Legislation is Way overdue for this nonsense. My home security cameras are all being disabled and unable to record videos as they have for years because the company (fuck you Arlo) has decided they want users to just suddenly start paying subscription fees. If we let them every company will eventually move to this model. Even staunch capitalists need to recognize that this is an issue begging for legislation. Stop this insanity.
Thats absolutely outrageous. Thats a brand I’ll never be purchasing.
Legislation is the only way to reign it in, of course they’d scream “but prices would go up!”. I’d rather pay a few bucks more up front to not pay 10x as much in ink later. The whole subscription model is awful too. They are turning our whole lives into rentals.
I’m sure if they did legislate it they’d do everything they could to try to work around it.
Sure it’s cat and mouse, but the mouse doesn’t do well if it just let’s the cat bat it around the room.
It needs to be eWaste prevention law. Perfectly functioning hardware should never become a brick due to license/subscription. Period. I don’t care if your business model is based on it. Fuck you.
My home camera was exactly what prompt me to learn how to reflash IoT devices, and set up a Home Assistant network that’s entierly self-hosted. It’s way easier than I though.
Want to drop some links for where to get started? I only sort of understand what you just said but I like the idea of my own network and it being easier than it seems!
That’s why I never cry for Adobe when they get pirated.
For anyone in the market for a printer: brother.
Got an epson with an ecotank and quite happy with it.
My last three printers have been Brother and they have been great. They do still have chipped toner cartridges but I haven’t had any trouble with 3rd party toner. They also work fantastic on Linux.
I’ve been doing IT for over 25 years. The only printer brand I will buy or recommend for the past 15 years running is Brother.
Brother has pulled this shit on my laser, locking out a non genuine cartridge after an update
Be warned they are all pieces of shit
My recommendation is to not buy cheap and look into small or medium printer class printers (depending on the volume).
Never the consumer version if possible.I’ve gotten shitty performance from 3rd party toner cartridges, so I just stick with the OEM.
I will agree with you that what they did is shitty, though.
Ink jet printers really are the embodiment of peak capitalism.
I can’t wait until a company like Apple creates their own printers and somehow makes it worse.
Uh… they did make printers, starting in the 80s some were pretty decent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apple_printers
I didn’t know this. But Apple is a different company than they were in the 80’s and i feel that it would still be bad today.
Edit: or the 90’s when they made their last models according to that article.
Whenever anyone tells me they’re on the market for a printer, I actively try and push them towards a laser. My Brother wireless laser has worked flawlessly for years, is extremely easy to maintain, and was not much more expensive than an inkjet when I bought it. The fact that the toner doesn’t really go bad like ink, and is an order of magnitude cheaper, makes all the difference. It lasts for a stupid number of pages too (I think I’m on my 2nd or 3rd toner cart in all the years I’ve had the printer). And it’s faster, the toner doesn’t run if the page gets wet, etc etc.
These inkjet companies really prey on less technical consumers not understanding that a) they have another option and b) ink is marked up to be worth more than gold by volume.
The answer is simple, stop buying new printers that do this, keep your old one or buy a used one. Hurt them in their profits.
I think it’s time to attempt some regulation. Probably won’t happen but I don’t see any other real, long term solution to this issue.
Okay but, we don’t do that around here. And when we do, we don’t enforce it.
This works until all the OEM’s jump on the malicious malfunction gravy train.
I would but the fucking things break and can’t be fixed
I agree with you, but have you owned a consumer printer? They break so freaking fast. When I had them, I don’t think I’ve ever had a printer last more than 3 years. Granted I haven’t owned a printer in 15 years, but prior to that I swear we had to replace those damn things like clock work every couple of years for some stupid reason.
I read this so often that this is the solution and I hate it. This is definitely not the answer. The majority of people just see a cheap printer and buy it without being informed about the long term costs. If you just stop buying without speaking up, they still get tons of sales of the uninformed and will keep trying to find other ways to get the most money out of them.
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Who the hell still scans documents with a multifunction printer. There are multiple apps on your phone that do that a lot better!
A phone app may be convenient but it’s nowhere near the quality of a true scanner
On top of what everyone else said, if you’re scanning something like a book, holding it upside-down on a scanner bed and pressing it flat will give you a much better scan than holding it open with your hand right-side up so you can get a phone photo of it.
How the hell do you know what apps are on my phone?
People with essential tremor perhaps? There is ZERO point me trying to scan something with a handheld scanner because it’s a blurred mess every time. Flatbed all the way. Or perhaps a tripod mount for the handheld scanner.
