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How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps
- bombcar 4y agoIt has always annoyed me that "region settings" don't just take into account the realities of the situation; they're OBVIOUSLY designed to prevent people in "rich" countries from buying media designated for "poor" countries in a form of market segmentation; but that should mean the "rich media" should just work in all devices. Of course now things like the players are so cheap you can just buy multiple if you want to bypass region encoding on DVDs, for example. I wonder if off-brand ink would have just completely ignored the region thingy.
- nikanj 4y agoYou are giving advice on how to circumvent region coding technology, which is probably illegal due to DMCA or some other act
- bombcar 4y agoIf I've had to deal with that once, I've had to deal with it 13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640 times.
- Toutouxc 4y agoTIL: this comment is about https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controve...
- jeron 4y agoI can’t see how suggesting to buy off brand ink is illegal
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoYou think non Americans give a flying fuck about a DMCA claim? I would love to be tried, remotely by an american court for breaking DMCA by bypassing DRM for american made software.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- realusername 4y agoDepends of your country, there's a lot of countries with interoperability exceptions to copyright, a lot of EU countries will fall in this category and it's totally legal in those countries to publish DRM hacks and publish software which circumvent such protections automatically.
- akira2501 4y agoThe DMCA specifically acknowledges that it cannot limit free speech, and it specifically defines what is prohibited: "No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part" Mere advise is almost certainly safe.
- oefrha 4y agoTangential: after moving to a “cheaper” region I can no longer gift American friends Steam titles. I’d pay the full American price but there’s simply no such option. Sad. (Of course I can send cash instead, but cash gifts IMO are kinda gross.)
- jbm 4y agoOn a side note, I've come around on cash gifts. I used to think they were gross, as they seemed to put a number on a relationship. However, life is short and I would much rather give my kids 20-40 bucks to gift to a friend than go shopping for a toy. Moreover, I'd rather get something I wanted instead of 10 things I didn't really want; cash presents make that possible.
- account42 4y agoAs a kid I preferred cash gifts because it meant I could buy the things I actually want. As an adult I have enough disposable income that 20-40 bucks does not make a meaningful difference to what I can buy - I much prefer getting an item that I didn't think about buying, something that the giver has invested time into creating/slecting or that has some other personal meaning. Of course that doesn't work out for situations where people just buy a random item as a token gift because they (feel they) are expected to provide one. In that situation the best solution is to remove that expectation - if nothing else works by forbidding gifts. Or to sum it up: I think cash gifts only make sense if the amount is menaingful for the receiver and they are not expected to just gift the same amount back (i.e. the relationship is asymmetric in terms of gift transfer).
- makeitdouble 4y ago> but that should mean the "rich media" should just work in all devices. There's no simple business reason to do that. The most basic approach is to have the customer pay multiple times: they can afford to move regions or have the goods imported, blocking that route and have them pay for a whole new set is a simple strategy. Arguing against that simpleness requires fuzzy touchy/feely brand image, consumer satisfaction, lifetime customer value calculations that most printer brands probably care very little about outside of the enterprise market.
- jen20 4y agoNo-one in their right mind would pay a scumbag company with that strategy having moved, so they in fact lose revenue as the ongoing media cost goes to their competitor.
- makeitdouble 4y agoThis is an issue only if your direct competitors have different strategies. And in my experience, they don't. I think the general wisdom for anyone caring enough, is to go for a Brother laser printer (I personally went for Xerox but it's the same deal), and I'd posit they're not in direct competition with HP or EPSON: - it requires ample prior research. You don't stumble upon a laser printer when going to a shopping mall and ask the staff for a printer for your kids homework. - it requires having given up on many dreams in general and recognizing the bullshit of the whole industry. They are big and bulky, expensive, under marketed, your friends won't have them (or you're lucky), they're never on discount, and you're not a lawyer so you shouldn't be buying something named "WorkCenter 6515" instead of "ENVY Inspire all-in-one" to print school assignments. When I bought mine online I was asked my VAT number for the corporate tax paperwork and had to explain we're just some random family needing a reliable printer. It's only after having seen the other side for so many years that you give up and buy a professional grade color laser printer if you expect to have to print more than 3 times a year at home.
- Jolter 4y agoI’m pretty sure off-brand ink would not have worked at all. That’s the whole purpose of the DRM — HP cannot tolerate that someone buys non-original cartridges, or refills them.
- nikanj 4y agoI think part reason HP had trouble solving this case is the fact that most skilled people have decent ethics, and refuse to work for Vito Corleone [ink edition].
- mrweasel 4y agoMy guess is that the issue for support is that it's very much an edge-case, and not something most in support would encounter. The feature is most likely only available do to refurb or transfer inventory across regions. That being said, the reason it works so poorly might be because there's a lack of continuity within HPs printer line up. For obvious reason I haven't used an HP products in years, but even going back, there seemed to be little lineage within their InkJet printers. The fact that a tools was still available is amazing.
- Nextgrid 4y agoNobody skilled is going to voluntarily do consumer-level tech support where 99% of support tickets involve the user being an absolute idiot (and you're not even allowed to swear at them). You do tech support out of necessity when you don't have any other options, and you look to get out as fast as possible.
- zaphirplane 4y agoWhat happened to the simple world of unit price and volume discounts. The screw the consumer for the max they can afford works for monopoly, corruption and stand over tactics
- hadrien01 4y agoI hope that someday the EU will look into manufacturers of consumables-based devices like printers. Consumers shouldn't be limited to use branded, forced-expiring, half-empty consumables, that can't work because of DRMs, or other anti-consumer rules like 'oh you need all cartridges even if you want to print in black and white'
- Nextgrid 4y agoThe EU makes a lot of noise and has a reputation for pro-consumer regulation, but that reputation is mostly historical. When it comes to new (last decade) pro-consumer regulations, they are flawed and/or not enforced enough to make a difference. Case in point, the GDPR. Lots of noise and fear-mongering, yet the (very little!) enforcement we've seen still isn't enough to actually be a deterrent. I suspect the upcoming DMA will play out in the same way.
- domh 4y agoI went through a similar problem with an expensive wifi 6 cable modem router (Netgear Nighthawk CAX80). Spent too much money on it ($400 if I remember rightly) for better internet connectivity from xfinity. Worked well until I moved back to the UK, shipping it across in a container, only to discover that it's not only region locked but if it cannot detect an American-style cable connection, it gets stuck in a reboot loop. Wanted to switch regions and turn on AP mode to use it just for that, but now it's an expensive paper weight. Also had the same problem with a gas pizza oven (Ooni), ironically from a Scottish company, but has only USA gas connections and is impossible to switch regions. I can very much sympathise with the author and am very glad consoles are no longer region locked.
- domh 4y agoOh and don't even get me started on trying to change regions on online accounts and the inconsistencies involved in doing so. Airbnb and Etsy, easy to change. PayPal and PlayStation online account, had to create a new account.
- soitgoes511 4y agoThis is so true. We moved to another country and changing everything from my location in the google play store (requires a form of payment from the new country) to opening a second PayPal account with another email was painful. I still think the change of cell phone numbers was the worst. It seems the assumption with all applications is that we will be born and die with the same number now. I will have to memorialize my cell number on my tombstone.
- mynameisvlad 4y agoHow would you expect global number portability to work when each country more or less has their own country code and unique numbering plan? A US to Canada or vice versa move would work since they’re on the same system, but a UK number, for instance, doesn’t even have the same digits of numbers necessarily, and even if they’re both 10, they’re completely different formats.
- rado 4y agoBrexit eBay forced me to create a new EU account, effectively nuking 15 years of reputation.
- Symbiote 4y agoSame. Their customer support agent started the conversation with something like "you've been our valued customer for 18 years, how can I help?" and two minutes later said there was no alternative but to open a new account.
- charlieyu1 4y agoIt’s always HP
- t344344 4y agoWho has so much free time? Easy solution: - return cartridges since they do not work in "compatible" printer. Consumer laws do not care about small print or region locks - go to unauthorized shop and have original cartridges refiled. I recycled cartridge like that for several years.
- Jolter 4y agoNot sure refilling works with HP’s DRM-equipped cartridges. I think they will refuse to print once their counter shows 0, no matter if there’s ink inside.
- t344344 4y agoYou have to keep or swap DRM chip. But I am in EU, not really sure about US.
- skuzye 4y agoMy dad used to be in the refill business selling parts, inks and all needed to get it done. Im not sure about this particular model but the DRM can be worked around in a couple of ways: swapping for a 3rd party drm chip, using a reset device or some older models just click “print anyway”. Edit: typo I’d imagine things could be worse nowadays. He used to buy products from an American company so it should be available in the US too.
- usr1106 4y agoThis story tells me I made the right decision: Never ever buy a printer. I can print in the library. Since Covid started I needed to do that twice: The first time they had stopped accepting cash because of the infection risk(!). And I loaded 2 Euros on my library card for 10 pages but obviously did not use all of them. The second time they were surprised that I had money on my library card. To be fair I have printed a couple of times at the office. But I think I have been below 10 pages a year for at least 10 years, office and library combined. The only case seems to be having to send documents to an authority abroad. That happens to me, but infrequently enough. Now people might say, do you trust the library with your personal documents? First I don't remember when I had something seriously sensitive. And then I would say do you trust all that closed source software on your own Windows PC? As Linux user I would have probably not even been able to open the secret windows the article described.
- tdeck 4y agoFor those of us who need to print a bit more often, my advice is to buy a black and white laser printer for ~$40 on Craigslist and you'll get years of cheap, reliable occasional printing in your own home while you use up the rest of the toner cartridge that came with it. When it breaks you can probably find another one in the same price range.
- rtpg 4y agoI'm going to advise against this. Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. I have gotten 2 used printers out of not wanting to generate e-waste, only to have constant printer jams and other frustrations leading to me having to just print at the grocery store instead. "That Brother printer" will cost you more (and be Yet Another Plastic Thing To Go To A Landfill Later), but will ... print every time. Sure, after a while you might need to clean the rollers or something, but at least you know it will be that and not some random bricking.
- Freak_NL 4y agoI got a Brother laser printer (HL-3170CDW) and in terms of economy it's hard to beat. (Never buy an ink printer though. That advice holds.) About the random bricking though… While this printer doesn't actually brick itself, it does have a very curious failure state where if you leave it off, but plugged into the mains, it will eventually refuse to boot up until you unplug it, wait for ten minutes, and plug it back in. No error message, no blinking lights, nothing to indicate that something is wrong, just nothing until you let it reset itself by removing the power cable for a while. I just leave it unplugged most of the time now.
- aetherspawn 4y agoWe bought a new Fuji Xerox recently and we were very happy with it. Everything so far seems very non-hostile. Have also owned Brother printers, which were very good, but they tended to overheat and catastrophically fail if you print a lot on them in one sitting (i.e. 1000 flyers). Owned Epson and always had driver issues.
- Neil44 4y agoHP printers are absolutely awful now in terms of their PITA setup, obtuse smart setup exe’s instead of drivers, stupid drm or subscription lock stuff like this. We do not supply or recommend them any more (IT company).
- andai 4y agoCan you recommend a printer or brand? Or else enumerate all the bad ones? ;)
- Neil44 4y agoI like Brothers or Xeroxs, or even Epsons.
- jojobas 4y agoFuji-Xerox laser mfus seem to be OK. Proper linux driver support, cups/ipp and the toner never dries.
- rwmj 4y agoI got one of those Epson ink tank printers which is pretty nice. Because it doesn't have (much of) a razors and blades ink model, you have to pay a significant amount of money up front however.
- sva_ 4y agoI went with a brother black&white laser printer a couple years ago, and never had any issue while using aftermarket toners etc. Also, the setup under Linux using CUPS was pretty straightforward.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoMy brother dcp-1512 laser printer/scanner is a tank and was cheaper than buying the ink for the hp inkjet it replaced. Toner costs $15 and I’ve only gone through two cartridges during the printers lifetime (6 years and counting). It works well with Linux although it has no wireless - I hooked it up to an old laptop to share the printer.
- 4y ago
- gambiting 4y agoIt's not even the idiotic DRM that gets me so triggered about this - I'm sure most of us have been in a situation with corporate support where someone is genuienly trying to help but their own tools don't work, their support pages don't load, and the tech team is no more knowledgeable than a random wiki article. Like, with the DVD drives you also had a built-in region lock into every drive but changing it could be accomplished in about 30 seconds and yes there was also a global limit on number of changes. Why go through this insane process of giving support dozen different numbers they type into some keygen - it feels crazy.
- bitcharmer 4y agoHP is another of many examples how MBAs in their search for ever growing "value" can gradually destroy a company that owes its success to great engineering.
- jsmith99 4y agoI bought a cheap (£50) hp multifunction at the start of covid with an instant ink subscription. Obviously this involves dystopian DRM and the printer phoning home the number of pages I am printing but it actually works really well. I print over WiFi from Windows, iPhone, android, etc with no issues, cartridges arrive at my door before I need them, and the cost per page is competitive with professional equipment (under 5p for the ink even if full colour photo). The cartridges belong to hp, not me, so they would stop working if I cancelled and I would have to buy my own. That's normal with pay per click printing, which is also the standard in high end leased machines. I don't want my computer to be an appliance but having the printer be 'just an appliance' is very convenient.
- tragomaskhalos 4y agoA pox on printers with DRM cartridges and all their works. We binned ours a couple of years back in favour of an Epson something-or-other. It's not exactly the world's greatest printer, but it has two absolutely killer features - one, it has four ink reservoirs that you refill from (non-DRM!) squeezy bottles of ink that are cheap, and two, once in there the ink lasts for absolutely ages. Like OP's, that printer took an absolute caning during the pandemic as both kids' schoolwork was constantly spewing out of the thing, and I marvel at how much money it saved us.
- greatgib 4y agoHP products are now such crappy/broken products, it is incredible. Their printers are probably the worst. All the ones I had to touch had problems: scan pages bent, adf adding a blue line on scanned documents, configuration messed up in windows because owning 2 times the same model or one of them being setup both by cable and wifi, huge software bloat on PC or android, thing that should connect but is not detected despite installing all their crappy software and resetting the stuff 10 times, printer refusing to start and scan because a cardridge is missing That makes me totally crazy and I hate them. I'm quite sure that they would have died a long time ago and not have this market share if they weren't so aggressive on prices. They are playing on the fact that they make you buy a lot of them. I think that some people should start to sue them.
- tgv 4y agoThe took over support for the Samsung printer I have, and guess what: that support is also practically non-existent. The software they offer is out of date, incomplete, whatever. There are messages on the forum from hp staff that it's easy: install something else, then pick model M2020. Well, not only could I never ever have guessed that from their documentation, it also doesn't work. HP is a total embarrassment.
- Dalewyn 4y ago>I'm quite sure that they would have died a long time ago and not have this market share They are riding on their legendary reputation during the 20th century. Once upon a time, Hewlett-Packard was the industry leader in precision electronics and their printers in particular were built to withstand World War 3.
- kuon 4y agoDo you have a recommendation for a laser printer manufacturer with no locking (third party toner, ok...) and no steganography (invisible dots)?
- mysterydip 4y agoNot sure on the invisible dots, but brother allows third party supplies: https://support.brother.com/g/b/sp/faqend.aspx?c=us&lang=en&prod=hl3180cdw_us_as&ftype3=2043&faqid=faq00000184_002 https://support.brother.com/g/b/sp/faqend.aspx?c=us&lang=en&...
- kuon 3y agoI remember this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 I do not know how brother fares now regarding open supplies.
- gesman 4y agoHave a separate small travel router with embedded VPN support to connect printer to Wi-fi hotspot with whatever region it wants to see. It's not HP's or any other vendor's business to know where you are. This is an easy solution to this. I have a few routers at home with a separate Wifi hotspot each configured for separate country to avoid exactly this nonsense for different services. Advantage of this approach is you can travel with a small travel router all over the world while feeding each of the service with a consistent country location. Added privacy is a benefit.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoWait. Your printer has online DRM?! Does it work without an internet connection? That's much worse than the situation in the article, which is just region locked cartridges.
- mikepurvis 4y agoDoesn't sound like it has to be online if they're blocking it using a VPN. But probably it phones home opportunistically, similar to modern TVs and most other "smart" stuff.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoAny recommendations on travel routers that support VPNs, specifically either wireguard or openvpn?
- gesman 4y agoYes, google: "gl inet travel routers". Supports everything. And this: https://www.gl-inet.com/products/compare/ https://www.gl-inet.com/products/compare/ I have about 5 of these at home, each configured at different subnet and VPN for different country. One i always take with me while traveling to securely connect via shady hotel Wi-Fi's. You can even go crazy with it - install ZeroTier directly in the router by typing few commands and access low-level config of the router from anywhere.
- benjamoon 4y agoI bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (with built in scanner) for £250 and it was bundled with 6 spare toner cartridges. That was two years ago, we’re still on the first cartridge. The printer before that was also a monochrome laser printer and that lasted nearly a decade (only got rid of it because it didn’t support wireless and I couldn’t be bothered running cables anymore). Basically, I think monochrome lasers can last forever, they always work (even if I haven’t printed for 6 months). Most people seem to buy printers with way too many features and they need 7 ink cartridges etc. I rarely print anything, but when I do I want it to just work.
- stormdennis 4y agoMine's a B&W samsung laser. I print a decent amount but sporadically, No issues, fast and reliable and generic replacement toner cartridges are cheap on Amazon (which was where I bought the printer for about 50 quid).
- kfarr 4y agoWe've had our Brother monochrome laser nearly 10 years. Still works perfectly, only used a handful of cartridges in the past decade
- elorant 4y agoI have a Lexmark E232 that bought back in 2006. I’ve printed like 90k pages and still works like a charm.
- chordalkeyboard 4y agoI was issued a Brother by the US Department of Veterans Affairs and it burned through ink cartridges, I took a semester off and the ones in the printer went bad without me printing anything; when the yellow ink ran out it refused to print in black and white even though I had plenty of black ink. Eventually it stopped working because of something to do with the drivers even though I never changed anything. I'm glad your experience, and the experiences of others here, seem to be better but I can't help but reflect on the variance every time I read an HN poster relating about their positive Brother experience since my own experience was so different.
- noisy_boy 4y agoI have the Brother HL-L2305W referenced[0] in the article. After I purchased it, I added it to the Wifi network and it showed up as a printer on my Linux machine. Stays mostly turned-off except when I need to print at which point I turn it on, it connects seamlessly, prints and I again turn it off. My wife can print to it from her iPhone and she is not a tech savvy person. All the high praise about Brother's monochrome laser printers are well deserved. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-...
- rekabis 4y agoHP used to be so good in terms of printers. I still have a 4050DTN that can take overstuffed cartridges that will do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage. I think I’m on my third cartridge in 20 years and two degrees. It needs some maintenance such as replacing the pick-up rollers and possibly even the fuser, but it’s an absolute beast that I have no intention of getting rid of any time soon. What I hear about HP printers these days is deeply disappointing. For shame, HP. You have truly lost your way.
- osigurdson 4y agoThere is no technology I despise more than printers. Inkjet printers, in particular, are the work of El Diabolicolo.
- 1970-01-01 4y agoIs this not something you would try to dump on a local computer repair shop? Why waste so much of your time?
- robswc 4y agoI actually have no idea how printers (things that have been around for ever) are _still_ just so bad. I do get cheap printers tbf... but sometimes they just flat out do not work or can't connect or get jobs stuck in the queue, etc. I never experience this when buying other "cheap" peripherals, yet, printers just seem to consistently suck in almost every way.
- Jolter 4y agoAt the university helpdesk, I worked next to a grizzled Unix veteran who had worked on their network since the 70’s. He said basically what you said: printers were always the worst component of the school’s network. From the typewriter-like things with all their their mechanical moving parts up the the Canon color laser printers we had just deployed, they all took inordinate amounts of time to keep running.
- robswc 4y agoIt really blows my mind and will frustrate me like no other device. Usually because its last minute and I have to print something out quickly. I could plug in a 10 year old USB camera, monitor, mouse, etc. and have no problems. Plugging in a 1 year old printer is really rolling the dice.
- AnotherGoodName 4y agoThey are required by law to do certain things. You can't print black if yellow is out because the tracking microdots won't print. The region is extremely important not to be changed because different regions have different requirements. You can't even create a printer startup and fix the issues because it's all basically regulatory.
- withinrafael 4y agoAm fascinated by the consumer regulatory angle here. Got any examples/text to read over?
- 4y ago
- lmg643 4y agothis place has been around for decades - https://www.tonerrefillkits.com/ https://www.tonerrefillkits.com/
- teddyh 4y agoIf I may, I’d lite to quote, in their entirety, two older comments of mine: ⁂ I agree about your description about printers, but I wouldn’t call them “evil”. I’m trying to think of the best word to describe them… haunted? bizarre? chaotic? random? mysterious? No wait, I know; the perfect word is opaque. They do weird stuff and you don’t know why, and you can’t look inside them and find out why. Hmm, now that I’ve come to this conclusion, the answer seems to be the same obvious one that we already have for the similar problem of opaque software and operating systems. Free software, so you can actually look inside and debug the things when your system/printer has found some new way to confound you. I seem to recall that the original story about how Richard Stallman was inspired to create the concept of free software was that he was stymied by proprietary software in a printer, so this would simply bring the concept back to its roots, so to speak. — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10322408 I wish that the intelligence in printers would migrate back to the computer. Having printers with their own complex formats (PCL, PostScript, etc.) only makes them inscrutable and lends itself to proprietary competing formats and printouts which never gets quite right. I think the original NeXT machine was on the right track with their simple bitmap-only laser printer, where the PostScript processing was done on the computer side. — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24787633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24787633
- ProllyInfamous 4y ago⁂ Are you using this to indicate sarcasm? Just asking cause I saw that given as an example of the tri-star symbol, and I'm just a confused Tennessean!
- atVelocet 4y agoGet a used HP LaserJet from their professional line. They lack wifi, are way bigger then your normal printer but they work for years without problems and have cheap replacement parts and cartidges. One general advice is to look for recommended devices in the medical/law/military area. There is nothing special about those printers but their recommondation for such institutions makes them a safe bet and never failed me or one of my clients (even 10+ years later).
- sciencesama 4y agoIs the an opensource firmware or even an opensource motherboard for hp ….?