Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit

HP all-in-one printer owners, upset that their devices wouldn't scan or fax when low on ink, were handed a partial win in a northern California court this week after a judge denied HP's motion to dismiss their suit. The plaintiffs argued in their amended class action complaint [PDF] that HP withheld vital information by …

[Rikki Tikki]

My memory is fading with age, I know, but last time I used a fax machine sometime last century, I seem to recall it printed a transmission report. So HP could possibly argue that locking the fax when out of ink is legitimate.

Not so easy to argue that with scanning, though (and I believe my Brother MFC will continue to scan even when out of toner).

[katrinab]

My Canon printed a transmission report when it had a full page of transmissions to report, so something like 15 transmissions.

[ChoHag]

"Cannot scan: In 6 months you may be unable to print a report saying you did so"

[Annihilator]

Yes but faxes on AIO devices are often done from a host PC which can receive a digital confirmation. And none of the standalone fax machines I've used in the last century refused to fax due to an inability to print a confirmation report - they've just queued the reports until they were ready.

[Orv]

On most fax machines I've used, transmission reports are optional.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Cannon fix the "bug"?

see title

[Anonymous Coward]

Epson

I've got a 2013 Epson that scans even when the ink is gone.

[Roopee]

Re: Epson

I had one too - my favourite scanner until I literally wore it out. I now use a Canon inkjet for the same purpose and it too will happily scan if a cartridge runs out, though I only print to it occasionally to stop it drying out - incidentally something Epson inkjets are notorious for.

As for HP, I’ve been advising clients for years to avoid their printers, though mainly because their software is so awful, in all its many guises. Perhaps I should be more grateful - HP printers have earned me quite a bit of troubleshooting money!

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Epson

Rope: I now use a Canon inkjet for the same purpose and it too will happily scan if a cartridge runs out,

Which one? I have a canon PIXMA MG6150, and I've never managed to get it to scan when it wants a new ink cartridge. I am replacing it anyway as I now find getting a driver impossible, and, of course, a new set of Canon ink cartridges costs more than Grand Cru Champagne.

[Little Mouse]

Re: Epson

Home Pixma user here - I've found my ink costs are significantly less than with the HP inkjets I owned in another life.

Although, to be fair, I don't by Canon-branded ink..

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Epson

"As for HP, I’ve been advising clients for years to avoid their printers"

Not even old, second hand ones?

[VicMortimer]

Re: Epson

If you mean more than 25 years old, fine.

But HP stopped building good printers more than two decades ago.

[GBE]

Re: Epson

Damn. My LaserJet 1320 is from 2004, so it's not old enough — I'll have to throw it out.

Still works perfectly (though I did have to buy one tonor cartridge about 10 years ago).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Epson

I think Vic was referring more to the inkjet side.

And I completely agree.

[Andy Non]

I ditched HP printers

years ago due to HPs mercenary behaviour and contempt for their customers. I'm very happy with Brother all-in-one printers and you don't need a second mortgage to buy ink or toner.

[Korev]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Me too. I used to love my HP inkjet, but a combination of them not supporting modern OSs on it and the ink games they played meant I bought elsewhere.

My story would be better if I hadn't have bought a Canon (although choice was limited in 2020 for some reason...)

[Wade Burchette]

Re: I ditched HP printers

They have only become worse. Some of their printers literally will not work until you provide an email address, and then the printer has to have a connection to the internet, even if it only the USB cable is used. All of their new printers require their unhelpful, confusing, difficult app. Many of them no longer have a helpful screen and navigation buttons. They only have buttons, and you have to read the manual or waste your ink and print two pages worth of instructions just to guess what to do. And all of them are desperately trying to get you into their printing subscription plan.

No one should ever buy a new HP printer, no exception.

[C R Mudgeon]

Re: I ditched HP printers

"No one should ever buy a new HP printer anything, no exception."

FTFY

If a company's upper management has approved of behavior such as you've described, can any of their products be trusted? And even if a given item is provably safe, they no longer deserve my business.

That makes me sad. I remember a time when Hewlett Packard was a name worthy of respect.

[aerogems]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Just think about some of their recent CEO choices.

Carly Fiorina: Destroyed the brand by selling cheap garbage and then spent company money to hire some PIs to spy on reporters

Leo Apotheker (or however it's spelled): Couldn't even show up for work the first several days because he was ducking process servers from his last employer looking to sue him and then only lasted maybe 2-3 months IIRC

Mark Hurd: At first it seemed like he was actually an adult and competent executive, then it came out he spent most of his time propositioning his secretaries

Meg Whitman: Poured kerosene on the fire by taking all the profitable bits of HP (the enterprise hardware) and splitting them off into a separate company and then dumping all the cheap printers and other garbage into another company that, quite frankly, I'm surprised hasn't gone bankrupt yet

It's tempting to blame the CEO, but the sickness seems to run a lot deeper than that.

[Spazturtle]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Hewlett Packard is a different company to HP, they split back in 2015 to form two different companies.

[ITMA]

Re: I ditched HP printers

I've came across those pieces of utter shite.

You can't even change the settings on a LOCAL printer connected via USB without using an effing online account. And if that account doesn't work, as one company I came across found, you are fucked.

My advice to anyone who has one - phone HP and tell them you want an full refund as it is "unfit for purpose". There is no bloody way a printer or scanner needs an effing online account to work.

Total shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I ditched HP printers

I can go one better. The "Zyxel Armor G5 12-Stream Multi-Gigabit WiFi 6 Router - AX6000" needs an account and internet to set it up. I did look at reviews before I bought it and maybe my brain just ignored it because it couldn't believe the sheer fucking stupidity. It's a router ffs. It did not stay out of the box for very long. I did ask Zyxel if I can disable it but alas not so I told them well you're having it back as I'm not having a device that really shouldn't need an account and I'm not leaving it's redundancy to be up to somebody else.

[bpfh]

Re: I ditched HP printers

I have 2 netgear plug-in wifi extenders that also require an online account to set up. I have no clue why.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Why they need it or why you still have them?

[JimboSmith]

Re: I ditched HP printers

I have 2 netgear plug-in wifi extenders that also require an online account to set up. I have no clue why.

Velop Mesh from Linksys has a similar system that unless you dig deep enough, requires an online account via their app. After a lot of faff, searching the internet and calling customer service I discovered that it’s possible without. They don’t make it obvious though and the instructions make no reference to it. When I enquired as to the sense (if there ever was any) in having my passwords stored on their cloudy computers the customer support rep said it helps you make changes when you’re not in the house. I said I was baffled as to why I’d want to do that. He didn’t have an answer that made sense in the real world.

[gnasher729]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Bloody Amazon door camera. Insisted on sending my door pictures to Amazon. I have WiFi and hundred of gigabytes of free storage at home. Why should I pay Amazon gor that?

[Annihilator]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Similar approach to HP printers and Gilette razors - it's the continuing costs they're interested in and so they sell the actual products at a loss. Blink cameras (now part of Amazon) are exactly the same.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Even after the lame ass WPS setup? What's the point in that? I would have sent them back.

[usbac]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Even Netgear's higher end managed switches need an online account to be able to configure them. I bought a new 48 port managed switch a while back, and when I found out that it needed an online account to be able to login, it went right back in the box. On a corporate network, I don't think so!!

The problem is that their newer firmware is causing their older switches to require an online account. I made that mistake at one point, and had to junk a perfectly good switch after a firmware update. Netgear products are on my permanent ban list now.

[897241021271418289475167044396734464892349863592355648549963125148587659264921474689457046465304467]

Re: I ditched HP printers

The DJI Osmo 3 action camera requires online activation via an app, or it won't do a goddamn thing! So I bought GoPro instead, which has a smaller less sensitive sensor, and smaller lens... but at least it functions as a video and stills camera right out of the box, without first having to be activated online (which doesn't always work to activate DJI Osmo 3 cameras anyway).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I ditched HP printers

A mate once emailed me and asked me what I thought of HP inkjet printers. He had to ask me to resend the email without the swearing as the profanity filtering system had blocked the original message.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I ditched HP printers

I've got a HP Envy, (can't remember the model, but it's now discontinued) and yes, the "HP Smart" software that goes with it is pretty awful. The official HP printer driver doesn't work properly on one of our windows 10 PCs, and we're having to use the Microsoft supplied driver to be able to print in colour, which is pretty weird... It suddenly started printing only in black and white after a software update, and HP support was absolutely no help at all, following their instructions made no difference, so I got rid of their driver.

However, despite the above, it does work very well for my family because of a couple of reasons.:

1. I'm on the £1.99 a month subscription, and my kids can do colour prints for school whenever they want (within reason, we get 180 pages a year for what we pay). New ink cartridges turn up in the post before the old ones run out, which is nice. The kids are banned from printing black and white on that printer though, they have to use our brother laser printer for that.

and

2. Xsane works with the printer, meaning that to scan, I can use my linux box and avoid using HP Smart.

[David 132]

Re: I ditched HP printers

It was a long, long time ago that HP could name a product “Envy” with a straight face.

Now “Pity” might be more appropriate, or possibly “Fury”.

[DJO]

Re: I ditched HP printers

It's actually "NV" and stands for "Not Viable".

[Annihilator]

Re: I ditched HP printers

I had that for a while, but I got disillusioned by them for a couple of reasons:

1) I originally bought the printer because it came with "2 years of Instant Ink". What it actually came with was credit to a certain value, and then a year later they hiked the price of Instant Ink to the point the credit only lasted 15 months. So I threw my toys out the pram and stopped using it after that.

2) Their ink cartridges have a phenomenal habit of drying up and smearing to the point of not being usable, but the printer still shows it as having ink in it, so they won't replace the cartridge. It sort of died in that state in the end.

[Annihilator]

Re: I ditched HP printers

But... but... but.. then you won't be able to print from the internet!!

Granted, I've never fathomed a use case where I would ever need to do that, but hey... HP think there's one...

[Jellied Eel]

Re: I ditched HP printers

Granted, I've never fathomed a use case where I would ever need to do that, but hey... HP think there's one...

Back in the day, fax spamming was a thing. HP presumably think it could be a thing again, and you'd welcome coming home to find a print tray filled with exciting offers from HP's selected partners, topped with a note that you're out of ink, and you should order more.

[David 132]

Re: I ditched HP printers

For really exciting spam, hook up your 3D printer to the Internet!

[43300]

Re: I ditched HP printers

HP's desktop laser MFDs used to be OK a decade or more ago - fuser was easy to replace and reasonably priced, and the only part which seemed prone to failure was the pickup roller (the rubber on it went hard and it stopped picking up paper) - but they were easily available and didn't cost much, and changing it took less than five minutes.

The newer oens are crap, and as the current ones wear out I'm replacing them with Toshibas. One particular annoyance is that the side panels wrap around the back corners, covering the screws which hold the fuser in, The side panels need to be partly unclipped and pulled outwards to get to the screws, but after several years of heat form the fuser the clips are all brittle and it's nearly impossible to release them without them breaking off.

[heyrick]

To add to this...

I have an HP inkjet, and I also use the Instant Ink service (as the retail ink cartridges are insultingly miniscule).

Recentish (about a year or so?) changes to the mobile app means that the bloody thing won't even permit a local over-intranet scan without signing into the HP account, and the built in WebScan doesn't work on Chrome or the more recent (after the add-ons thing for changed) versions of Firefox, even in desktop mode.

When it eventually packs up, I'll be on the lookout for an inexpensive WiFi printer that does reasonably good prints to regular A4 and has ink that doesn't cost the GDP of a small island nation. Any suggestions?

[R Soul]

Re: To add to this...

Buy a Brother inkjet or all-in-one. Cartridges are usually <£20 and good for ~500 pages.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: To add to this...

Brother's laser printers are also very good, and usually don't complain about third-party cartridges. (Usually. They don't like one of the nameless brands I ended up with.)

[abend0c4]

Re: To add to this...

The only laser printers recommended by URefillToner - who have supplied refilling kits for a long time - are all Brother models, but even they caveat possible further exploitation of the microchips.

I have a Brother inkjet MFC (it was the cheapest way of getting a scanner with an ADF) and whereas it will accept third-party ink, it seems to implement some kind of "use-by" date: it suddenly refused to "recognise" a cartridge that had been perfectly acceptable and still had plenty of ink and also rejected the replacements bought at the same time, while happily accepting a batch bought later. Since none of this is documented, the ink suppliers don't take responsibility and nor do Brother.

Being "better than HP" is to be damned with faint praise these days.

[boblongii]

Re: To add to this...

Just wondering - is it possible that modern inks do actually have a use-by date for actual reasons? I can imagine possible reasons connected to chemistry. Obviously, this should be documented even if it is genuine.

[abend0c4]

Re: To add to this...

There is a suggestion here that they may have a shelf-life of 2 years for possibly-valid reasons. However, no message from the printer on first installing the cartridge and no obvious date on the box. The printer simply reported "ink cartridge not recognised", which seems to be the Brother catch-all.

[Missing Semicolon]

Re: To add to this...

Ah. I tried UrefilToner for my Brother Laser a while back. The toner seemed to be contaminated with small particles, which caused streaks on the output. The colours where particularly bad. Eventually gave up.

[Stevie]

Re: Brother Laser Printer

Love mine, but discovered last week that Adobe Reader doesn’t recognize the double-side print feature any more. LibreOffice sees the feature just fine. 8o/

So there’s that.

[Roland6]

Re: Brother Laser Printer

I know it sounds daft but have you tried uninstalling your print driver, reboot and reinstalll…

I had a problem with my Brother inkjet, where Excel (and Excel only) decided normal A4 was actually A6 regardless of the printer and Windows settings. Cured by uninstall/reinstall…

[Sudosu]

Re: To add to this...

I have a desktop Brother laser I bought in 2006 for $60 that is still running strong after thousands of pages.

Duplex is manual but I don't often print too many pages at a go so its not a big deal.

Cartridges are about $60-80 though I should look at after-market next time.

You can shake the cartridge and get another couple hundred pages.

I actually bought a few of these and gave them to the relatives that I support IT for and all are still in service.

[Roopee]

Re: To add to this...

I concur with the several recommendations to buy a Brother - I have 2 (old mono laser + newish colour laser) and both are excellent and have no-fuss drivers for network printing from just about any OS (including mobiles). Their inkjets seem pretty good too, from what I’ve seen at clients.

[Ivan001]

Re: To add to this...

Running the same Brother laser B&W printer for something like 9 years now. I buy third party XL tonners which last forever (2000+ pages) for 30 euros.

My mom bought an Epson Eco tank and while ink is cheaper, the printer still needs maintenance now and then which is not trivial (enjoying a disposal tank and resetting the counter) which needs to be done by a technician.

[Tom 7]

Re: To add to this...

I had a 4 colour dot matrix brother printer. Eventually it was snapped up by someone who wanted the stepper motors from inside it - turns out they are made from adamantine and will outlive the universe.He may well be correct.

[Forex]

Re: To add to this...

Epson liquid ink has lasted me a long time. You just buy the liquid and squeeze it into the reservoir for each colour.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: To add to this...

I just purchased an Epson EcoTank ET-2856, which arrived with three colour bottles of ink, and two larger bottles of black ink. Hoping that this will be cheaper to run and keep up with drivers for OS releases better than my Canon PIXMA.

[hedgie]

Re: To add to this...

I don't recall the model, but I got an EcoTank all-in-one for my mother earlier this year. It's not just the inexpensive non-DRMed ink that's better about it than the HP that's now in an E-waste pile. It uses CUPS for printing, so on Mac or Linux, you can just connect the thing and go, and even Windows would only need a generic driver that talks CUPS. The scanner software was the only install needed, (and only tried on a Mac, so that is one caveat) and considering its small footprint, it seems to use built-in functionality where possible, so should be fairly future-proof. It also, unlike HP, doesn't require you to log in and send your stuff to them, and can function completely offline.

I'd never have even thought 10 years ago that Epson would be the economic option for home/small-office printing,[1] but here we are.

[1] Back then, I wouldn't even look at an Epson unless it was for the kind of photo printing where you're passing off the ink cost to the buyer anyway.

[bpfh]

Re: To add to this...

This. But your printer costs double to triple that of a non ink-tank printer with similar capacity, but if you print a lot this is the way. In my calculations my wife's ink tank Epson is costing less per page than my Samsung (now HP....) multi function B&W laser printer using alternative cartridges from Amazon.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: To add to this...

It may also be eventually cheaper if you only print occasionally. I would print a page or two maybe once every two months, but the cartridges would just dry out and the Canon PIXMA would demand an almost complete set of new cartridges just to print out a letter (in Black ink too, it still wanted all the colour cartridges). At the time I considered £56 to print out a letter a bit steep. Hoping my Epson will still print after a month of doing nothing, if I keep it out of the sunlight.

[Roland6]

Re: To add to this...

>” Hoping my Epson will still print after a month of doing nothing, if I keep it out of the sunlight.”

Well lockdown should of given you a large stock of “rubbing alcohol”, this combined with some cotton buds, disposable kitchen towels and a lint free cloth gives you the tools to unblock the dried up ink cartridge nozzles you will tend to find in a printer that has been turned off for a few months…

Okay the tri-colour cartridges are an issue because of the small amount of ink they contain, so for these I tend to use the cheaper low capacity cartridges and bin if they haven’t been used in 6 plus months.

[sanmigueelbeer]

Re: To add to this...

Whatever brand of printer you buy, NEVER update the firmware.

For those still loyal to HP, all printer models that end with an "e" means Instant Ink.

A handful of Brother printers can still work with 3rd party ink, however, as long as the printer firmware remains as is.

[Kurgan]

Re: To add to this...

Do not upgrade it unless it does it anyway and you cannot block it. Better block its mac address at the firewall.

[Johnb89]

Re: To add to this...

I liked my Epson specifically because it was happy with 3rd party ink, until it tricked me into a firmware update ('update required for marvellous new features', it said) ... suddenly and totally coincidentally it stopped being ok with 3rd party ink. Arseholes.

[Orv]

Re: To add to this...

Have you ever found 3rd party ink to be worthwhile? My experience with 3rd party toner cartridges has been that they invariably start streaking after only a few hundred pages. I gave up on them as being a scam.

[Roland6]

Re: To add to this...

Yes, I only use third-party inks and toner, just not purchased from eBay or the high street.

However, for inkjets, need to investigate the source of the cartridge bodies, the cheaper ones will be using potentially cartridge bodies that have been refurbished multiple times and cheap ink mixes. For lasers, I simply took a look at the cartridges the maintainer of printers for FT100 companies used and selected my model from their catalogue…

Okay, my ink/toner supplies are not the cheapest, but typically my consumables are about a third the price of OEM toner/ink, I try and buy in bulk when the supplier has a sale on…

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: To add to this...

Cut your losses and ditch it now.

[Pascal Monett]

"an HP support agent told a user"

Well that's one guy who's almost certainly not working at HP any more.

I have abandoned ink a long time ago. I have a Samsung SCX-4600 laser printer, bought in 2017. I don't need to print in color, and I hardly need to print, so when I do need to print, toner doesn't dry up and block me. And when I need to scan, it works, whatever the amount of toner.

I suggest people rethink their printing needs. There are very few actual cases where you need a color copy fo anything, and in our digital age today, a color scan will likely be more useful.

And every scanner scans in color.

[ITMA]

Re: "an HP support agent told a user"

There is a fundamental truth here that is not being said outright:

Inkjet printers are not sold to print. They are sold to sell more ink.

That is the top and bottom of it.

I've worked for two (Japanese) printer manufacturers and injkets "printers" where litterally a loss making "carcass" to sell very profitable ink cartridges.

[Roland6]

Re: "an HP support agent told a user"

>” I have abandoned ink a long time ago. I have a Samsung SCX-4600 laser printer”

Not sure how long it has been there, but don’t remember seeing it previously, but HP Smart now offers to “authenticate” my Laserjet’s toner cartridge. As I use third-party cartridges I’m not tempted to explore the functionality further and so decline the offer…

[Nonymous Crowd Nerd]

Re: "an HP support agent told a user"

For your limited colour printing needs, go to Tesco..

For your limited color printing needs, go to Walmart (probably).

[Sudosu]

Re: "an HP support agent told a user"

..or to Kinko's, say hi to Stelio for me.

[Anonymous Coward]

How about printers that stop when one colour is out ?

I recently junked a perfectly functional OKI that had decided that for the want of a yellow laser toner cartridge (c £100) it wouldn't print in black and white with it's 95% full black toner.

After two hours (that's a very cheap £200 of my time) trying to research any workarounds, it was decided to scrap the f***ing thing.

I note with interest that these consumer initiatives rarely begin - or affect - the UK. Is that coz we is special ?

[Bebu]

Re: How about printers that stop when one colour is out ?

《the UK. Is that coz we is special?》

Youz is special. At least based your politics for the last decade or so :)

My rules for printers:

1. I don't need one.

2. If I must, then a mono laser, not HP. Brother and FujiXerox haven't disappointed and work with linux/cups.

3. Never buy anything multifunctional - usually ends up multi-dysfunctional - goes for printer/scanner/fax combos as much as for tv/dvd/etc combos. Of course, in this, 'smart' phones are my worst nightmare - the amount fFaffing around with an Android 11 phone just to dial a new number. Agent 86 had it a lot easier (rotary) dialing with his shoe phone, ignoring the dogshit.

4. Should the need arise for polychrome printing the local office supply chain store offers the service reasonably price via internet or from media and less reasonably priced on A3-A0. :)

[aerogems]

I remember back when someone got the bright idea to use software in the driver to replace some of the logic that was previously done in dedicated silicon and thought that was probably about as low as companies could go. What a sweet summer child I was.

At this point, I just use my phone as a scanner. There are literally dozens of free apps, like Microsoft Lens, that will take a photo of a document, automatically crop it so only the document is in the image, and even do some manipulations so even if you don't take the image completely dead straight on, it'll make it look like you did. Unless you're a lawyer or something and maybe need to scan hundreds of pages a day -- in which case you wouldn't likely be using some cheap ass inkjet printer -- just forget the printer entirely. There are also fax apps for phones that'll let you send one of those images as a fax. A cheap phone or tablet with Internet access is about all you need now.

Even though I'm sure HP will end up being the winner in this case, I wish all the luck to the two plaintiffs. It'll probably take the EU deciding to take a look at things in a decade or so to finally put an end to it because America is suffering from a bad case of late stage capitalism. We forgot the lessons learned during the gilded age and are now repeating them.

[ITMA]

"I remember back when someone got the bright idea to use software in the driver to replace some of the logic that was previously done in dedicated silicon and thought that was probably about as low as companies could go. What a sweet summer child I was."

You are describing "Windows" or "GDI" printers. Known in the (PC printer) industry as "brain dead printers" because that is litterally what they are.

They are a bare print engine with all the rasterising done on the host PC. An (old) example being the OkiPage 4w.

Crap printers. Always were and always will be.

[aerogems]

Yup. The "Winprinter" which *ahem* complemented the "Winmodem".

I mean, from a purely technical standpoint I can kind of appreciate them as a work of engineering ingenuity, but it doesn't really do much to make me despise them any less.

[Peter Gathercole]

For man years, inkjet (in particular) printers have just accepted a bit map from the computer. This is basically what a winprinter did. Even if the printer was more capable, they still got sent bitmaps wrapped in a minimal amount of PDL, just like Winprinters.

In printers run through CUPS (Linux and MacOS), this has been done either using GhostView or Gutenprint. In Windows the rasterization was done by WDDM.

It's only with the advent of IPP printers (which understand pdf files) that OSs have required printers to do anything more complex than accepting bitmaps.

[Rich 2]

What comes around….

“ It's only with the advent of IPP printers (which understand pdf files) that OSs have required printers to do anything more complex than accepting bitmaps”

PDF is the direct sibling of postscript, so IPP has basically taken us back to postscript printers from 30 (40?) years ago. Postscript printers stopped selling partly because they were very expensive. But I’m sure the cost of implementing it has reduced to stuff-all by now.

I’m not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing - just an observation

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What comes around….

"But I’m sure the cost of implementing it has reduced to stuff-all by now."

It is. I would only ever consider a PS compatible printer. Although you do have to double the check the cheap end ones in case the PS is done in software by the driver. PCL6 comparability is also a nice-to-have or as an alternative. My use case is printing from FreeBSD,Linux and my wifes Windows laptop, so there's no real need for OEM drivers or worry that they may stop supporting it (eg new version of Windows often drop "old" printers) PS and PCL6 are so ubiquitous now it's hard to find an OS+driver that won't support a printer in most of ots functions. Likewise with scanners, I only buy stuff which is supported by SANE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What comes around….

The LaserWriter (for the Mac 128k) understood Postscript about 40 years ago.

At that time, the most common language was the one for Epson line printers (and it is still in use for the POS printers)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: What comes around….

My current model Brother laser printer does ESCP2 as well as PS and PCL6. Maybe something else I don't recall right now too. :-)

Yeah, Apple were always offering expensive options, even 40 years ago :-) PS was quite expensive to license back then. HP and other printers often had it as an optional extra on a plug-in "font" cartridge.

[Roland6]

Re: What comes around….

>” PS was quite expensive to license back then.”

Kyocera had a reasonably priced office postscript printer in 1986. ..

The laugh back then was that the postscript printer was typically running a Motorola 68xxxx configuration that was more powerful than the typical x86 PC of the time and commonly found in Unix workstations…

Aside. Looking back it shows just how cheap IT is today. Even unadjusted for inflation, the Apple LaserWriter price tag of 7,000 USD, isn’t an impulse buy and who would be prepared to pay the inflation adjusted price of 19,000 USD?

[ITMA]

Re: What comes around….

Most of that cost was I believe the cost of licensing both the PostScript interpreter and the RIP board it ran on. Both horrendously expensive from Adobe.

Oki got around this on their Oki DOC-IT multifunction devices by using TruImage (a PostScript clone) and putting the RIP and rest of the printer's "brains" on a full size ISA card with an Intel i860 RISC processor.

I did some handcrafted PostScript to do a fancy demo page while working for Oki. It worked perfectly on their genuine PostScript printers but broke TruImage LOL

[I could be a dog really]

Re: What comes around….

Ah yes, I remember that well.

And Adobe's response (actually I think they got their game in order well before it was needed) was the confusion of Type 1 and Type 3 fonts - where the clones couldn't render a lot of Adobe and 3rd party fonts.

And Apple came up with TrueType as a competing outline (vector) font, which I suspect was partly to blame for Adobe suddenly lowering it's prices once it no longer had a de-facto monopoly.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: What comes around….

The laugh back then was that the postscript printer was typically running a Motorola 68xxxx configuration that was more powerful than the typical x86 PC of the time and commonly found in Unix workstations…

The other laugh was realising that those postcript was also a language. So could send 'print' jobs that would take a strangely long time to 'print' and then produce a single results page. Which kinda upset the ops folks at the Uni's computer centre once they twigged to what we were doing. Wasn't our fault their printer had more compute than our workstations.

[ITMA]

Re: What comes around….

When I did a PostScript programming course BITD the guy running it put it this way:

"Printing is a side effect of executing a PostScript program".

Plus:

"A PostScript program is not 'run' or 'compiled' but 'consumed' by the printer".

Which is true.

My "demo page", which was only 20 or 30 lines of (condensed) handwritten PostScript, selected a font, then scalled that font vertically using a sine wave (plus an offset) and output text along the lines of "Oki OL-480 Genuine PostScript" with the height modulated by the sine wave. On the next line the text was slightly offset and the sine wave shifted in phase by 270 degrees. It then filled the page before doing the final showpage.command.

Getting used to the stack orientated RPN was hard.

I still have the book we were given on the course:

PostScript Language Refence Manual, Second Edition.

ISBN 0201181274

[I could be a dog really]

Re: What comes around….

And as your interesting fact for the day ...

It's list price was around £7k, that of a Mac was around £2k (for some reason, £2295 comes to mind for a Mac Plus when that was the current model). If you wanted a 20Mbyte hard disk, that was another £995. So you were looking at a minimum of over £10k (in 80s money) for your basic setup. And back then, dealers could actually keep some margin on that.

And for some time, the LaserWriter was the most powerful computer Apple sold - 12MHz CPU clock vs 8MHz in the Mac Plus. And 2Mbyte of RAM vs 1Mbyte in the MAC plus. IIRC there were some programs around which could send some graphics jobs to the printer - generating additional bitmap versions of PostScript fonts for use on-screen was one of them.

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: What comes around….

Bearing in mind that a Raspberry Pi easily has enough power to rasterize Postscript, so yes, the cost has come down.

So it's no great surprise that modern printers can render PDF files.

The problem is that according to it's developers, CUPS is going IPP only, and it will be increasingly difficult to drive older printers if that happens.

[Roland6]

Re: What comes around….

>” So it's no great surprise that modern printers can render PDF files.”

But that was also by deliberate intent. From memory, much was made about the realignment of PostScript 3.0 with PDF so that PDF effectively became a subset of PS3, hence any software/device that supported PS3 could also, with no extra work support PDF.

[Roland6]

The Apple laserwriter and is use of PostScript, predates IPP by over a decade…

The MS-DOS print driver produced postscript (as did the subsequent Wfwg driver.).

What IPP really brings to the party is a standard way to access printer management and control functionality.

Interestingly, it would seem the IPad using the Apple AirPrint driver, seems to always send a bit map, even if the printer (via IPP) announces it can accept PDF and the source document is a PDF.

[martinusher]

Ink's not the only problem

I've got an old HP all-in-one that, being a laser printer, doesn't have ink cartridge problems. (My wife's HP -- more trouble than its worth.)

Being old things can wear out. Like the scanner bulb. When that ages the scanner will not settle corretly, it just takes off and tries to self-destruct at random. A new scanner bulb fixes this but the unit design is such that you're supposed to replace the entire scanner assembly. You can find a bulb and replace it but its a really fiddly operation, its obviously never intended as a fix.

I'm never ceased to be amazed at the amount of effort that goes into making things that don't work. The driver for this older printer is easy, unobtrusive and in its Linux incarnation works fine. The Windows software is huge, buggy and may or may not work.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Ink's not the only problem

"You can find a bulb and replace it but its a really fiddly operation, its obviously never intended as a fix."

Look at the list of available "spares" for the big HP floor-standing office devices. The list is fairly small nowadays and is often entire sub-assemblies these days. Got a scanner problem? Replace the entire scanner/lid of the printer it's not just a roller or separator pad.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Ink's not the only problem

"Replace the entire scanner/lid of the printer it's not just a roller or separator pad."

Oops! IF it's not just a roller or separator pad.

It's not that bad. Yet.

[VicMortimer]

Re: Ink's not the only problem

You don't get the bulb from HP, and never did.

That's always been a 3rd party repair.

One of my Brother lasers has a bad fuser roller. The only part available from Brother is an entire fuser assembly, and costs almost as much as a new printer. A 3rd party roller is about $30.

[EBG]

let's hope they win

a personal gripe (Canon - and that's after choosing them for having the least shitty software) won't pint B+W when the colour cartridge is out of ink

[Boris the Cockroach]

Re: let's hope they win

Or print at all when its done the maximum number of head cleans and has to go back to canon for 'fixing'

(reality: taking the inkpad out and pressing power on and FF waiting for it to beep 3 times then release both buttons and press FF to reset the cleaning counter)

[Sudosu]

Re: let's hope they win

I had that with a Brother printer, but you could put electrical tape over the sensor window of the offending cartridge and fool it into thinking it was full.

[Zebo-the-Fat]

Why?

What technical reason do they give for locking out the scan function when the ink runs out? (apart from an attempt to take your cash)

[MrBanana]

Re: Why?

You have answered you own question.

[segfault188]

Scanner stopped working when printer ink ran out

I had an HP Officejet All-In-One printer / A3 scanner which I had to send to landfill because the scanner 'coincidentally' stopped working when non-genuine ink cartridges were rejected. I'd replaced the tiny starter cartridges with extra large non-genuine cartridges containing microchips that were supposed to pass the checks for genuine cartridges. They worked fine for a while, but then the printer wouldn't accept them any more. The starter cartridges had run out so they were rejected too.

Luckily I'd completed scanning the large number of A3 documents which I'd bought the printer/scanner for, but it wasn't worth paying almost the same as the cost of the device to get genuine cartridges. So, it went to landfill and I bought a non-HP laser printer for my occasional printing needs. I'll never buy an HP device again after their deliberate sabotage of my scanner.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Scanner stopped working when printer ink ran out

I had an OfficeJet as well a long time ago. I found out that after 18 months (IIRC) it would just tell yo that the ink cartridges were out of date and stop working. To my mind that's much the same as the complaint discussed here - but this was around the time when you stopped being able to speak to local Trading Standards people for advise and had to call something like Consumer Direct who didn't seem to think this was a problem. Back then I didn't know what I know now - had I done so then I'd probably have kicked up something of a stink.

Like others, I'd never consider a modern HP product.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they even fighting this?

Just say "oops, that was totally by mistake" and use the money you're definitely going to pay to the lawyers, and almost certainly to the plaintiffs, to just update the fucking firmware so it will fax and scan with no ink! ಠ_ಠ

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why are they even fighting this?

Someone asked the lawyers what they should do, and the lawyers obviously recommended fighting it.

[Marty McFly]

Re: Why are they even fighting this?

Did you see how they settled the last one for $1.35M? That is a mouse fart compared to the revenue they make conning people in to buying unnecessary ink cartridges.