[HN Gopher] Canon is telling customers how to override counterfe...
___________________________________________________________________
Canon is telling customers how to override counterfeit cartridge
warnings
Author : max-m
Score : 156 points
Date : 2022-01-08 12:20 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| tiku wrote:
| Why 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..
| HPsquared wrote:
| The same reason printers made by large manufacturers break all
| the time: printing is hard.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Alternatively (and as a shortcut to not deal with hardware
| that's actually difficult to build), why is there no FOSS
| aftermarket firmware?
| nicoburns wrote:
| My 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.
| sterlind wrote:
| laser could be easier right?
| falcolas wrote:
| Technically, we do. Pen Plotters. You can even re-use a large
| part of your 3d printer frame.
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| 2d printing sounds a bit less romantic than the 3d kind.
| deutschepost wrote:
| Some 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 wrote:
| On 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It 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.
| egeozcan wrote:
| The 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/interi...
| acmegeek wrote:
| Here is the English version: https://www.canon-
| europe.com/support/business-product-suppor...
| grenoire wrote:
| From such abundance that we can have microchips in disposable ink
| cartridges to prevent printer owners from using unauthorised
| ink...
| mikro2nd wrote:
| I've heard it referred to as "affluenza"
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The 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).
| jopsen wrote:
| Ink 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.
| [deleted]
| akvadrako wrote:
| There isn't need for disruption - laser printers are almost
| always a better choice, people just don't know or aren't
| willing to spend the upfront prices.
| mopsi wrote:
| Epson already disrupted it with cheap refillable EcoTank
| printers: https://epson.com/ecotank-ink-tank-printers
|
| OEM refill bottles cost around 120 USD per liter when bought
| from office supply stores in small 70 ml bottles. Large non-OEM
| 1L bottles with quality ink manufactured in Germany cost 30
| USD.
| petee wrote:
| My mom just got one and it was nice to setup, but I read
| somewhere recently that people were discovering the hard way
| that the standard ink fades very easily. I think you can find
| archival inks though.
|
| I have never heard of Wilhelm Research, but this pdf has a
| comparison of fade times, and the EcoTank is listed around ~2
| years under glass, at least dark storage rating is >100 years
| for all of them
|
| Edit; oops, forgot the link: http://www.wilhelm-
| research.com/hp/WIR_Ink_Tank_Printer_Comp...
| pixl97 wrote:
| Printing 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 wrote:
| Printing _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 wrote:
| There'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.
| linster wrote:
| Because SV disruption for printers would be Juicero for fax
| machines.
| coin wrote:
| > How is this not ripe for disruption?
|
| It's called a Brother laser printer
| gruez wrote:
| >How is this not ripe for disruption?
|
| good luck getting VC funding when your business model _doesn
| 't_ involve some sort of recurring revenue.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Sad that "recurring customer" is not considered "revenue".
|
| Maybe going the VC route is toxic.
| Silhouette wrote:
| The thing I find disturbing is how hard it is becoming for
| someone to bootstrap a business _without_ going the
| investor-led route. Between the regulatory environment and
| the crazy amounts of money that businesses with big
| investors can offer to recruit staff even if neither the
| business nor the staff actually make any money yet
| themselves, in some industries it is almost impossible to
| compete simply by building a sound, revenue-generating
| business independently and from the ground up any more. I
| don 't think this is a healthy trend but the economic
| incentives in our financial systems today make its
| dominance inevitable.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Indeed, I've never met VC comfortable with being labeled
| anti-drm around other VC.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| When I print artwork, inkjet is my only choice. I have an Epson
| for that.
|
| For everything else, yeah, laser printer.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Oh yes. Epson P900: archival pigment inks, instead of dye
| inks, on good acid-free paper it's rated to last ~100 years
| (200 years for black and white) and everything is just
| absolutely gorgeous, and I can print 17x22" / A2 sized
| posters. This is what inkjet is made for.
|
| Documents? Reach for the lasers.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| >Documents? Reach for the lasers.
|
| Maybe not if you want to print documents with security
| features :P
| jagger27 wrote:
| I really like the recent trend of megatank printers that just
| take a dumb bottle of ink to refill.
| ta988 wrote:
| I 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.
| trentnix wrote:
| I 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.
| imglorp wrote:
| The 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.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Video games are the same there are regions with far lower
| prices for new titles like Latin America, Russia and some
| parts of Asia.
|
| A lot of the keys sold on various sites come from those
| regions, some companies iirc Ubisoft started implementing
| region locks.
|
| Region locks on DVDs other than due to issues of distribution
| rights especially for dubbing and subtitles followed the same
| logic especially in Russia where region locked DVDs were
| released much earlier and for much cheaper as piracy was far
| more common there than in the west.
| luma wrote:
| Wiley also attempted to make importing those foreign versions
| illegal, because of course they did. It eventually took the
| US Supreme Court to intervene on behalf of common sense.
| sofixa wrote:
| In 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.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Wasting paper doesn't seem like a likely goal for a
| business.
|
| Could this format be designed to satisfy some local
| expectations as to the look and feel of a "quality" book?
| dpark wrote:
| No, no. It must be the intentional paper wasting because
| corporations are intrinsically evil, and so will choose
| evil solutions even if they are not profitable.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| As someone who vision is not getting better, the bigger
| font with more whitespace sound good to me! I prefer paper
| books over e-readers, but many print book have fonts that
| too small whereas e-readers are adjustable.
| xeromal wrote:
| In college, the international book was always disallowed and
| most of the time, the chapters and pages were just jumbled
| up. Nothing more.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| The professor might benefit financially from the sale of
| the book, e.g. if they're the author. It's quite common,
| really.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, I had to buy one or two really shitty homemade-
| looking books the prof wrote. On the other side, I had
| professors that wrote their own curriculum and did their
| best to enjoy we didn't waste money on unnecessary books.
| mattkevan wrote:
| I discovered this when the HP printer I'd just bought from a
| major UK retailer refused to accept official HP ink cartridges.
|
| Turned out that the starter cartridges that came with it were
| US region coded and the printer was now permanently locked to
| US ink.
|
| Hated that thing with a passion - the crunch it made hitting
| the bottom of the e-waste bin when it finally broke was deeply
| satisfying.
|
| I'll never purchase an HP product ever again.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Even Nintendo has stopped region locking games
| xahrepap wrote:
| I bought an HP Color Laser printer a few years ago to avoid the
| Ink Jet nonsense.
|
| Turns out it's not Ink Jet, it's HP. Lessons learned.
|
| The printer worked flawlessly until I went through my first
| toner cartridges (the carts shipped with the printer are
| intentionally smaller so you have to replace them)
|
| I noticed the 3rd party replacements were $80 for a full set
| whereas 1st party were $200. I got the 3rd party. It's been
| such a headache ever since. The MAJORITY of prints from my iMac
| fail. Google suggests the Mac drivers have a bug that cause OOM
| errors on the printer. Funny thing is it always succeeds from
| Windows or Linux. So I half bought it, and just put up with it.
|
| Fast forward a few years (a week or two ago) and my wife points
| out that there was an HP update and the printer works
| perfectly! Yay! The color cartridge is basically empty and
| needs replacing. Worked perfectly for a week until the printer
| popped up an error message "non-hp chip".
|
| All speculation and anecdotal, but I just can't help but feel
| like they've ended their charade and are actually being
| "honest" with me now...
| lordnacho wrote:
| I've had similar experiences with HP. Buy a cartridge that is
| supposed to be HP, but it complains. Plus it says it's empty
| way before it makes sense.
|
| HP's software is also incredibly slow. I think it asks a
| server for something when I open it, which is unnecessary.
|
| Is there some brand you can buy where this doesn't happen?
| Happy to pay up.
| brodock wrote:
| Brother printers are also a good "family printer" (the one
| you buy so you dont have to fix the printer every N months
| through the phone).
| MandieD wrote:
| Looks like several other HN readers have had the same lack
| of drama with Brother lasers that I have.
| mcv wrote:
| HP is just awful. I will never buy from them. I bought a
| Samsung laser printer assuming they were less awful, but now
| support for Samsung printers is handled by HP.
|
| My next printer is going to be Brother; that seems to be the
| only honest printer manufacturer out there.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I've replaced the mix of HPs and Canons in my house and
| office with Brothers. They're like, oh, you made your own
| toner with crayon and coffee grounds? Ok, I can work with
| that.
| Natsu wrote:
| Yeah, I got a Brother laser printer about 10 years ago.
| Still works just fine. I think it has the original toner in
| it.
| blip54321 wrote:
| The other problem with HP is the crazy EULAs and the spyware.
|
| Right now, my favorite printer is an Epson.
| solarkraft wrote:
| If I was in the market for a printer, I would strongly
| consider an Epson EcoTank (no cartriges, just refillable ink
| tanks). If they don't have one fitting my profile, I'd
| consider another Epson printer because they sell the
| EcoTanks.
| tzs wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Can you explain why it is a stupid claim?
|
| High humidity is known to affect things such as ink drying time
| which can affect print quality, so it isn't immediately obvious
| to me that it would be stupid to have different ink
| formulations for different climates.
|
| Edit: note that I'm not saying that HP was telling the truth. I
| just wanted to know how the very idea that of different inks
| for different climates is apparently stupid.
|
| Yes, in most places the humidity varies a good amount. But
| there are regions where it tends to be high most of the time,
| and regions where it tends to be low most of the time. It
| doesn't seem inherently absurd that an ink company might have
| say low, high, and regular humidity ink formulations designed
| for areas that are persistently low, persistently high, or
| neither.
|
| You might expect this to be pointless because humidity often
| swings a fair amount each day, but that the way humidity
| affects printing is by changing the moisture of the paper. A
| place where humidity swings from low to high and back on
| something like a daily cycle is likely to have much smaller
| swings in paper moisture content. The paper will remain closer
| to the some sort of weighted average of past humidity.
| s_gourichon wrote:
| And even if the region-humidity thing was true, the printer
| could just print a warning. That would not justify a plain
| refusal to print, would it?
| mcphage wrote:
| They might have different formulations, but they don't have
| any justification for preventing ink from one area from even
| being usable in another.
| calciphus wrote:
| Regions like "Americas", "Western Europe", etc often have far
| more variance within them than is worth accounting for in a
| printer ink formulation. I can travel within just the state
| of California and have more humidity variance than could
| possibly justify region locked printer ink.
|
| It's for price localization - sell at what the market will
| bear, and different regions have different price points.
| jevoten wrote:
| A quick search reveals Europe and the US are coded as
| different HP printer regions, despite having overlapping
| humidity profiles, and the humidity difference between
| Louisiana and Alaska is far greater than between New York and
| London.
|
| It is clearly a bald faced lie, coming from the least
| trustworthy source. If they told me water was wet, I'd
| double-check.
| gitgrump wrote:
| The hygrometers in my house swing between 30% and 70%
| depending on the season, but I apparently don't need to take
| that into account when buying printer ink. "Uh oh, it's
| raining! Honey, get the South America ink cartridge, quick! I
| have a form to print!"
| LanceH wrote:
| Climates and regions only have a mild correlation. How many
| regions would you need for a single state like California? If
| this were true, you would need seasonal ink in Wisconsin.
| Before selling it to you, they would have to ask a series of
| questions whether the printer would be in a climate
| controlled area or not, etc...
| petee wrote:
| This 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.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Most 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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| GordonS wrote:
| I 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 PS30 and probably
| last for at least 5 years!
| alex_anglin wrote:
| Yeah, the consensus view these days seems to be that
| Brother laser printers are the way to go.
| MandieD wrote:
| Our Brother color laser (purchased around 2013, I think)
| cheerfully accepts whatever generic toner we've thrown into
| it, and allows them to each be replaced when they're
| actually empty.
| tagoregrtst wrote:
| Epson'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 wrote:
| The 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.
| tagoregrtst wrote:
| I don't know about HP, Ive sworn off HP since Corina
| brought it to the ground.
| zerof1l wrote:
| Every time some news about printers pops up, I see people
| praising Brother printers. Not a long time ago, I had to
| purchase a printer and decided to buy Brother one, since so
| many praises it. Seller included cartridges, but the
| printer refused to acknowledge the full black ink
| cartridge. It simply reported it as empty.
|
| I was unable to find any way to trick it or to bypass that
| check. I ended up having to purchase a new black ink
| cartridge for about 1/5th price of the printer. Now I
| either need to purchase some device to reprogram the chip
| on that cartridge or throw it away.
|
| Bottom line, Brother printers are no better than the rest
| of them.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| People praise Brother _laser printers_. Sounds like you
| got an inkjet. (But that 's rubbish regardless.)
| ezconnect wrote:
| HP 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.
| wildzzz wrote:
| I'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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| HP 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 wrote:
| The original HP is now Keysight. HP the printer company got
| the name, but Keysight has the engineering.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| If you count "Cartridge can't be detected" as "warning that
| indicate counterfeit cartrige"...
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| I don't have a Canon, does the printer say "Cartridge can't
| be detected" for all other third party cartridges?
| detaro wrote:
| It'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".
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've updated the title from "Canon sells toner cartridges
| that register as counterfeit".
| krzat wrote:
| No wonder we have a chip shortage.
| lolinder wrote:
| Seriously. I hope one good thing that will come of this is an
| end to putting chips in things that don't need chips.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, kind of starting to like this chip shortage now....
| HelloNurse wrote:
| I'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.
| bArray wrote:
| If 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
| mdavis6890 wrote:
| I 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).
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