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Dear Brother Printers: Eat a [Sponsor friendly words here] (self.technology)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by infinitevalence to c/technology@lemmy.world

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For a while now I have been a Brother evangelist because they just worked, they did not lock you into first party only printing supplies, and they were overall a good value.

THEN: my printer firmware auto updated and suddenly my toner cartridges were no longer recognized. Its not that they ran out and I put in new ones, simply the ones that had previously worked (3rd party already) just stopped and it reported an error.

I managed to find a guide on downgrading the firmware, and now I am back up and running and auto update is turned off. I am also saving all the little chips from the Brother branded cartridges.

So Dear Brother Printers, Please choke on a bag of dicks. I spent $500ish on a laser color printer so I would not have to deal with the shitification that has happened to inkjet. Seeing hostile and profiteering consumer behavior from other printer companies you decided to copy them for short term gains.

Well I will no longer recommend your products, and I will go out of my way to fix and downgrade your older printers with the sole purposes of putting them back into use and costing you new sales.

1 down, 1 in the cue, feel free to stop being anti consumer and breaking hardware we already paid for.

URL referencing the last time I know they got caught messing with Firmwares: https://www.therecycler.com/posts/new-firmware-updates-affect-aftermarket-cartridges/

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[–] i2ndshenanigans@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I just had to get rid of a canon printer that I’ve had for the last 10 years or so and I had been looking for a printer that I didn’t have to deal with this. As much as I hate HP I got one of their printers that use the tanks you fill with bottles of ink and so far so good. Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink. I’ve purchased a 3rd party bottle of ink and it still prints like their first party bottles so I think that’s the route I’m going from now on.

Now they have some other bullshit you have to deal with like having a friggin account to manage the printer locally so I just set it up on the screen itself. I blocked its outbound connection to on the firewall so it can’t connect out and I haven’t had any issues. I sniffed the traffic I did see it trying to upload something after a print so they are more than likely trying to steal my data but I’ve been working on IT for 20 years so they won’t get my shit but I wouldn’t recommend it for someone that doesn’t have the ability to do that.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink.

Some of them apparently DRM the waste ink pads instead.

[–] i2ndshenanigans@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Well shit. I print a few times a year so we will see what kind of crap I have to deal with.