Please, PLEASE do not buy HP Inkjet printers!

[thewayne]

Or any inkjet printer, for that matter. HP just seems especially egregious in their conduct. I have railed against them before, and will continue doing so. Here's the latest.

HP pushed out a firmware update to its printers to disable using non-HP ink cartridges in them. And the update is flawed. It is bricking a number of printers AROUND THE WORLD. They are borked so bad that the touchscreen doesn't respond, and you need a working touchscreen to get into the hardware reset menu! Unless they figure out some way to reverse this, there are going to be A LOT of printers flooding their service centers, or entering landfills.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/hp-printers-computers-ink-cartridges-rivals/

https://www.engadget.com/hp-officejet-printers-are-bricking-following-a-recent-software-update-223559237.html


This news started spreading about the update early last week, but now news is getting out about printers being turned into cumbersome paperweights.

From a Slashdot summary:
Meanwhile, Engadget now reports that "a software update Hewlett-Packard released earlier this month for its OfficeJet printers is causing some of those devices to become unusable."
After downloading the faulty software, the built-in touchscreen on an affected printer will display a blue screen with the error code 83C0000B. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way for someone to fix a printer broken in this way on their own, partly because factory resetting an HP OfficeJet requires interacting with the printer's touchscreen display. For the moment, HP customers report the only solution to the problem is to send a broken printer back to the company for service.

BleepingComputer says the firmware update "has been bricking HP Office Jet printers worldwide since it was released earlier this month..."
"Our teams are working diligently to address the blue screen error affecting a limited number of HP OfficeJet Pro 9020e printers," HP told BleepingComputer... Since the issues surfaced, multiple threads have been started by people from the U.S., the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, Poland, New Zealand, and France who had their printers bricked, some with more than a dozen pages of reports.

"HP has no solution at this time. Hidden service menu is not showing, and the printer is not booting anymore. Only a blue screen," one customer said.

"I talked to HP Customer Service and they told me they don't have a solution to fix this firmware issue, at the moment," another added.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/05/21/0032211/hp-rushes-to-fix-bricked-printers-after-faulty-firmware-update


The reason why these printers are so inexpensive is because the company - not just HP - makes a fortune on you replacing the ink cartridges. That ink is more expensive than GOLD. It's HP's first or second most profitable line item. The problem is that for most printers, if ANY ink tank empties, the printer won't print until it is replaced. And in multi-function printers with scanners, frequently the SCANNER WON'T WORK if there is an empty ink tank! Where the hell is the logic in that, except to screw over the customers?

I literally threw a multifunction printer in the trash when I couldn't use the scanner. I went out afterwards and bought a nice Epson flat bed scanner for about $200 or so, and it's still in use about a decade later! For printing, I bought a $100 Samsung (sadly now bought out by HP) monochrome laser printer. If I absolutely must print color, I'll do it at work, or for photos, I'll send them to Walgreens and pick them up the next time that I'm in town.

Please PLEASE PLEASE don't buy inkjet printers, unless you absolutely must print color on a regular basis. And if you do need to do that, consider a color laser printer - your cost per page is much less expensive, though the cost of cartridges will cause heart palpitations, at least until you remember how many pages you get out of them.

Comments

[dewline]

I'm stuck with my Epson WF-7840 for the time being. Thankfully, so long as I don't further update the firmware, I can avoid this risk. For now.

[warriorsavant]

Ink for printers is like clothing for Barbie Dolls; it's how they make their money. In fact, that is true in many industries, how many items have useless filters, for example, it's just that printer are the most egregious. The entire world loathes the "you are out of yellow, so you can't print in B&W, but it makes them money, so they keep doing it. The last time my HP printer bricked, I refused to buy another one. The other companies try to do the same thing, but not quite as viciously as HP.

[acelightning73]

It's like razor blades, or coffee filters. You need this one accessory in order t use the device. And they're always proprietary. I did have a color inkjet printer once. I bought a cartridge refill kit for less than the cost of four cartridges. It was awkward and messy, and sometimes the machine didn't believe the cartridges weren't still empty. Now I see ads for "infinite ink" printers - it must be a really strange cartridge.

[thewayne]

My understanding is the infinite ink is a subscription service and they send you cartridges on a regular basis.  Also, if you print too many pages before your next cartridge is due, they lock the printer!  Of course, it varies by brand.  Laser printers are immune to this.

[acelightning73]

If I had to do a lot of color printing, I'd get a color laser printer. I had a color inkjet ages ago, and I printed a Klingon emblem and a line of poetry in Klingon for my Australian friend, who had written the poem I quoted. It was fun to print stuff that could be ironed onto a T-shirt. And I printed stuff on clear acetate to create instant "stained glass" windows. But color printing and a device to do so are far beyond my current budget.

[bibliofile]

No worries, I only ever bought a laserjet (and not HP), and that was a couple of decades ago. I'm a text person, not a photos one. If I need a color print, I can go to the library or the nearest office center.

Thanks for the warning, though. Bricking your old products is bad business. Sure, people need new printers now, but are they going to buy yours? Or is that loss of customer base part of the equation? Ugh.

[disneydream06]

I think I have already mentioned that I bought an HP wireless printer only to not be able to get it to connect to my computer. Paperwegith. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you make a suggestion?
Doesn't even need to be wireless. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

I'm not current on the printer market as I haven't needed to replace one in a while.  I've worked with Canons and Brother lasers and found them both to be pretty reliable and not difficult to work with, and not too expensive.

[disneydream06]

Thank you. :)

[devilc]

I stopped buying HP products in 1998 when I got W98 and discovered that the year old $700 flatbed scanner I had scrimped and saved to buy (college student money) no longer worked, and HP would sell me a new driver (plus a bunch of software I didn't need) for $70.

I called their 800 number to doublecheck that no, they really did not have an updated driver available for download, because, surely they meant like $7 for the cost of a CD and the postage, right. Nope. $70.

If you don't support your products? I don't support you. I knew then that HP was a trash company. I have never bought an HP product for my use since 1997, and steer everybody away from them.

(A friend managed to get it up and running with a generic twain driver, but it lacked several nice features built into the HP official driver.)


And yes, color laser printer all the way. I have a Brother Color Laser printer and yes, the cartridges are expensive, but they last for at least 5k pages, meaning I buy them once every 4 or so years.

[thewayne]

I'm pretty sure that I've told this story before, but when I worked for the police dept through the '90s, we sent our IT guys off to HP for training and certification to service our inkjets and scanners.  They all passed their tests.  And then HP would not sell us parts kits!!! Once Compaq bought Digital and destroyed it, then HP and Compaq merged, for me it was two mediocre companies combining to become one truly mediocre company.  And HP has yet to prove me wrong.  Back in the late '80s when I was doing a lot more hardware maintenance, both those brands were absolute PITAs as they were just a little bit non-standard in a number of ways.  Very annoying garbage.

[moxie_man]

This reeks of a potential class action lawsuit where the lawyer makes 8 figures and all the class action members will get a check for $3.37.

We keep wife's "antique" roughly 25 yr old Samsung b&w printer (an ML1740) going here for when we need to print something.

[thewayne]

That's about the size of it!  I've never participated in a class action, just not worth further enriching the attys involved.

[moxie_man]

Personally, I don't care if the lawyers get rich. I just like seeing the company shell-out 10 figures or so, which is that much less profit for their shareholders.

[thewayne]

Meta just got tagged for over a BILLION from the EU!  They might actually feel that!  I look at these fines levied by our gov't for $200mil and just shake my head, they should levy them as a percentage of gross revenue if they want them to be actually punished.

[captainsblog]

About a decade ago, after Kodak had whiffed on digital photography, fucked up digital processing and abandoned its professionals, a light briefly went on in its Rochester HQ. "Let's make a relatively inexpensive printer with relatively inexpensive replacement ink and not piss off our customer base!" We bought two- one for here and one for the kid.

Alas, by then their brand was too damaged for it to catch on. I've had to bring a probably decade-old Epson inkjet back online for stupid reasons and, while it's not quite as DRM-heavy as HP or Lexmark, the single black cartridge was 20 bucks when I finally found one in stock. I'll post about whether it worked, and how long it will be before one of the other three cartridges (which I NEVER intentionally use) times out and gorks the whole thing again.

[thewayne]

My heart breaks a little bit every time I think about how Kodak did themselves in.  I started in Photography in the later 1970s doing my own B&W processing and printing, and they were most certainly the go-to vendor for so many of us.  I didn't know about the printers, though!  That's pretty interesting.

[armiphlage]

I've been boycotting HP since 1997, when they told me that tech support for my model of printer required me to call a 1-900 pay-per-minute number. Which then put me on hold.

[thewayne]

OMG!  A 900 support number?!  That's a new one to me!

[gingeriana]

No home printer since 2005
Trying to find paperless options whenever possible

[thewayne]

Good for you!  In the last 2-3 years, the only printing that I've done is for our lodger, things like postal RMA stuff and some documents for him to get a job.  Though now I'll be printing medical surveys for my wife every 2-4 weeks as she started a new chemo drug and has to scan them and send them back to her doc.  She's easily frustrated and wouldn't easily cope with trying to mark them up in a PDF editor.

[lovelyangel]

I have mixed feelings about HP – and, fortunately, I haven’t been through the bad experiences that many people here have. I do recall a story (I have no reference) of an HP exec who had a meeting with staff and stood on top of an HP printer without causing any damage. And he told his team that printers don’t need to be built like this. Make 'em lighter and cheaper! And so began the slippery slope.

And, yeah, I’ve been keeping an eye on the shift to chipped ink cartridges and customer usage monitoring. They’re coming up with screwy (read: subscription) programs for toner ("Instant Ink") – and the new LaserJet printers require an internet connection to support that. I sure wouldn’t want my printer to stop working if I had no internet connection.

I’ve been a loyal HP customer since I bought my HP-45C calculator in 1973 (it’s 50 years old now!!), and my HP LaserJet printers have been great. I have friends who worked at HP (Corvallis, Vancouver, Boise). I still use my HP-12C calculator.

But HPQ is a mere shadow of the engineering powerhouse that was HP of the last century. I certainly don’t have much faith or trust in them. But – I’m seriously considering purchasing a new HP Multifunction Color LaserJet to replace my 11-year-old HP LaserJet and my 11-year-old Canon color inkjet printer. Both printers are still working, although the scanner cover hinge is broken on the Canon printer. One of the old-school (no "Instant Ink") HP color LaserJets is on sale everywhere for Memorial Day weekend.

On all my printers I always use manufacturer ink/toner cartridges (just like I always use manufacturer batteries in my digital cameras – they just work better). I’ve stopped trying to print photographs at home, so I’d be better off with a color laser printer than a color inkjet printer. I bought my retirement car; now I think I’ll buy my retirement printer. I print all the time, and I do a lot of markup on printouts.

[thewayne]

You definitely have a very different use case than most people, no doubt.  If I were shooting more seriously, I'd be basing my needs evaluation with different weights.  But for now, I'm shooting for my personal satisfaction and web display, if I need to get a good print of something I'll send out for it.

[silveradept]

Absolute stupidity on HP's part, but we had already known they were moving in this direction every time we heard about some other thing they'd done to stop others from using ink that wasn't theirs and that they could overcharge for.

Thankfully for all of us, a housemate had a Canon they'd never used, and we set that up, and it, at least for now, accepts generics and other things that can keep it in use for reasonable expense. If and when it borks in the future, I might go in for a compact laser printer of some sort just to get away from this transparent cash grab by companies who want vendor lock-in instead of behaving like sensible entities.

[thewayne]

If the printer currently accepts generics, and you don't have the mfr app installed and don't do bios updates (which printers really never need once they're working properly), chances are it will never be remotely bricked.

[silveradept]

Unfortunately, the printer drivers came with an app that allows it to work properly on one of the systems, and secondly, when there's an update, it refuses to do things other than update.