. In terms of serving its people, their government is a poison pill they're pathetically powerless to purge. Perhaps that's insurmountable. Perhaps it's all going down into darkness and taking most of the world with it. In the meantime, at least we could all stop buying products that spit in our faces even as we type in our credit card numbers.
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Once the RFK Jr groupies are done with pox parties they can move on to HP Parties - modelled on the Tupperware sales parties of boomer times, but attendees will come away proudly bearing a new HP cuckoo, secure in the knowledge that every overpriced cartridge that expires permanently testifies that they're not woke.
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Brother is where it’s at. Best bang for your buck in laser printing, and they’re not dicks about it.
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I realize Best Buy and Staples push HP crap because they get the biggest incentives from them, but I'll never understand why ANYONE buys their crappy products. They haven't made a decent one this century and company is a bunch of scumbags
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As a young tech, I use to be HP certified, loved their LaserJet series, but hated working on all those Inkjets. Over the years, I've always tried to have a laser printer, currently I'm using the popular Brother model. I do have a big old Epson Workforce inkjet that I'm able to use with cheap, remanufactured cartridges.
Recently a neighbor asked for my help installing a new HP inkjet he'd purchased. I couldn't believe how cheap the build quality was, and the setup procedure not intuitive and very obtuse.
Recently a neighbor asked for my help installing a new HP inkjet he'd purchased. I couldn't believe how cheap the build quality was, and the setup procedure not intuitive and very obtuse.
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That just means I have a new incentive to not buy HP printers (or anything HP really).
Not like the likelihood of me doing so was particularly high in the first place...
Not like the likelihood of me doing so was particularly high in the first place...
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