Inkjet Mafia and other computer BS

[Deschodt]

My recent experience with inkjet really brought back to mind a youtube video identifying printer companies as mafia operations. They keep getting sued, lose, and continue anyway.. Printers are sold at a loss (illegal) and $$ is made on ink. And they keep trying to prevent ink refillers from taking their (your) money.

You get a new printer, the cartridges are 25% full barely... But what really annoys me is now they add chips to the cartridges so that you are forced to buy their stuff at full cost. Or invest into some tech to break the code of the chips, dude, I just wanna print a few pics for the family, not hack....a printer cartridge !

Lately I tried to print a photo on my week old printer, and was denied because of low black ink. Ironically the printer has 2 black cartridges, one for printing letters, one for photos on glossier paper, I had enough of that second one.... but it still refused to move forward until I replaced ALL the low cartridges, whether they were gonna get used or not.. $%$#%

I was under the impression I owned that printer, but no. It can deny me printing if *one* cartridge is low, never mind if my printer must be used to print a bomb disarming code in whatever shade of purple rainbow... if one of my colors is low, my choices are "replace cartridge" or "cancel print", both translating into go F$%% yourself.

I may be a curmudgeon but life was better in the 90s, this is high grade bull$hit.

PS: on the same topic, no I do not want your $%$#% subscription to Adobe's entire software toolbox, I want photoshop elements, on my PC, hard copy, mine forever - don't care about patches. Same with quicken... I bought the flipping thing, and now that I refuse to pay a sub the following year, I have *Ads* on MY software... Yup, I must be getting old, get off my lawn (er, PC).

[rwest]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

My recent experience with inkjet really brought back to mind a youtube video identifying printer companies as mafia operations. They keep getting sued, lose, and continue anyway.. Printers are sold at a loss (illegal) and $$ is made on ink. And they keep trying to prevent ink refillers from taking their (your) money.

You get a new printer, the cartridges are 25% full barely... But what really annoys me is now they add chips to the cartridges so that you are forced to buy their stuff at full cost. Or invest into some tech to break the code of the chips, dude, I just wanna print a few pics for the family, not hack....a printer cartridge !

Lately I tried to print a photo on my week old printer, and was denied because of low black ink. Ironically the printer has 2 black cartridges, one for printing letters, one for photos on glossier paper, I had enough of that second one.... but it still refused to move forward until I replaced ALL the low cartridges, whether they were gonna get used or not.. $%$#%

I was under the impression I owned that printer, but no. It can deny me printing if *one* cartridge is low, never mind if my printer must be used to print a bomb disarming code in whatever shade of purple rainbow... if one of my colors is low, my choices are "replace cartridge" or "cancel print", both translating into go F$%% yourself.

I may be a curmudgeon but life was better in the 90s, this is high grade bull$hit.

PS: on the same topic, no I do not want your $%$#% subscription to Adobe's entire software toolbox, I want photoshop elements, on my PC, hard copy, mine forever - don't care about patches. Same with quicken... I bought the flipping thing, and now that I refuse to pay a sub the following year, I have *Ads* on MY software... Yup, I must be getting old, get off my lawn (er, PC).

Preaching to the choir my friend!

I stopped buying printers after the last one stopped working. I figured for how often I printed something it was probably several dollars a copy.

I have a FedEx office a couple miles away and a few blocks away is a Walgreens that will do photos, so that’s what I have been doing.

I did buy a small 4x6 $40 thermal printer to do labels for my eBay sales and it works excellent.

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

....

PS: on the same topic, no I do not want your $%$#% subscription to Adobe's entire software toolbox, I want photoshop elements, on my PC, hard copy, mine forever - don't care about patches. Same with quicken... I bought the flipping thing, and now that I refuse to pay a sub the following year, I have *Ads* on MY software... Yup, I must be getting old, get off my lawn (er, PC).

I saw the cloud coming and bought a standalone version of photoshop four or five years ago. I think it's now bound to the processor in my pc - so I guess this old box is my forever picture tweaking machine.

This modern life-by-subscription is infuriating. Even the things you "buy" like the aforementioned photoshop or some MP3s off of Mr Bezos' big phallic platform have restrictions or magically disappear.

For music, I'll use Amazon like I do Hotels.com - an initial search to see what's out there _then_ go direct to the source.

And yes, I understand that you never actually buy any of that stuff. You "buy" a license and accept the myriad nonnegotiable conditions which always include that you can play with their stuff for only as long as they want to let you.

Oh, and a Brother b&w duplex laser is the only printer in this house. If I need better quality, larger paper or colors I'll drop some pocket change at our local pack-it/ship-it/print-it storefront. For us, the (maybe) $10/y we spend with them is worth 100x in not dealing with the urge to throw yet another inkjet out the window.

[Zeke]

I have fairly decent HP and I have paid the ransom for HP cartridges. But unless I establish an account with HP, I can't scan. I don't mean scan and copy. I can't scan and save. Until I find out who what and why, I won't buy another printer. Thinking about old ones at sales especially from older folks that may not have used it much.

I took great delight in tossing my Canon as high as I possibly could out in the alley to see it smack the concrete. Not completely satisfied, I tossed it a few times. I guess If I had tossed into a spinning washing machine I could have been a TikTok for 15 minutes.

And then there's this:

[onewhippedpuppy]

Agree, eff those mf’ers! I’ll add to the complaint file the fact that WiFi enabled printers all seem to flake on the network connection at the worst possible time, forcing you to reset to factory default (best case). My less than a year old Brother laser is now plugged into my router because it will absolutely not print an effing thing from my laptop, despite me downloading every piece of Brother software, firmware, and drivers. Prints great from my phone, argh!

[GH85Carrera]

I gave up on inkjet printers decades ago. Color Laser is the way to go, unless you need real photo quality. I rarely want a true photo quality print, and when I do, I go to a local place that is cheap, but high quality.

My Brother laser printer is happy to print stuff from my wife's phone or iPad. Toner is way cheaper, and never goes bad from age.

My first inkjet printer was free when I bought a large monitor. I looked at replacing the cartridge, and said no effing way, and I tossed it in the trash.

[1990C4S]

I'm retired, the only thing I mi about work is the free printing and scanning...

[schwarz633]

I guess I'll be counter to the theme here, but I've got an HP Envy multi-function printer and am subscribed to HP Instant Ink. I pay $5/month for I think 50 pages, which meets my requirements just fine. This printer always prints, ink doesn't dry up, and they send me new cartridges when they run low. I'll pay $60/year for the convenience of having it just work when I need it. As far as refilling cartridges like in that YouTube video, I've been down that road many years ago, and life is too short to f around like that. It seems like the older I get, the more tolerance I have for paying for convenience.

[stevej37]

My next ink jet printer will be an Epson Eco Tank Printer.

"This EcoTank comes with four bottles of ink (black, cyan, yellow and magenta), which you use to fill the corresponding ink tanks. The black ink is rated to last 7,500 pages, while the color inks should last 6,000 pages."

$220 at Amazon

[zakthor]

I do the tech support for my friends and family but a hard rule for me is "no printers unless they are network laser printers". You want to fax or scan? Buy a dedicated unit. Sorry but I'm not dealing with their crazy drivers and you don't want to pay for that ink.

Those all-in-wonder printers at costco and office depot? Have at it but I won't even think about touching it.

Xerox b&w laser printers are cheap and so are their cartridges and they don't dry out. $80 cartridge lasts us for years.

[RANDY P]

"Consumer grade" tech of any sort is pure garbage, especially faxes and printers. Same if it says "HP" on it anywhere

Buy a laser-preferably one good enough for commercial use.

Problem solved.

[RANDY P]

Originally Posted by zakthor

I do the tech support for my friends and family but a hard rule for me is "no printers unless they are network laser printers". You want to fax or scan? Buy a dedicated unit. Sorry but I'm not dealing with their crazy drivers and you don't want to pay for that ink.

.

^^^
SEE!

rjp

[masraum]

I haven't owned an inkjet printer in probably 15-20 years.

My last one (an HP) did have a setting that you could set to override the "don't print if you think the ink is out" setting which was great. It wasn't unusual for the printer to tell me that it was out of ink, but I would keep printing for months or even a year before I actually ran out of ink.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by mjohnson

I saw the cloud coming and bought a standalone version of photoshop four or five years ago. I think it's now bound to the processor in my pc - so I guess this old box is my forever picture tweaking machine.

This modern life-by-subscription is infuriating. Even the things you "buy" like the aforementioned photoshop or some MP3s off of Mr Bezos' big phallic platform have restrictions or magically disappear.

For music, I'll use Amazon like I do Hotels.com - an initial search to see what's out there _then_ go direct to the source.

And yes, I understand that you never actually buy any of that stuff. You "buy" a license and accept the myriad nonnegotiable conditions which always include that you can play with their stuff for only as long as they want to let you.

Oh, and a Brother b&w duplex laser is the only printer in this house. If I need better quality, larger paper or colors I'll drop some pocket change at our local pack-it/ship-it/print-it storefront. For us, the (maybe) $10/y we spend with them is worth 100x in not dealing with the urge to throw yet another inkjet out the window.

I held on to a stand alone version of PS as long as I could. I know that at one time I had a copy for MacOS and would love that now, except that it was old enough that it almost certainly would not work with my current version.

I also switched to a Brother laser after my last HP laser printer died. We rarely print stuff these days, probably <50 pages/yr, and most of that is probably taxes (I print a copy for our files and also save an electronic copy).

My wife refuses to buy any books or media of any sort from Amazon since they can kill it afterwards if they want.

[RANDY P]

LOl, I admit, I've smashed and broken more than a few inkjets during my lifetime. Cheap inkjet printers are a curse of modern civilization

Oh and yes, no driver autosetup nonsense- I do the old fashioned set up by IP manually- still.

rjp

[NY65912]

Don't do a ton of printing. Bought a Epson tank injet after getting jumped by HP for years. The Epson is a really good printer.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

Agree, eff those mf’ers! I’ll add to the complaint file the fact that WiFi enabled printers all seem to flake on the network connection at the worst possible time, forcing you to reset to factory default (best case). My less than a year old Brother laser is now plugged into my router because it will absolutely not print an effing thing from my laptop, despite me downloading every piece of Brother software, firmware, and drivers. Prints great from my phone, argh!

Interesting. I haven't had a problem with my brother on our wifi since I bought it. Before that, I had an HP that didn't support wifi. I did have an old linksys router that I loaded some software on that allowed it to basically make my old printer into a wifi enabled printer. Now that we have the brother, I don't need it.

But if you can plug into a router with ethernet, that's almost always better than wireless.

[greglepore]

I have a brick hp for the reasons above.
Cheap Brother laser has been good for 2 plus years, I don't ever update anything and kill the alerts. It'll eventually flake but no biggie. Third party dry ink works great.

[rfuerst911sc]

I wised up and bought a Brother black/white laser printer . It sits unused for months at a time and then we need it . It always performs . Toner cartridges available online or at Wally World. Zero complaints .

[berettafan]

As others have said I've not owned an inkjet in decades. Horrible junk. For our home printer (I use quite a bit for work) I bought a quality laser that isn't box store junk.