Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges

Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by john01dav on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @11:21PM (#43262745)

With traditional cartridges the ink can dry out and clog the cartridge if you don't print regularly. My print work loads are very bursty, like I had to print 100 resumes to go to a career fair one time but this was after like 6 months of nothing. For this reason, I prefer laser printers. Furthermore, with permanently plumbed pipes, it sounds like it could ruin the whole printer instead of just a cartridge.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by javawizard on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @11:38PM (#43262855)

It's a good point.

My workloads are similarly bursty. I've had no problems so far; the worst I've had to deal with is splotchy printing after it's been sitting for O(months), and a quick print head clean fixes that right up.

Laser printers are great if you're doing all or mostly documents though, I can't argue with that. About half of my printing is stickers and high quality photo prints, both of which benefit from inkjet printing.

(My specific model of printer is an Epson EcoTank ET-8550)

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by sitkack on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @01:01AM (#43263389)

Sounds pretty hit or miss, the 1 star reviews don't inspire confidence.

https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-Photo-ET-...

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by j45 on Tuesday March 04, 2025 @11:36PM (#43262845)

Fair point, laser is great. Color laser is preferable, but not always comparable to what some inkjets can do.

Also possible to schedule/automate a test print every so often with the low cost of printing on the large tank printers to keep the print heads happy.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by alsoforgotmypwd on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @12:12AM (#43263102)

5 year or more year old used HP enterprise workgroup printer only or mopier with low page count are ideal for personal use. In general, the more expensive the initial purchase price of laser printers, the more repairable and durable and lower cost per page they are. (I worked in a large university department in the 00's where they had zillions of network enterprise HP printers of all sizes.)

I have an HP LaserJet Pro M402dw because I don't have a particular need for color.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by j45 on Thursday March 06, 2025 @01:34PM (#43283497)

Lots of great black and white options in laser printing. Even Laser LED printers (okidata, etc) are good bang for the buck.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by userbinator on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @12:25AM (#43263184)

If you're in a humid climate, toner will clump while ink won't dry. I've noticed that in SE Asia, inkjets are more popular, likely for this reason.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by sejje on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @07:37AM (#43265734)

The inside of a home is rarely a humid climate.

I quit buying inkjets 20 years ago in southwest Florida.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by starspangled on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @07:49AM (#43265821)

There are places in the tropics where a lot of the houses aren't kept closed up with AC running constantly. A lot of South-East Asia, for example.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by zamalek on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @12:28AM (#43263198)

I had a really shitty customer support interaction for a $60 Brother scanner: they included the wrong calibration sheet, and proceeded to attempt gas lighting me about user error despite photos showing it didn't fit in the scanner under any orientation. Replacements were $20 shipped, but out of stock anyway. Needless to say, that changed my mind about which manufacturer to make an expensive purchase from.

It was Wikipedia that reminded me Xerox even existed. All my other research led to the usual shitlist: HP, Canon, Brother, etc. No problems on Linux and Mac (printing and scanning), which is seems par these days, but no problems on Windows either: the manufacturer app was completely optional (but was straight to the point, functional, and worth the install).

Xerox color lasers have my glowing recommendation.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by noname120 on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @03:19AM (#43264160)

When did you buy it? After a cursory search it seems that Xerox engages in the same scammy behavior with 3rd-party consumables: artificially degrading the quality (lower DPI, fake printhead jerks), region-locking, wasting ink so it drains faster, and DRMs that blank out refuse anything that didn't pad their bottom line.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by account42 on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @10:07AM (#43267528)

> artificially degrading the quality (lower DPI, fake printhead jerks)

Huh, won't users just blame the printer for that?

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by noname120 on Friday March 07, 2025 @05:59AM (#43289155)

Not if it only happens on 3rd-party cartridges combined with the fact that Xerox claims that they are low-quality and compared to their high quality genuine original cartridges™

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by zamalek on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @11:39AM (#43268942)

Jerking print heads for laser? That's not how laser printers work. Either way, I'm using 3rd party toner in mine (6515) just fine. It looks like people who have issues purchased metered printers.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by noname120 on Friday March 07, 2025 @06:06AM (#43289204)

Laser heads can misalign though (not sure if Xerox does that). Your Xerox® WorkCentre 6515 printer was launched 9 years ago and is not sold anymore. It's very possible that they changed their practices since then and/or that the price point is high enough that they wouldn't do that (it's aimed at professional customers after all).

Either way after a quick Reddit search there seems to be irreplaceable parts on that printer too. For example the fuser which is allegedly not user-replaceable.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by skyyler on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @02:17PM (#43270956)

I love my Xerox! It's a VersaLink that I took from an office of a defunct company.

Came with replacement toner cartridges but I'm still on the set that was installed when I got it!!

Prints are crisp, fast, and it doesn't use very much power when idle. Love it!

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by sebazzz on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @01:35AM (#43263554)

Clogged cartridges aren't the major issue. Clogged print heads means your printer is ruined and you can dispose of it. Except for HP printers where the print head is in the cartridge itself.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by numpad0 on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @02:03AM (#43263729)

I've had great successes undoing clogged head on Epson printers with just few drops of isopropyl alcohol on ink drawing port. Weirdly the clogs don't even reproduce thereafter, so it might be silently doing something horrible, but worked for me.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by javawizard on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @01:51AM (#43263642)

Where did you hear that? You can buy replacement print heads for all cartridge-less printers I've ever worked with, including my ET-8550.

The difference is that they're purchased separately from the ink, so as long as the original one works you can continue to use it no matter how much ink you go through.

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Re:Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink c... by starspangled on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @08:07AM (#43265940)

My print workload is very bursty but also low volume at the best of times. When my printer died I decided not to replace it because document printing services cost on the order of 10 cents per page (non-bulk) for basic printing.

I'd have to print hundreds of pages to even match the cost of a very cheap printer. I may never reach that threshold ever.

Best of all I don't have to worry about storing a crappy printer somewhere or have it dry out or clog up or spend time and effort on it and blocking it from accessing the internet and probably end up throwing it out and having to get a new one when I pull it out once every 4 years.

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