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Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
HP released a firmware update on March 12, 2016 for several of the company's Officejet printers that renders non-HP ink cartridges useless.
HP customers began to complain about the issue on September 13, 2016 on various online forums, the official HP forum, and on community sites like Reddit.
All reported that a HP Officejet printer blocked non-HP ink cartridges from working, and that the device displayed one of the following messages to the user:
Cartridge Problem.
The following ink cartridges appears to be missing or [damaged].
Replace the ink cartridges to resume printing.
[Continues...]
Cartridge Problem.
Until cartridges are replaced, make sure the printer is turned on to avoid damage to the printer.
One or more cartridges are missing or damaged.
The ink cartridge listed above is an older generation ink cartridge that does not work in your printer. It can still be used with some older printer models.
If you do not own an older printer model and your ink cartridge is a genuine HP cartridge, contract HP support for more information.
It appears that HP programmed the firmware update that it released in March to block non-HP ink cartridges from working starting September 13, 2016.
[...] HP customers affected by the issue cannot do much about it it appears. The printer won't accept non-HP ink cartridges anymore unless they are specifically designed for the new firmware.
[...] HP customers who don't want to experience an issue like this again in the future may want to disable firmware updates for their printer.
[...] The easiest option to do so is to wait for the next HP Update prompt to appear.
- Select Settings on the prompt.
- On the HP Update Settings page, switch to Never under "Check for software updates on the web".
Also, whenever a HP Update prompt is displayed, select Cancel to block the download and installation of the update.
So, what's the complement of "delayed gratification"?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kilo110 on Monday September 19 2016, @01:20PM
I love Brother printers.
They're great with driver support. Most (all?) of their printers have mac/win/linux support. Some even have Solaris drivers iirc.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday September 19 2016, @04:00PM
Any recommendations? My mother 'borrowed' my printer a few years ago and I've been using the one at work, but have been considering a replacement. I'd like something that's fairly compact, cheap to operate (replacement toner not too expensive), colour, supports double-sided and network printing, and has a double-sided scanner with a reasonable sheet-feed mode and the ability to save PDFs.
My old printer was a Dell which managed to produce PDFs from its scanner that crashed every other model of printer I've tried sending them to and a couple of PDF readers.
sudo mod me up