Remote update strikes again. Every manufacturer that abuses this mechanism for anything other than actual security updates should be fined in a way that registers on their stock price and if they do it twice they should be fined out of existence.
>Every manufacturer that abuses this mechanism for anything other than actual security updates should be fined in a way that registers on their stock price and if they do it twice they should be fined out of existence.
No fines, just allow the customer to send back the devices and get a full refund plus all costs covered by the manufacturer...it could be so easy.
Give back the HP and buy a Brother....that would be called a self regulating Market.
Brother apparently has been going down this path as well. I've read that they intentionally degrade print quality with third-party inks and other things [1,2]
>The punishment should be blunt, uniform, and intimidating! This is absolutely a situation for fines!
To cover refund is a much bigger "fine" and the money flows directly back to those who suffered, that's not the case with fines, and fines are mostly small change for big-corps.
Just extend the rights of Customers and everything could be fine.
This is a problem not solved by the market, for many reasons, but the most important one is that they all try to do this sooner or later. Shareholder value must increase and be found somewhere.
Only government regulations can keep capitalism in check, maybe an unpopular opinion on HN but it hurts startups too because the market is not penetrable for competition.
When business can affect polices in there favor. Good luck with that. You can see how well Gov. regulation is working out with John Deers control over farming equipment.
The real problem is that a certain political affiliation has opened the floodgates toward unbridled corporate meddling in politics.
If coroporations can set the rule due to legal bribery (lobbying) that's a larger systemic issue that only underwrites my point.
Fortunately there are other examples that show it can be done better, you may have to look for those examples either outside of the USA or in the past of the USA.
Some people requires market to work 100% perfect, or else government regulations. For some reason, government regulations are allowed to fail miserably (e.g. 18th amendment).
The market solution doesn't have to be your desired solution. Here it seems that some people doesn't care HP practices, so market provides shitty HP practices. They have easy options (bare minimum: don't buy HP), but they actively avoid them, so the market allows and encourages it.
The incentives of capitalism are such that unless there are very strict regulations, it degenerates in what the game of monopoly tries to convey in a visceral manner. A few people will own everything at the cost of everybody else.
Because protection against monopolies is dead in USA, we see exactly this play out.
Not true, and well known as not true for ages in the economic field. The primary source of monopolies are government regulations (e.g. patents, exclusive licenses, etc). In fact the words "monopoly" and "patent" started meaning "the government will allow this and only this business to do that thing, and will prosecute whoever tries to compete".
HP only have like 25% of the printer market. Realistic alternatives currently are: Brother, Epson, Kyocera, Ricoh and in some markets NEC. Anyone buying a HP today is asking for it.
What monopoly? You just can buy a printer with refillable ink tanks from several competitors, but also from HP. Then you pay the real price for the printer and the printer heads that need to be replaced occasionally.
These printers are sold below cost so that money can be made from the ink. Naturally, this needs some form of DRM. Capitalism offers you plenty of alternatives for printing at the best cost, these printers are actually good deals for people who rarely print.
>Only government regulations can keep capitalism in check
That's what i mean, a customer is allowed to return a device/car/whatever and get fully refunded if the initial function of a device changes with no technical advantage for the customer.
Fines brings the Customer nothing (aka you don't get your money back) and is mostly small change for the company, no need to change anything...but paying full refunds for let's say a 4yo device, that could hurt allot.
The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue, and they would be eligible for a refund (minus inflation).
Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business... The endless emails and phone calls. Overall the customers are not in any position of power without a forced recall.
>The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue,
If the customer has no issues there are no issues right?
>Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business...
Again it's an HP and you send it directly to them, the MANUFACTURER has to cover all costs. Your retailer has not made the update so he should have nothing to do with it.
>The endless emails and phone calls.
One email: My printer (serial-number) worked for two years with that toner, since your update it's not working anymore (error blablabla), roll back that update or send me a shipping label.
>Overall the customers are not in any position of power without a forced recall.
Time to change that then right? Restore the functionality of my device or take it back.
>If the customer has no issues there are no issues right
Customers have been conditioned to blame themselves for any device/product shortcomings, and consider themselves rather unworthy. Personally I have witnessed that first hand that end users consider both hardware and software too hard to use and any misgivings would be attributed to their own faults. That extends to all kind of hardware - including hand tools.
I got one of those too, and I got it because I didn’t want to worry about this kind of garbage from HP. It’s also a bonus that I haven’t had to refill the ink in a LONG time.
But oh my. The quality of the printing is terrible.
That's the first stop, and the second is to make sure you run it at or near 20 degrees Celsius to get the ink to flow properly otherwise quality will suffer.
I tried to read the article but my HP computer just turned off randomly and installed an unauthorized bios update bricking it. I'm on my phone now and outraged.
Bricked things can’t be unbricked. That’s why it’s called “bricking” - they are permanently as useful as a brick. If it can be unbricked then it wasn’t bricked, just borked.
maybe not.. my HP laptop did a BIOS update yesterday via windows shutdown without warning. turned it of because the battery was low. luckily I got the charger on it in time.
Tbf that's a mechanism integrated directly into Windows updates now and has nothing to do with HP. Any "critical" bios and CPU microcode updates can be done through Windows Update(and there isn't any good way to selectively block them).
HP is involved in that. They wrote the software, provided it to Microsoft, and are aware of how Windows Update works. I'm reminded of the times Windows Update has "helpfully" installed drivers for HP printers for me that are essentially bloatware, phoning home, asking me to create an account, and advertising its ink.
My Dad was affected by this and I am now pissed after performing [Parental Support]. I had told him not to buy HP but he still thinks it is the 80s. Well, thankfully Brother Printers is now in my country and so I can smash that HP with a large hammer and call it a day.
Those are also the printers that track in software if the 'waste ink reservoir' is full (which happends after a certain number of printouts) and brick when they reach the limit requiring you to send the printer to the manufacturer.
I just bought an HP color laser printer this week. This despite knowing HP's shenanigans, but COSTCO has too good a deal and the wife really wanted a good modern printer (we have an HP 4Plus). I admit, it prints beautifully.
In the settings, there's a way to shutoff automatic updates, which I set. But I don't trust post-Corina HP at all and I wanted to firewall it from the internet.
It turns out my D-Link router is vastly more annoying than my printer. Unclear setting menus, no help or manual, and settings that appear to work will block every computer from the internet when the router is reset.
I believe some printers have been caught getting updated from the host pc via the same channel as any other print job. usb, net, doesn't matter.
So you also want to make sure you're using a generic driver and not the current "hp smart" bs drivers they've been pushing for several years. Possibly tough to do on a new enough printer, maybe no generic driver available especially for scanning unless you're using linux.
Amazingly they still offered old-style drivers for my M281fdw for my wife's win10 machine, which cleared up a problem where the printer would crash and reboot every time she sent a print job, meanwhile I had no problem from linux. Ripped out all the hp smart drivers and put in the basic ones and it never did it again, over 2 years so far. But I have to assume that they just don't even offer classic style drivers for new models by now.
I like your drivers point. I guess I could disable the printer's wifi and USB it to a rpi4 acting as a printer server.
Ironically this new printer works great with my 20 year old SGI Fuel (which I lovingly keep), while I cant figure out how to make it work with my Plus4 (which Im keeping).
I actually really like this printer. Prints fast, great detailed settings available on a little webserver, it seems every single old printer protocol is supported. All for less than $400. Its the first HP product Ive enjoyed since I got my first CD burner in '99.
I just really distrust anything Corina has touched.
Routers are similar to printers in that respect. I had a similar experience with a d-link. Got an Asus for about 3x more money and it does everything !
2. I don't trust an HP printer to, on occasion, try DHCP or change a setting (or look at an open wifi network but that wouldnt be the routers fault) to get an update.
I wonder what happens then. Do printers become unaffordable, or will some random Chinese company make a $30 printer?
A lot of arts and crafts and decorations become real hard without a printer,and monochrome laser is basically useless for home use cases(Unless you actually like paper for documents)
Maybe it's just my own little bubble but everything around me seems to be going digital. I used to print invoices / received printed invoices, communicated with the government with printed forms. These days I receive/send invoices via email, and communicate with the government via their web apps. I haven't printed anything in quite a while. And if I wanted to print a photo to put on a wall, I would probably go to a professional shop anyway to get the best quality.
Not obvious. A simple "mostly" would have fixed the statement.
Speaking as someone who still occasionally needs a print-out and will not ever see that need go away unless some kind of amazing e-ink technology becomes the norm.
Agreed. When there is paper thin and paper light e-ink tech that cost about as much as paper then I will consider going all digital. I tried going all digital with my business forms process with iPads. It didn't work out.
DRM in printer supplies is hardly new. The first HP printer with DRM that comes to mind is the LaserJet 4100. RFID tags and whatnot, they backed off and went with cheaper solutions with the 4200 series. I think Lexmark pioneered selling the printers themselves as loss leaders.
I think perhaps what's getting lost here is that in the consumer space printers are being sold on a razor and blade model. The printers themselves are loss leaders. Your $100 laser printer definitely costs more than the sale price to manufacture. Eons ago Kodak tried to buck the trend with cheap consumables and a printer more or less sold at cost. Kodak bailed after a whole five years. Consumers care more about up front costs than they do about the cost of consumables – as it turns out most people are terrible about long term strategizing.
Kodak had some serious reliability issues with the print heads in those printers. I think that was more the reason that it failed rather than consumers not liking the up front price on its own. No one likes buying what’s supposed to be the premium model just to have massive print head failures render your printer useless.
Maybe, IDK. Inkjets have never held much appeal for me. That said Lexmark lasted way longer in the consumer space and their inkjet printers were widely regarded as crap.
People who need to print something now and reason with themselves that it's cheaper to buy a basic £29 HP printer because obviously they might need to print something again in the future(at which point the ink has long dried and new replacement is £39 for a cartridge).
I'm convinced that laser printers are the answer. Colour ones are now more or less affordable and last for many years and of course they have no issue with ink drying out.
Yes but it's harder to justify even a basic laser printer at around £99 when all you need to do is print some forms. A £29 printer which might be useful in the future is more appealing psychologically(somehow).
There are print on demand options down to single page single copy documents cheap enough I probably won't replace my printer next time as my printing need is now so infrequent. Only issue I've seen is that few of them seem to offer immediate courier service. Many will offer same day, though, and I'm sure most others could arrange a courier if you go through the hassle of calling.
Canon had this thing where they require toners that have rfid drm but due to the chip shortages they couldn’t get the tags. So they had to provide workarounds for ignoring the drm on the boxes.
The “security” chips are very inexpensive. Both the physical chip and also the associated cost to engineer them into the product and to program them on the assembly line.
HP need an update capability or everyone would be outraged if they couldn’t patch CVE.
It’s basically free for HP to have this capability to block 3rd party ink. But it comes with a responsibility to not be a jerk, which they seem to have failed at.
The security chips are getting more and more sophisticated as people start to crack the early versions. The R&D cost of this is pretty large, and so is the material costs.
You are only considering HP firmware update. But even in that there will be a huge cost for implementing, testing and deploying this new functionality.
The cat and mouse game of "cracking" the toner/ink chips has gone on as long as they have existed. It's been over a decade since I worked for Xerox on these kinds of chips, so they may have gotten much more complex and expensive since then, but it was always quite a delicate game internally as to what kinds of technology we would actually deploy as it's a very delicate balance from a legal standpoint.
Lexmark has historically always taken things too far on the legal side and really ruined the ability for printer companies to "protect" their toner/ink sales from 3rd parties. One recent way Lexmark has taken this too far is: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf
That's not the first time Lexmark has ended up in front of the US Supreme Court for similar shenanigans. I don't believe they've ever had good luck when cases have made it to higher courts.
The father of a childhood friend of mine was chief counsel during a previous Lexmark supreme court visit (the Static Controls case, I think?). He liked to paint and his basement was full of self-made art, copies of famous works and his own originals. I got the impression he didn't really believe in the corporate position on ink and toner DRM. That may be part of why he retired young.
Static Control Components was always fun to watch! They really seemed like the leader in terms of making 3rd party consumables chips, at least on the tech and legal side of things.
The chips on toner/ink started because there was a need to comprehend how much ink/toner was left in a cartridge and to make sure the right one was inserted. You could weigh the cartridge but that's quite expensive. It's much cheaper to count pixels or ink drops (and their size) and then write how many of those had been used up into a chip on the toner/ink. That way the printer always knows approximately how much ink/toner is left in the cartridge.
Clearly once you have a chip on the consumable, it's natural for a business to consider how this can be leveraged for financial gain. Lexmark was always VERY aggressive about this. When I was at Xerox we seemed to be much less aggressive in how we implemented restrictions.
I have an abandoned patent application from my time at Xerox for restricting a toner bottle to a specific customer. As far as I know, they never implemented it, but we did have the technical ability to do so if we had wished. The downside to an implementation like this is it kills the 2nd hand/resale market, which may or may not be legal. You cannot patent something illegal. I'm not sure if that's why the patent got abandoned or not.
I wonder why there hasn't been some rather cheap, open-source solution for home printing? Why does every single printer manufacturer needs to be so scummy? HP, Epson, Conan. They're all horrible in terms of user experience. Is it so difficult to make a $100 printer that just prints? instead of bricking itself everytime it is actually needed.
I expect the answer is that printing is a rat's nest of patent protection, trade secrets, etc.
It's not easy to make a laser printer from scratch.
And now you want a business model based on charging commodity costs for both the hardware and consumables. Which leaves essentially $0 for development costs, which are substantial.
Printers suck. They should be awesome. But instead, the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999. The last notable feture: tabloid size ink jets came out a decade ago. Printers still have paper handling issues, and inkjets still waste tons of ink unclogging print heads. All the innovation goes into lock-in and marketing strategies for consumables. The silver lining is that most printers have a Linux drivers these days.
I was a big advocate of Brother printers, but the last one I bought in 2020 has been plagued with paper jams and the cyan ink leeched into the yellow internal tank. So I now have a tabloid format scanner + B&W printer. I almost dread shopping for a printer because I feel like I'm entering into an abusive relationship with a loan shark (really, $75 for ink for the $200 printer?... or cheap toner! yeah! Oh, the developer unit costs more than the printer... Boo.)
I thought it was Brother laser printers that are the benchmark? Inkjet printers are simply the wrong technology for occasional printing. The clogging problem cannot be solved. It’s like trying to use 12V DC for household mains power.
Get a black and white Brother laser. They just work. Leave the inkjet printers to the photographers who print giant glossy colour photos every day.
Printers suck the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999.
In 1999 I was using a £150 canon colour inket with 360x360 resolution. Lasted ten years with fake ink at £20 a year. Now I am using a £150 canon megatank with 1200x4800 resolution, scan,copy,wifi and print plus an official bottle of ink costs £10 and lasts 5000 pages. Downside, I doubt the modern build quality will last 10 years but fingers crossed.
So adjusted for inflation my printer is much better. But having been been tantalised by £50 allinones for 15 years if you can just get past the expensive cartridge chips I agree it doesn't feel like it...
In 93, I bought an 720x720dpi Epson inkjet over the 600dpi Canon model. That printer was amazing, but by 99, everyone had caught up. By 99, I had a 1200dpi Tektronix printer at work, and at home the inkjet claimed to do 1200x2400 but looked about the same as the old Epson. My latest printer (a Brother) claims to do 1200x4800, and it looks... maybe better than the old Epson. The one thing, the Brother is really fast compared to the older printers.
Dunno. I've upgraded my brother mfc from 9020cdw to l8900cdw and both quality and speed are lot higher in the newer model. So the progress over 8 years is clearly visible in this case.
If I find my HP printer upgraded in this way, I literally will build a trebuchet in the back of my truck and hurl the now worthless paperweight through the window of the local HP division, which happens to be their printer R&D department.
I will happily face any resulting criminal charges, because I am pretty sure there would be enough sympathy here alone to raise bail and legal fees.
If they want to behave like criminals, then they should expect tit-for-tat retaliation.
This seems to happen every few years. Printer vendors try to bleed a turnip, lock out features, threaten subscriptions, then public outrage. They back down and waggle their finger saying "I'll be back!" like a good villain. They have to try to remain relevant somehow in a digital age when people certainly aren't printing more lest they all shrivel up and die.
I hate printers. I find them "non computing", even if once we were using teletypes.
Terminals won, and, later, graphical screens.
I never knew how to fix one at hardware level. I like to mangle data either on a term
or a screen, I don't want to be the printed press guy.
PostScript, PDF and DJVU look well enough onscreen since NeXTStep and much better in any modern GNU/BSD machine even with GV and DjView
at 1280x720 on a 10" screen.
This may not be a popular opinion but personally, I like the smell and feel of paper. One day I hope we can mimic it in an interactive format. Until then, I will continue to use paper.
I feel lucky when decided to buy a Brother printer instead of HP. Super easy to setup, press the WPS button once to connect to WI-FI and I can start printing from my Ubuntu laptop without install anything.
I have one equally old; Dell Color Laser 3110cn. Every day I print something with it, I am amazed and astonished. It doesn't even go through toner very quickly. I've had the thing something like 8 years. It was used in an office and replaced unnecessarily before I took it.
I dont think it will survive the next time I have to move house, the plastic casing is cracking and falling off at this point the thing has been through so much. They DEFINITELY don't make em like they used it.
I'll probably stop printing things all together for the rest of my life the day that dell gives up the ghost. Its just not worth it
