16 ms·
Canon is telling customers how to override counterfeit cartridge warnings
- petee 5y agoThis makes me smile. I bought a Canon Pixma inkjet photo printer last year, and upon taking apart the cartridges I was surprised to find the only thing inside was a 6 pin chip connected to nothing else but the printer -- no level sensing at all; I believe the printer just guesses how much ink it uses and records that on the chip.
- isoprophlex 5y agoThis kind of shit is so hilariously anti-consumer... and I don't think there's a consumer brand of photo printers that doesn't try to swindle its users. Thankfully there are many cheap online photo printing services with rapid turnaround where I live. I just use those instead, and accept that getting a photo printed isn't instant.
- alex_anglin 5y agoI too have a Canon POS inkjet printer/scanner. Recently had to change change out the black ink cartridges, because those are the only ones that really deplete. Picture my frustration when all of the cartridges needed to be replaced at the same time (even those full of ink), lest the printer not register the new cartridges. I will never buy another Canon printer again and think twice about any of their other products. At least they're giving HP a run for seeing which firm can burn their brand the fastest.
- wildzzz 5y agoI've got a Canon MX920 series printer. I only use third party cartridges (EZ Ink or something). Carts are cheap and I've got no issue only replacing them one at a time. Sometimes the wireless printing gets a little wonky but this has probably been the best printer I've ever owned. It just works and the ink is so damn cheap. One thing that is a little annoying is that you can't print without all of the carts being non-empty and you need both black pigment and regular black but this is typical of any inkjet printer.
- GordonS 5y agoI got totally sick of it a couple of years back - I'd had HP, Epson and Canon inkjets over the years, and with all it seemed like every time I just wanted to print something, I had to do a silly dance of "realigning print heads" or "unclogging" or whatever, all of which consumed both time and ink. And invariably after printing more than 3 pages it'd moan about low ink levels. And genuine ink cartridges are expensive! The practice of locking to prevent using generic cartridges is terrible. Inkjets are a scam, plain and simple. So, I bought an inexpensive Brother laser printer. It's black only, but I switched to printing most photos at Costco years ago anyway - the quality is just so much better than you can achieve at home. Anyway, what a revelation! It starts up in a couple of seconds, and when you hit "print", it just does it, again in just a couple of seconds. No moaning about maintenance. No asking me to change a cartridge every 3 minutes - just a printer that works when you need it to! And it came with a "small" ink tank, that is somehow still going! Even when I do need to buy another ink tank, a full sized one, it'll only cost something like £30 and probably last for at least 5 years!
- alex_anglin 5y agoYeah, the consensus view these days seems to be that Brother laser printers are the way to go.
- tagoregrtst 5y agoEpson’s more professional line is (was) pretty decent. The cartridges are big and cheap, and they even have a printer line that takes straight ink (ie there’s a tank you top off). The printers are more expensive though (at least $100 more for the same functionality - which is probably the profit they estimate they’re forgoing on the ink), and the last one I bought was cheap (still going though). Never buy a consumer grade printer though.
- GordonS 5y agoThe HP and Canon ones I had were actually pretty expensive, and one of the HP ones even did A3. So I don't think this is only an issue with low-end consumer models.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoHP already burned their brand to the ground. I did pick up an HP color laser printer on eBay — but a model for which the toner-pirates have already hacked the chips. Apparently HP's more recent offerings don't have such a ready supply of 3rd party toner vendors. Definitely a fucked up world we're living in. I feel bad for those less tech-savvy. Worst still for our planet though as I suspect that rather than lining HP or Canon's pockets, the less sophisticated users are simply tossing out these peripherals faster than an old VHS player.
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y agoThe original HP is now Keysight. HP the printer company got the name, but Keysight has the engineering.
- ezconnect 5y agoHP burned their printer brand a long time ago, my last HP inkjet was the HP 720c and was very reliable and had a big ink that can print tons of documents. After that they made the ink so tiny you have to buy ink every month.
- AshamedCaptain 5y agoMost if not all inkjet printers with cartridge "chips" do exactly this -- it's why there is a large market of cartridge chip "resetters"; just search around.
- userbinator 5y agoAFAIK it was Epson who did it first (over 20 years ago now): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25054177 (you'll need to read the article from the Internet archive, since it has unfortunately disappeared) The chip is just an EEPROM. The printer presumably has a pretty accurate estimate given that it knows how many pixels were printed, and the volume of each one.
- timcederman 5y agoThe nice thing with the Canon printers is they at least let you override the low ink warnings and still print. Sometimes I get a normal extra print or two, but it's usually pretty accurate.
- MerelyMortal 5y agoThe HN title doesn't do this justice: Because of the chip shortage, Canon is selling cartridges without chips that identify them as genuine, so Canon is telling customers how to override the warnings that indicate they are counterfeit cartridges.
- detaro 5y agoIf you count "Cartridge can't be detected" as "warning that indicate counterfeit cartrige"...
- MerelyMortal 5y agoI don't have a Canon, does the printer say "Cartridge can't be detected" for all other third party cartridges?
- detaro 5y agoIt's the gist of the errors shown in the Canon documentation linked as "evidence". The "worst" is suggesting that it might be "a non-Canon cartridge".
- krzat 5y agoNo wonder we have a chip shortage.
- dang 5y ago
- egeozcan 5y agoThe screenshots in the instructions[0] seem to suggest that the printer warns about a wrong product type and "threatens" that it could cause malfunctions. [0]: (German) https://www.canon.de/support/business-product-support/interim-toner/ https://www.canon.de/support/business-product-support/interi...
- acmegeek 5y agoHere is the English version: https://www.canon-europe.com/support/business-product-support/interim-toner/ https://www.canon-europe.com/support/business-product-suppor...
- grenoire 5y agoFrom such abundance that we can have microchips in disposable ink cartridges to prevent printer owners from using unauthorised ink...
- mikro2nd 5y agoI've heard it referred to as "affluenza"
- trentnix 5y agoI bought extra HP cartridges off of Amazon years ago for my business so we would have extras. Imagine my surprise when, after installing the cartridges about a year later, I learned they were the wrong “region”. Turns out HP region locks ink like they are Blu-Rays or Nintendo games! I had no idea I was buying “out-of-region” ink cartridges and I also had no idea such a thing could possibly matter. I called HP and the tech support person had the gall to tell me they have different ink for different regions because the climates are different. I nearly swallowed my teeth at the stupidity of such a claim. They offered nothing until I started telling my story on Twitter, and suddenly a Support person messaged me on Twitter offering free replacements. So not only do they have an indefensible strategy of region-locking ink cartridges, they also train you to whine as loudly as possible to get any sort of recourse. The entire printer industry appears to be running one scam or another.
- wodenokoto 5y agoEven Nintendo has stopped region locking games
- imglorp 5y agoThe book industry did this too, years ago. They would sell normal books in the West but cheaper versions, with lighter weight paper etc, in Eastern countries. There's no lock of course, but before the internet it was harder to buy a cheap copy of Knuth from India if you lived in US. The point is, ink extortion seems to thrive on pricing tiers for different markets, just like content extortion does.
- sofixa 5y agoIn France many books come in a default format which is a massive waste of space - big size, the paper is very thick, the font is pretty big, and there's a lot of whitespace on each page. And some books get a "pocket edition" which doesn't do any of those. If it were just the font it could be explained by targeting/adapting to people with poor vision, but the rest makes no sense besides to waste paper.
- 5y ago
- jopsen 5y agoInk printer is a scam. We've known it for years. How is this not ripe for disruption? Honestly, I haven't bothered owning a printer, but if I had to -- I would probably try my luck at a laserprinter.
- pixl97 5y agoPrinting is a late stage market. Why print when you have a tablet? E-docs and signing have replaced a huge amount of the market printing used to have. Add to that the pandemic that's pushed this even further.
- Silhouette 5y agoPrinting documents is a fading memory for many of us. Printing photos well at home could have more demand than ever now that almost everyone carries a camera around with them all the time but that camera doesn't produce prints you can frame and put on the wall the way you used to.
- kstrauser 5y agoThere’s a Walgreens down the block from me. It’s cheaper and better quality than a home photo printer, and only a little less convenient.
- FDSGSG 5y agoIt's unlikely that the Walgreens would have a better photo printer than a SC-P700 or SC-P900, they might be able to do larger format prints though.
- linster 5y agoBecause SV disruption for printers would be Juicero for fax machines.
- gruez 5y ago>How is this not ripe for disruption? good luck getting VC funding when your business model doesn't involve some sort of recurring revenue.
- tiku 5y agoWhy is there no open source printer yet? We have the most cool 3d printing rigs, mounting it to some rails etc is not the problem.. Just a black and white printer, nothing fancy..
- falcolas 5y agoTechnically, we do. Pen Plotters. You can even re-use a large part of your 3d printer frame.
- nathanvanfleet 5y ago2d printing sounds a bit less romantic than the 3d kind.
- userbinator 5y agoThis. 3D printing is a trendy fashion, 2D is boring. I'm sure the community has enough intellectual ability to create, if not a full printer, at least replacement firmware for existing ones. There just doesn't seem to be much motivation to do so.
- bobsmooth 5y agoIf you're willing to waste a stupid amount of plastic you can 3D print a stamp and stamp your letter. You could do multi-color printing if you used a paintbrush instead of a roller to apply the ink.
- nicoburns 5y agoMy understanding is that the nozzles for squirting the ink are genuinely difficult things to design and manufacture. I so far think too few people have the expertise and resources to make an open source version.
- deutschepost 5y agoSome years ago I was on a Civil Protection Excercise as the IT and Communications Officer. Part of my Gear was a small printer (can't remember which brand). After I set up the laptops for the team I put the cartridges in the printer and the printer told me, that these were the "Setup Cartridges" which were only usable in the first few months after purchase. And that I was supposed to buy normal cartridges to use the printer. I was able to get a replacement printer from the place where we were staying, but this situation still enrages me to this day. What if this had been a real emergency?
- nbernard 5y agoOn the other hand, this is one of the reasons for having exercises. I hope you diffused the information and that this printer brand is now known and banned in every emergency service as unsuitable.
- deutschepost 5y agoI did. But they probably just replaced the setup cartridges in the backpacks with normal ones. Sadly there are only so many manufacturers who make good quality backpack-sized printers.
- WrtCdEvrydy 5y agoIt depends on what you need, I've been a fan of Brother for years and their thermal printers actually have a full sized printer that fits in a backpack (it's basically a rollthrough printer). The issue is putting a pack of thermal paper and not forgetting it.
- jagger27 5y agoI really like the recent trend of megatank printers that just take a dumb bottle of ink to refill.
- jrochkind1 5y agoThe tweet references a German tweet... anyone have the actual instructions from Canon, in English? (I don't have a Canon printer, I'm just curious).
- ta988 5y agoI bought an Epson ecotank, best inkjet purchase ever. Cost by page is on par with laser, works immediately on Linux (scan and print) even over wifi.
- HelloNurse 5y agoI've been using a HP inkjet printer for a few years and it's happy to accept third party toner. It just randomly ruins the Windows printer driver and printing queue once in a while, nothing hardware.
- mdavis6890 5y agoI think the main issue is consumer education, psychology and behavior. Basically, people don't know how much it actually costs to make a printer and don't know enough about it (not a judgement, they probably have better things to do than spend hours researching printers) to choose based on overall quality and such metrics. They basically just choose based on price. So manufacturers competed on price until they got to well below the all-in cost of the printer (including R&D, etc) hoping to make it up in the cost of consumables. So now they HAVE to make whatever money they are going to make on the consumables side. If a company came out with a printer that was expensive enough that they could make money on the printer and not on consumables. How many would they sell? My guess is very, very few, as consumers would just buy the cheaper-up-front option. Note that this mostly applies to ink-jet and not laser, as the latter have historically been purchased more by businesses which are more likely to know about and focus on overall quality and economics, and take consumable cost over years into account during purchase. I guess now that laser printers are entering the consumer market more and more, and consumers are still they same as they have been, we're going to see this issue pushed into lasers as well (as noted in this tweet).
- flubflub 5y agoI think people do know. Currently very few people I know actually print anything with digital services and email. They use tablets for reading documents. For a covid pass you can show the PDF. For a train ticket you can show the QR code on the phone. Some employment contracts can be signed digitally, maybe this you print? I'm not sure what you need printing for. Some of these people buy a printer for a one off because they will never finish the cartridge over time. The only uses I can think of are public notices like lost cat or printing a handwriting exercise. I have had to print out rental contracts to sign but real estate will eventually modernise.
- bArray 5y agoIf anyone wants to create an open source printer I think they would get some sizeable backing. I would take anything that can print text onto random A4 paper and takes reasonably cheap ink. There's not so much already in this space [1]. Just keep the goal simple and achievable. It's way too dangerous, but I often pondered a "zero ink" solution that burns text directly onto paper. Essentially a high-speed laser engraver. I could imagine given heat and fuel, you would want to limit oxygen, possibly by pulling a vacuum. I would also like to see what a modern take on a dot matrix printer could be like. [1] https://www.appropedia.org/Open_source_Inkjet_printers https://www.appropedia.org/Open_source_Inkjet_printers
- userbinator 5y agoI would also like to see what a modern take on a dot matrix printer could be like. They are still being made, but not cheap.
- bArray 5y agoI had a quick look over on Amazon and they appeared to be left-over old stock?
- userbinator 5y agohttps://www.oki.com/me/printing/products/dotmatrix/index.html https://www.oki.com/me/printing/products/dotmatrix/index.htm...
- traceroute66 5y agoI wish Canon would tell users of its business lasers how to reset a forgotten admin PIN. Apparently only Canon Service providers can do a full factory reset due to "data protection" reasons. Go figure.
- userbinator 5y agoAsk on some of the "shadier" forums and you might get an answer. Knowing a foreign East European or Asian language helps. (There are plenty of Chinese, Polish, Romanian, Russian, and Vietnamese forums discussing consumer electronics repair, but very few in English.)
- contingencies 5y agoFor our company we tried three brands of printer in the last year or so. HP, Canon and Brother. Our needs are basic: ethernet and wifi printing, in black and white, laser, A4. Scanner included. Must work on Windows and OSX. Linux would be nice. Would you believe that this is apparently a big ask? The latest Canon did not work on OSX. Something like >12 months after an OS update they couldn't push out a functional driver. HP I can't recall what the issue was but it was sent back for a refund and this was accepted. Perhaps also lack of OSX support. Finally, our Brother printer worked with the following not insignificant caveats: replacing the toner apparently requires surgery on the prior cartridge to transfer a chip, calling Brother they don't give a shit, scanning cannot be done directly to PDF it must be done to JPG then converted over the PDF or you get garbage pages instead of correct content, and you cannot have both ethernet and wifi active at the same time on a printer purchased explicitly for this purpose in 2021. Honestly, the printer industry is so bad there's actually room for a new entrant to do it properly. There's also low hanging fruit like detect if multi-page scans have been inserted the wrong way up, etc. which the idiotic industry has failed to latch on to despite 20 years of opportunity. Also, office label printing. Input to traditional label printers is crap. Try inputting non-roman character sets or engineering symbols on those things. Ugh. A decent driver ("print from excel", "[x] sever tape after label") and embedding this within a standard office printer would surely yield large volume tape purchases.
- the_printer 5y agoBrother laser jet printer + scan snap will get you where you want to go
- contingencies 5y agoI use imagemagick's convert. But sure. Just be sure you want to retype the wifi password every time you switch from wired to wireless ethernet interface. FFS.
- AtomicOrbital 5y agoThis printer cartridge issue is creating a huge opportunity for some enterprising startup to produce a solid printer with quality cartridges ... I just hope this happens and they refuse to be bought out by HP or anyone else
- BeeBeeBee123 5y agoHP did an update around June 2021, I believe the last 4 numbers are 0495. This update is the one that is causing problems with the 3rd party cartridges. I have a HP Envy 5660. Going in the trash soon..