HP firmware snuck in September 12 failure date for non-HP cartridges

Jos

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Last week, on September 13, thousands of HP printer owners were suddenly greeted by an error message when attempting to print, telling them that their ink cartridges were "damaged" and needed to be replaced. The reason has now been confirmed by HP itself: the company is locking out third party ink cartridges so that only its own will work going forward.

The change was apparently introduced as part of a firmware update back in March but it was timed to go into effect last week, though some of their printers prior to that already shipped with the timer. HP is calling it a move to "protect [its] innovations and intellectual property.”

Printers are often sold for little margin in order to earn profits over the life of it through the sale of consumables. This all about protecting one of the company's biggest profit centers, and while the move would have been unpopular one way or another, HP could have at least been forthcoming rather than sneaking in a 'self-destruct' timer and only disclosing it after the fact.

The HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X printers are affected. HP says these printers will continue to work with refilled or remanufactured cartridges with an original HP security chip.

Curiously, there are some reports from owners with original cartridges claiming they also got the error message, and that they weren't able to get the printer to respond in order to remove the supposedly damaged ink cartridge.

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I had an HP printer in college. It failed before the small included cartridge even ran out. Good thing too, replacing all the colors would have costed more than the printer!
 
I have an HP Deskjet 5550 bought circa 2000. It's gone through 2 university degrees and a college program in Analytical chemistry...and still works. Slow, but it prints absolutely fine. Hasn't had much use in the last couple of years though.
 
It's a violation of anti-trust(anti-monopoly) laws to charge so much for ink and not allow anything but proprietary products to work with products, which apple does and ibm did. For some strange reason, microsoft and ibm are/were allowed to exist as large monopolies. My brother printer had the same issue; if the firmware update were applied you couldn't use 3rd party cartridges. I knew not to apply the update. If the newspapers were printed with such ink each paper would be $100. To say the reverse, hardware doesn't usually make much of a profit. Ibm earned their money from selling punched cards, much like the boxer engine (boxers punch) in the new 2017 subaru I bought "selling smartphone apps." Gonna drive that baby to equador someday.
 
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Glad I dont update the firmware of my x451dw. Do not update firmwares if you are using 3rd party inks. This is what I also do with my brother printer.
 
**** move HP. I was a loyal HP printer buying for our work printers, but no more. Good luck with this HP...
 
This is nice to know. Now I can mark HP off the list next time I need a printer.

I'd say this will pretty much render them irrelevant in the consumer space. Epson, Brother, Lexmark..almost anyone makes better products.
lexmark doesn't make printers any more, so there aren't much of a threat. Epson and Brother have been this way for almost 4 years now, you can use epson/brother cartridges that have been refilled (sometimes) or have had there chips moved to a knock off cartridge or you can buy the retail cartridge. HP you could buy retail, refill HP cartridges or you could buy Chinese made cartridges that has never been near HP manufacturing ever(aka knockoff chip). HP just stopped the latter, which I am fine with means less ****ed up printers that I have to look at since someone decided to buy the $5 black cartridge from ink365.blah.
 
Didn't Lexmark go through almost the same thing in court about locking out 3rd party
cartridges, in the early 2000's??
 
And yet HP continues to shoot itself in the foot.

Will be shooting itself even more in the foot. They purchased Samsung's printer, copiers division.
Don't know about their printers, but their photocopy machines are JUNK. Software after software after software bugs!!
 
I can understand why HP is doing this. This is the business model for most printers, sell the unit at a low cost (possibly even at a loss or at cost) and make money off of ink cartridges. Is this a good business model? Eh, maybe.

This is also why I am more interested in Epson's EcoTank printers, where the business model is that the ink is cheap and the printer itself is more expensive.
 
Dell printers anyon
I can understand why HP is doing this. This is the business model for most printers, sell the unit at a low cost (possibly even at a loss or at cost) and make money off of ink cartridges. Is this a good business model? Eh, maybe.

This is also why I am more interested in Epson's EcoTank printers, where the business model is that the ink is cheap and the printer itself is more expensive.


my beef with the eco tanks is out of the 10 I have sold, 5 have broken. They give you as much ink as a 4630 could handle but based the machine on the 2630. So if you are actually using them in a high workload environment they can't cope with that much printing demand. If they did a eco tank based of the high end work force printers then it would be worth it, but the cost per page is almost identical between getting a eco tank at $400 or getting a 4630 on sale for $150 then buying the same page count worth of cartridges.
 
HP = HORRIBLE PRODUCTS...HORRIBLE PEOPLE...and last but not least...HORRIBLE PRINTERS!!!

Ive been boycotting them since 1998 when they screwed me over on a scanner I purchased from Office Depot. I wont even buy their printer paper . In fact, I needed a specific type of paper they sell and I made my employee drive all over the city until they found the same paper made from someone else.
 
My printer will be from a different company next time too. I also hate the pop up that my ink is running out. I can tell on my own! And I usually have a spare on hand anyway.
 
I have an HP Deskjet 5550 bought circa 2000. It's gone through 2 university degrees and a college program in Analytical chemistry...and still works. Slow, but it prints absolutely fine. Hasn't had much use in the last couple of years though.

Your printer was made during the tail end of HP's era of making quality products that lasted. That ended around 2000, give or take. Now? I've gone through several HP & Brother printers in the last 5 years alone. Lucky to get a year out of them before they inexplicably fail in some way. Friends & colleagues have experienced this too. Best printer I ever had was a simple HP DeskJet from the 90s. It was about $200-250 and it lasted a decade before being damaged in a fire. I even have an HP Pavilion PC and Dell XPS PC, both from the 90s...both retired computers, yet both built so well that they'll still fire up and boot into Windows 95 & 98. Sad that all these companies have thrown quality into the trash.
 
I hesitate to even say this for the jinx factor. I have and still use as my primary printer a HP LaserJet P1006 that I have had since 2008 and running Windows XP. Still going strong. I hold my breath each time I purchase a new toner cartridge for fear that the printer will give up and I will be stuck with an expensive cartridge. To replace my then $99 printer with a new one of the same kind would cost about $600 even though it is hard to believe there are still new ones in boxes. But I have checked and verified there are still some new unopened ones out there. I wouldn't replace it with the same but still I love this printer.
 
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People still use printers? Seriously though, I have a Brother printer that will accept the most generic cartridges on the planet but the printer collects more dust than anything. It is nice to have it when I need to print a return label for HP products (burn).
 
HP has always been very supportive, & always has righted any wrongs. I am a proprietary supporter. HP will continue to get my business!!!
 
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