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A comment on Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink. Parent comment

Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by orev on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:13PM (#28888866)
At the low number of pages printed at home, I don’t mind buying the actual name-brand toner. If you’re only changing it every 2 years, the cost doesn’t matter much, and at least the company (i.e. Brother) gets some profit from being a good citizen. Going with non-OEM toner in that situation just drives the company into needing to find more revenue streams, such as locking down the cartridges, which undermines you. At some point people need to be willing to pay a little more to a company that treats them with respect.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by maxerickson on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:32PM (#28889018)
I put a piece of black tape over the window on my Brother starter toner like 4 years ago. Print quality is still good enough for anything I print at home (which is obviously very little).
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by spicybright on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:47PM (#28889169)
What does this do?
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by maxerickson on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:51PM (#28889199)
There's a sensor that checks the toner level. The tape tricks it into thinking the level passes instead of not passing.

I don't remember if it just stops the printer from complaining about the level, or if it refuses to print with a low level.

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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by zdragnar on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:52PM (#28889202)
Hides the fill level from the optical sensor. They can be rather pessimistic about the quality of print that you'll get at lower levels.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by tsimionescu on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:18PM (#28888901)
How about they make their money by selling a good printer? I don't have to buy has from my car company if I want a good car.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by kube-system on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:36PM (#28889062)
It’s has historically proven difficult to sustain that model because the consumer printer market for the past 20 years has been race to the bottom. It’s hard to compete when competitors are selling their printers at or below cost.

Consumers mostly tend to make their purchase decisions on the margin, and so the razors-and-blades model works well.

I guess there may be a few recent exceptions to this like the Epson Ecotank, although I don’t know how profitable that has been for them.

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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by pepoluan on Sunday October 17, 2021 @03:12AM (#28894574)
In my country, it seems inkjet printers with tanks are quick replacing printers with cartridges.

The reason being people in my country don't really care about warranty, would go out and buy a cheap cartridge-based printer, then bring that printer to some hack shops that will "convert" that printer into a tank-based one, allowing you to use any third-party ink.

So manufacturers keep absorbing loss on their lower-than-cost printers and couldn't make a profit from ink sales.

That's why cartridge-based printers are slowly being phased out for ink tank printers... So manufacturers can grab profit directly from printer sales :-)

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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by lotsofpulp on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:44PM (#28889140)
Brother has been selling solid printers and software for as long as I have used them, which is 15+ years.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by kube-system on Saturday October 16, 2021 @01:00PM (#28889285)
I agree, and I have a couple of them myself.

But they’re not the ones cranking out the $20-$50 inkjets that litter the shelves at Walmart/Best Buy

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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by kaladin-jasnah on Saturday October 16, 2021 @01:56PM (#28889872)
Well, the EcoTanks are pretty expensive to begin with. They also have some colour quality issues that requires you to waste ink to like… recalibrate every so often, or something thing like that?

But most of the time, it's fine, and the ink is cheap.

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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by kube-system on Saturday October 16, 2021 @02:17PM (#28890060)
All of the inkjets on the shelf would have similar prices to the EcoTanks if they weren't sold at or below cost and subsidized by their cartridges.

It costs HP/Canon at least (if not more than) $49 to build a $49 inkjet all-in-one.

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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by sagarm on Saturday October 16, 2021 @02:31PM (#28890191)
I'm using a 10 year old Brother with the starter toner. Still going strong, but I haven't given Brother a cent since I bought it for $100. Can they survive off that? Hopefully.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by noasaservice on Saturday October 16, 2021 @03:03PM (#28890460)
One purchase does not give a company the rights for all future purchases. If their business model assumes that, their business model is faulty.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by vlovich123 on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:21PM (#28888917)
Would you rate the typical car buying experience as one that’s fair where the customer generally isn’t taken advantage of?
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by throwaway09223 on Saturday October 16, 2021 @12:31PM (#28889009)
In terms of vendor lock-in on the fuel supply? Yes absolutely.
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Re:Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of... by discreditable on Saturday October 16, 2021 @01:37PM (#28889650)
I switched to OEM toner after using up some generic stuff I'd been working on for two years. It's barely more expensive and it was nice they included a prepaid shipping label for me to return the used cartridge to them.
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