BROTHER PRINTERS STILL SCAMING CONSUMERS

[Anonymous]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-10026576-33.html
How your printer tricks you into buying ink and toner when you don’t need it

If you own a Brother HL-2040 printer, the article is especially
relevant. The author suspected that the printer was lying about being
out of toner and he figured out how to lie back to it, making it think
there was a new cartridge. Sure enough the printer had lots of toner
left, as Mr. Manjoo puts it “At least eight months have passed. I’ve
printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn’t begun to
fade.”

Brother is not the only company wringing profits out of
way-too-early warnings out being out of ink/toner. The good news,
according to the article is that “… instructions for fooling
different laser printers into thinking you’ve installed a new cartridge
are easy to come by … If you’re at all skilled at searching the Web,
you can probably find out how to do it …. Just Google some
combination of your printer’s model number and the words toner,
override, cheap, and perhaps lying bastards.”

My HP LaserJet 1320 is well-mannered; it warns when it thinks the
toner is running low, but doesn’t do anything other than warn. And,
it’s reasonably accurate, giving me time to order a new cartridge
before it really runs out of toner. Apparently, I’m lucky.Or, it may be that the more expensive the printer is up-front, the
less the manufacturer feels the need to play tricks with the ink/toner.
If that appeals to you, see Kodak’s consumer printers aim to chop ink costs.

[Author]

August 28, 2008 at 1:23 PM