Canon: Chip supplies are so bad that our ink cartridges will look as though they're fakes The ongoing semiconductor shortage has reached the point that it's affecting one of the most-hated aspects of printing – copy-protection chips on ink cartridges. That's right, the function that enables printers to scream about foreign bodies if you dare to use a third-party cartridge or potentially prevent the printer from …
I mean, why make something convenient and easy to use (I know, I know, they're printer manufacturers) when you can just blame covid and have your customers click through warnings and get an unsatisfactory experience?
I have two printers at home. A laser printer because I don't print much and toners last a long, long time. An inkjet because I have a model railway and it's useful for printing out top layers of scenery.
The laser printer is an HP of some description and is hard wired in. Every time I try to use it I have to fight for five minutes before it finally wakes up and starts printing. If I accidentally tell it to print something in colour it will stall for half an hour before finally rendering a B&W version.
The inkjet is a Canon of some ilk. A cheap unit that only has a wifi connection. When I want to print something on it it accepts the request immediately and springs into life. On one occasion I needed to scan something (a very rare event) but it did that without bleating either.
There's obviously something seriously wrong with one of these printers because it's not operating normally. But I'm not going to mention it to Canon in case they fix it..
:)
"The inkjet is a Canon of some ilk. A cheap unit that only has a wifi connection. When I want to print something on it it accepts the request immediately and springs into life..."
Seconded. I have a cheapo Canon inkjet connected on network through WiFi and it prints without complaints from any PC or phone (app required) connected on the network. It scans without complaints, and also prints fairly good photos. Perhaps even more importantly, it accepts third-party cartidges without problems (even detects ink levels - it starts to complain and say it's empty a while before it actually becomes unusable, but I think that's just the software that's set up to 'encourage' more ink consumption).
As to this:
"There is no negative impact on print quality when using consumables without electronic components"
I should effin' hope so!!
When I was in school some bonehead student wrote a few lines of assembly code that took control of the mainframe printer and not only suppressed the CR but kept the printhead at 1,1. The printer's ink ribbon caught on fire.
I know this because when I went to pick up my batch job I got yelled at. Turned out to be another student with the same name. Honest!
HPs Takeover of Samsungs printer division, hasn't faired as well either. Given my SCX 32500W lazer printer from ~ca. 2010, (Which is still only on its third Cartrige),. is also not directly surpported under any current macOS either. though it can be massaged into working if only temperaliy before the drivers somehow manage to bugger themselves up again.
You are confusing Canon for Samsung, but on the whole yes thats largely correct. Sadly one of the first things to get hit was the Android ( iOS Mobile Print App. Which still prevents you from sharing scaned Documents via WhatsApp chats.
...And it was the Samsung Printers that were re-badged as HP's...
"Detecting a cartridge that's run out of ink? Easy. Just look at the output."
Knowing that you're about to run out of ink/toner and should order more is somewhat helpful, though (as is knowing which of the 8 ink cartridges has run out - sometimes it's not obvious from looking at the output) :)
"as is knowing which of the 8 ink cartridges has run out - sometimes it's not obvious from looking at the output"
Every time I occasionally use my Epson inkjet I do its "nozzle check". Sure enough the black is faint - and only "cleaning" fixes it. However I suspect that the process also "cleans" the colours unnecessarily?
"Detecting a cartridge that's run out of ink? Easy. Just look at the output."
Surely someone somwehere has a clever way for the printer to detect cartridge ink levels without any chippery on the cartridge. Even it's just a transparent window in the cartidge combined with an LED + photodetector?
I wonder if the print quality of the pages will be lower. Isn't that the standard curse of non-OEM cartridges ?
If the quality does go down then that would indicate that the firmware is doing this when the relevant ID chip is not detected.
Rinse and repeat for all the other claimed problems with non-genuine cartridges.
That just depends on the quality of the toner/inks. The only reason to buy OEM cartridges is to have a reasonable assurance the quality is identical across replacvements. If you supply your non OEM cartridges from a supplier that can do the same there are really no problems. If the supplier doesn't control it there could be issues, as with any other product.
That could put them in troubled waters if evidences are found. I think they just play the FUD card. People trying to find if that is true or not will found surely someone who used low-quality supplies and complained about that.
What is really missing IMHO is reputable third party brands - there are some local ones, but not some widespread ones. Probably because many fear some kind of litigation for IP infringement or the like.
The majority of remanufactured cartridges in the UK and, indeed, Europe are manufactured by one North London company called Environmental Business Products. If you buy an own brand cartridge from a major retailer it more than likely comes from them.
I buy third party printer cartridges all the time for my aging Epson SX535WD from Partridge Ceople. Compared to the official Epsons, I see NO difference. I've had the had color cartridge non-working from the off, but they've been very good at sending a new one in those rare instances.
I have an Epson multifuction printer that generally works OK with Ubuntu. But recently I could not get it to print (when I was in a hurry of course) .
I copied the file to the old womens Win10 box and attempted to print. A message box popped up stating non Epson cartridge was I sure I wanted to risk printing with it. Printed OK and since has printed from Ubuntu.
Some years ago the Lexmark driver software on Linux urged me to "upgrade" the firmware. When I clicked the button for more information it, commendably, told me that the "upgrade" would prevent me from using "non-authorised" cartridges.
I declined.
The printer is no less shit.
Get a laser, or an ecotank.
-A.
Contrary to assertions, paper is one of the nastier items to manufacture (quite nasty chemicals used) and has a very limited number of recycle uses (the papermaking pul[ing process chops wood lignin fibres up and it can only get "so short" before it no longer works as paper)
Coated paper is virtually impossible to recycle into anything except building insulation
In a lot of cases it's virtually impossible to compost too, thanks to the preservatives/dyes/varnishes added
The mantra is "reduce", "reuse", "recycle" - it's greener to not print at all and jumping straight to the recycling stage is the greenwashing way of assuaging a guilty conscience
Ink cartridges, on the other hand are just bits of plastic and surprisingly easy to recycle if they can't be reused (most can be refilled)
That said, the cost and energy expenditure of recycling most plastics (or paper) is so high that you'd usually expend 10% as much oil simply burning the old stuff as fuel and manufacturing new items from virgin materials
It's complex - and "recycling" only really works for a limited range of stuff.
In most cases it's a horrendous expenditure of resources. Plastics/paper in particular are extremely low value materials with a very high recycling cost - should we REALLY be spending 20p recycling a soft drink bottle that cost 2p to manfacture and distribute (and constitutes 0.1p worth of raw materials), into another 2p bottle or is it better to find a better way of dealing with it at end of life, or finding a better value proposition for the distribution of the content?
"or finding a better value proposition for the distribution of the content?"
Lay pipes to every house and distribute the water in bulk. If people want to add taste they can buy a flavour concentrate and fill their own container too. There are more radical propositions that flavoured, sugared, caffeine laden drinks are not essential anyway.
Some of us old enough to remember when virtually all computer input consisted of 80-column punch cards might also remember that they were eminently recyclable. They became slightly darker at each processing.
As a bureau operation, we got through hundreds of boxes of cards. There would usually be a carton (5 boxes worth) of chads by the time our scrap man called to empty the pallets in the loading bay.
The proceeds paid for various gatherings for staff, all catering and entertainment being fully funded. There were many of these partaken of ======>
And they will happily pay to help keep used plastic from ending up in the hands of refillers, who would gladly see it re-used several times before it hit's a recycle bin.
Cannon users may be able to trick their MFP's by transplanting the chip from their old cart BTW. It may not accurately report prints unless you reset it though. But chip resetters would be dangerous circumvention devices that only commie mutant traitors to Alpha Complex would have access to right?
Fortunately I just happen to have a perfectly legitimate EEPROM programmer right over here...
The reason why manufacturers have a "recycle" option is to starve the remanufacture market. Currently many charities distribute postage paid cartridge bags which send empty cartridges to a London company. The company pays the charities a few pennies to the for every filled bag. The company refills the cartridges and re-brands them for major retailers. By offering a recycle option the manufacturers disrupt this market and rob from the charities at the same time.
"If the price is anything like HP - I assume they end up in a bank vault as some sort of currency reserve."
Speaking with a (now long retired) university procurement guy, he urged us to consider anything except HP for our purchases
Paraphrasing his explanation, his department had run a lot of testing of printers of various types and duty cycles and HP consistently came out as the most expensive, worst quality of the big names, with running costs ten+ times higher than several of the competing makers
This was BEFORE the split into HP/HPE
It matched what I'd already experienced but it was nice to see it actually quantified
Unfortunately he'd been unable to set policy on printer purchases because politics. Attempts to ban HP purchases had met with ferocious resistance, as had attempts to ban personal printers (anything smaller than a workgroup printer has eye-wateringly high cost of operation). Some groups had individual cheap inkjets on each desk and were paying incredibly high figures comnpared to using a higher quality workgroup lase, let alone a departmental one
And of course, people buy cheap printers without considering their print volumes. When I did the sums I found that a few £10k departmental lasers were £100k cheaper over 5 years than buying several more £1k workgroup printers - and then spent 4 years being obstructed by manglement who refused to spend that much on a printer when cheaper ones were available
>Where do they think the official cartridges end up?
I'm not sure about 'landfill' but I can see that third-party cartridges would get discarded as they are intentionally different to the OEM cartridges so as to not infringe design. So a supplier would want to only refurbish and refill official OEM cartridges.
This is an area where the EU could usefully 'interfere', just as it did with USB phone chargers.
The whole inkjet industry is a bunch of malicious jerks who'll be the second against the wall when the revolution comes. (With apologies to Adams, D).
Brother in law is looking for cheap-ish replacement cartridges for printer from "well known Highly Profitable company" - we check the specs. Aparently 900 pages of printing - we just laughed. I think I can only get around 100 pages from the bastards. I don't print a lot but in studying an MBA (boo, hiss) I really like to proofread ONE final copy in paper, of a paper. Some mistakes just stand out like dogs bollocks on paper when they parse fine on a screen.
But the absolute fuckery of NOT letting me print black only when, say, the cyan is empty is beyond the tears of satan. It is not a coincidence that I have stopped recommending that same company for any enterprise computing gear.
No you don't understand. They need to add a bit of cyan to black to make the black look blacker.
They also can't just add the cyan to the black ink ahead of time because *mumble*.
And they can't possibly let you, on your* printer, print off a page of text that isn't a perfect black because that would degrade your customer experience much more badly than not being able to print in the first place because you're out of cyan.
I have an old Canon A3 printer which has just achieved end-of-life (persistent and repeated paper jams). But before I perform the experiment to find out whether WEEE really is the sound of an A3 printer dropped from several tens of metres until just before it hits a hard surface, I need to source a replacement.
A3 printers aren't standard consumer fare ... the choices are limited and the prices are (with a few exceptions) high. At the moment the leader is one by Brother.
Any other suggestions?
In all honesty, I can't remember if the Brother color MFP I bought threw an error when I put non-OEM toners into it, but if it did, it was straightforward to get around, and the output quality is still just fine for me. (if I really need a nice looking color page, I have an ink drinking photo printer that gets fired up on such occasions.)
When my beloved HP LaserJet 110 died after 20 years (paper feed issues, no spares available) I replaced it with a cheap Brother. It has nothing like the build quality, and I'll be pleased to get five years out of it, but it prints well, plays nice with Linux and cheerfully accepts knock-off toners at well under a tenner each (OEM £31.99).
Overall good enough that I bought a second one for another site.
I have a HP Officejet Pro 7740 (MFM) hooked up to a Mac, and that works well, even with imitation cartridges (provided you follow the warning you get from suppliers: stop updating printer firmware).
Not only does it a decent job printing on A3, it can do so doublesided and comes with two separate paper drawers. What's more, it also scans A3, and I even managed that through the ADF. It has no need to turn the paper for doublesided scans because like all modern HP scanners it has a scanner strip for each side. I tend to use it for diagrams as A4 doesn't quite cover my needs.
However, it really doesn't like being inactive for a couple of weeks, then you will have to run one of two cleaning cycles, even when you properly powered it down before travelling so the head was capped.
And yes, it also does a decent job for A4.
I tend to switch 50/50 between original and imitation just to compare ink quality and to be honest, even with printing pictures there is hardly any need for colour corrections.
I can't tell you about the fax facility, though, as I have not used it, ever. Come to think of it, I have not used a fax for at least a decade now..
"However, it really doesn't like being inactive for a couple of weeks"
This is standard problem #1 with _ALL_ inkjets.
If you're not printing every other day, don't buy one.
Lasers don't have this problem, are only slightly more expensive and are generally MUCH cheaper to run
Oh, I know. The problem is that an A3 printing inkjet is relatively easy to find and is cheap to run provided it's either an Ecotank or has alternative ink available (something I check before I even buy a printer).
A3 size laser printers are *far* more expensive and, due to rarity, also less likely have alternative toner providers available.
Hence me taking the occasional cleaning hit, and it's also the reason I didn't buy a separate laser printer for A4 - this way, the inkjet gets more to print and thus spends less time inactive.
If you have the space, look out for an office copier. They're pretty useful and the toner tends to be much more cost effective.
You can often see second hand ones on Craigslist or the like for not very much money. You do have to figure out how to get it home mind, and better to get something that has had a good service history.
Could you try fitting a cheap replacement pickup roller from $ONLINE_TAT_BAZAAR? I got my 14-year-old laser printer working again recently using a £3.33 part and a youtube tutorial, though an a3 printer might be harder to source bits for. If the alternative is binning it then might as well have a go...
get yourself a rubber kit. The standard problem with all printers that are experiencing paper jams is worn out rubber pickup/friction rollers/worn springs and almost all of these are replaceable
The lifespan of most paper drawer pickup rollers is around 50k sheets. If they're smooth/shiny, they need replacing
search term 'Brother [model] consumable kit' (or roller kit or refurb kit) is your recommended starting point
...with no DRM issues!
No, really. I reached the end of the ancient ribbon, so it's time to put in a brand-new one. Being a Remington, though, I can't just drop in the plastic spools; I have to wind the ribbon onto the built-in metal spools. But first I had to go buy nitrile gloves because fresh ink.
I also learned they keys were REALLY sticky. Not the mechanisms; the key caps themselves. Then it occurred to me that, after sitting umpteen years in Grandpa's dental office -- probably in his private back office, that Mr. Heavy Smoker left quite a bit of tar behind. Amazing how a light swipe of a Clorox wipe lifted that away, and they both look AND feel clean again.
"We are paying millions of credits for the ensuring of unquestionable [objects'] origin."
"Millions? That means millions of motives for counterfeiting."
"But we are paying for the removing of the motives!"
"Money creates motive. At those rates you're probably subsidizing an entire [object] black market."
--Howard Tayler, Schlock Mercenary book 6 bonus story
(If it were just one of the 20 years of strips, I'd post a link, but bonus stories are only for chumps who pay for Schlock.)
Its simple supply and demand. If you artificially inflate a price, a black market will rise to skim some of the margin. If you charge a reasonable price, you still turn a profit, but there is little margin for the black market to try to take.
The world is built on greed, though, not "is it enough?"
I remember heading to the local retailer for replacement tape for my mum's label printer. There it was, on the shelves.
Next to it, was the exact same product (same length of tape, too), for a pound LESS. To get this deal, all I had to do was carry home a whole brand new label printer and eight batteries.
I think Epson did indeed do the smart thing here - that ink is about as expensive as imitation ink so there's no earthly reason why you would buy "fake" ink.
If they had an A3 printer which could do edgeless I'd be interested, but sadly not. That said, I'm moving to laserprinters anyway - less hassle.
Can i just say Fsck off HP, I won't be buying any of your crappy printers! My 15 year old Epson Stylus is still going strong 3rd party ink carts cost me £1 each from Ebay and thanks to OpenWRT on my router and my printer connected to the routers USB port I can even print to it over the network.
Our printer died messily - as in the print head itself sprung a leak somehow - two weeks before the schools shut last year. Took the plunge on a more expensive cannon printer/scanner with ink tanks instead, and apart from one scary moment during setup while it slurped down so much yellow I was expecting to find a very hard to explain stain on the table it has been fine ever since.
Even better is I'm still using the initial bottles of ink it came with, despite feeding more paper into it for kids worksheets than I ever thought possible and it's already paid for itself.
My guess is that the chips have some tamper proofing on board in a (vain) attempt at making it more difficult for third-party suppliers to recycle these. The irony of this situation is so thick you could insulate a huge building with it.
I find it interesting that on the Internet there will always be trolls around that will take the other position.
But when debating cartridge based printers, there is an universal agreement that the printer OEMs are pure evil. They will indeed be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
BTW: Hey Canon! Care to explain me why a defective print head means the scanner unit cannot operate? Or why running out of ink in the first place immediately fried the print head? (up to that point no streaking on the page had been observed, but I'm sure Canon wasn't wrong in claiming it was empty -- they would not lie, would they?)
I had an HP LaserJet 2000 I bought in the late 90s or early '00s that printed flawlessly even on the day I got rid of it.
Unfortunately the old driver I used for it that had survived two windows upgrades failed to make it into Windows 10, so last year it was gotten rid of. Heavy beast. Slow. Noisy. And unstoppable, as most HP hardware was once upon a time...
I remember listening to the ENRON auction, which was an early Online Event.
People were snapping up the second-hand LaserJet 2000 boxes for a hundred quid more than the retail price of the 2100 which replaced it, and which came with fresh toner and a warranty.
It's an AUCTION! It MUST be cheap!
How do you get your canon printer to scan with empty ink cartridges? I ask for myself and a poster above. (I currently own a Canon Pixma something or other which demands a complete new set of cartridges whenever I want to print anything, and refuses to scan anything if it hasn't got print capability too.)
Well that sucks - I own and Epson CX9400Fax that refuses to send faxes if ink needs replacement but scan function still works. In fact, I haven't replaced ink cartridges in over a decade since I have a laser for printing. The Epson is a dedicated scanner now since I don't need the fax function anymore.
I agree. I bought two Epson Eco-Tank printers to replace workgroup printers because we no longer print 500 page plus reports for customers - they accept PDF copies. It was an good move and reduced costs, improved print quality and pleased the users. It also saved the pain in the neck which was discovering that toner cartridges had "caked" reducing the laser print quality and needing cartridges and transfer belts to be swapped out before their scheduled EOL.
The Eco-Tanks have performed well and their major use these days is for printing paper copies of travel documents and notices for the site where they are installed. Occasionally an engineer will print off a manual so they have a handy reference that doesn't need a device to read.
HP can suck my ass. I was in the middle of a 5pg single-sided print job; and the printer displayed "INVALID PRINT HEAD DETECTED!", and wouldn't print.
This was a 16mo printer, less than 2k pages on it, with co-incidentally brand-new ink in it.
I'd paid ~$400cad for the printer new 16 mos ago; 4 mos before the warranty expired. HP's spares site (even with a corporate login) told me the print head was no longer available; and the only option was to replace the printer.
I've had HP printers forever. Been a fan-boi even. But after that; fuck you in your actual assholes.
I threw away an HP printer because on the day I needed to print a boarding pass it decided the ink cartridge was not kosher and it wouldnt use it. Heap of crap! I also wouldnt buy Canon for the same reason. I currently have an Epson that has ink reservoirs that I can fill from liquid ink bottles... it was no more expensive than the others and operates as a scanner as well.
If I were HMG and banning people from giving away plastic bags then I would ban the sale of printers that dont use refillable systems like the Epson one. But then again, unlike current politicians and civil servants I wouldnt be accepting the back handers and bribes required to keep this abuse of the public going.
The baggy they sent with the toner cartridge said they were going to refill it.
With the current work-from-home edicts, there is of course far lower than usual demand for toner, so surely there is a large pile of cartridges ready for refilling.
Or did Canon lie? Perhaps WEEE should find out what's really happening with those cartridges...
fyi:
Canon has an official Englsh-language page to complement the German one... there's no need to mess with the German tentacle (unless you're into tentacle anime... in which case.... we need pics :p )
https://www.canon-europe.com/support/business-product-support/interim-toner/
RE: "HP got in touch to say: "HP uses original HP chips in its ink and toner cartridges to ensure the best possible customer experience while protecting against the counterfeiting of its supplies. The company leverages a globally diverse supply chain to remain agile and adaptable in the face of changing industry dynamics."
Or, they could just allow people to use their own ink. Radical idea, I know.
I understand their excuse that they subsidise the cost of the printers with the profits from the ink, but even assuming that is true, perhaps they'd be better just setting the printer price so it covers the cost of development, manufacture and a reasonable profit.
But that isn't the way Printer Manufacturers work.
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