5 ms·
I agree, the inexpensive laser printers are amazing. But I do wonder whether this problem will continue to be specific to ink jet printers. It's easy enough t
by SquishyPanda23 6y ago
I agree, the inexpensive laser printers are amazing.
But I do wonder whether this problem will continue to be specific to ink jet printers. It's easy enough to make a laser printer refuse to print with a third party cartridge.
Many refrigerators do the same thing to prevent you from using third party water filters. I think this is a more general pattern than inkjet printers.
- gregmac 6y agoThere is definitely lots of DRM-type stuff happening in laser printers, mostly on the higher end. It goes beyond just 3rd party, too. The best example I've heard from this was from {large-copier-manufacturer}. Someone (not an official dealer) in the middle east had purchased a truckload of copiers and cartridges in a fire sale from a business in the UK that was closing. They sold these copiers locally, of course undercutting regular local prices. Everything was fine until all the customers needed new toner, which they purchased locally, and suddenly got errors telling them the toner was incompatible. What happened is while the copiers themselves are the same globally, the cartridges are region-encoded. The first time the copier powers on, it does a write-once setting to region-lock itself to whatever cartridge is installed. There's apparently no factory reset or software change to modify this setting (in the name of security), so the only fix was either to import cartridge from the UK (which the official dealers can't even do) or replace the mainboard to fully reset the thing back to how it comes from the factory.
- mjevans 6y agoIf anyone knows of this mentioned by a credible source; I need to know whom to never support financially again.
- tinus_hn 6y agoThe printer in the article is a laser printer. The only thing that matters is if the manufacturer thinks customers will accept this abuse.