Oh how far you've fallen, Wirecutter.
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Oh how far you've fallen, Wirecutter. Recommending HP printers? Nuh uh. They all make you want to pull your hair out, but for my money Brother sucks way less. Unless you absolutely need photo quality printouts or something. I think even Brother put something on their newer models that doesn't let you use third-party toner cartridges unless they have a special chip on them. But when I think of HP, I think of bloat, and proprietary bloat.
https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-laser-printer/
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@briankrebs can confirm re: DRM on some Brother models
Brother implemented the lockout in newer firmware revisions for older models
they use one wire eeproms to track the number of uses of the cart they're installed in
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@briankrebs Are you sure Brother now requires a special chip? I would find that highly surprising.
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@morb cool cool cool. so is there a way to bypass it or trick it into thinking the chip is there, without actually removing one from an old, authorized toner cartridge and soldering it on?
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@briankrebs Reminded me of this Verge article…
https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine
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@briankrebs I have an old-ish brother printer. No WiFi, nothing, just works. The thing wants to do a firmware update since a few weeks. Couldn't locate what it would do, so I'm not letting it.
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@morb it used to be enough to just put tape over a tiny transparent section of the cartridge, but I guess we're operating at a different level now.
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@derickr Well, I tried many different cartridges that are supposed to work with my model. I need to investigate whether it still has the same firmware when we bought it (I sort of doubt it), but after a lot of searching I found that it's true. Someone else in the comments here (@morb) made the same observation.
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@briankrebs HP literally stands for Hair Pulling unacceptable quality
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@briankrebs At least you can put them in the dishwasher now. That definitely was a surprise to see.
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@steveriggins Good one! I'm so stealing that.
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My experience too, going back 30 years into our small corp. IT. They were the most irritating things to install.
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@briankrebs argh I wish you had told me this exactly one year ago
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@briankrebs we’ve had HP printers and 3rd party toners for 25ish years without a lot of issues. We had one 4050 for close to 15 yrs before we replaced it solely because it was really slow. It still worked. Just replaced rollers and fusers every few years and it just kept plugging along.
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@briankrebs Never looked back from our Epson Ecotank puchase. Being able to dispense ink from a real bottle is great. Not sure if the drivers are tracking me, but DRM isn't a thing if you are dispensing ink from a bottle yourself.
