Consumer printers are mostly cheap to buy. The manufacturer's idea there is that you are tempted to buy a pricing competitive printer and then start pumping money when you need more ink. Why will you be forced to do that? It's simple:
A new printer costs 100$ and a cartridge 75$
Yup, that's how it goes. Not only that, but some printers have initial cartridges are not topped with ink so they will only run you through half the possible pagecount so that, you got it, you need ink sooner rather than later. (HP dollar sign eye$$).
But people are smart and they not only started refilling their own cartridges (bottled ink is cheap), but now there are all sorts of cartridge expansion kits to keep you running longer. An example is below:
Source: TechCrunch
So all is fine, good and dandy but what does HP do?
Oh whale, back in March they released a firmware update for a bunch of their printers:
HP Officejet Pro 8610, HP Officejet Pro 8615, HP Officejet Pro 8620, HP Officejet Pro 8625, HP Officejet Pro 8630, and HP Officejet Pro 6230 ePrinter, HP Officejet Pro 6830 e-All-in-One Printer, HP Officejet Pro 6835 e-All-in-One Printer, HP Officejet 6812 e-All-in-One Printer, HP Officejet 6815 e-All-in-One Printer.
Aparently this firmware update had a feature that would block non-HP cartridges and show an error stating they are damaged or non-compatible due to being non-HP. They key in this change is that it came into effect on September 13th.
Here are some of the messages users are getting:
Cartridge Problem.
The following ink cartridges appears to be missing or damages.
Replace the ink cartridges to resume printing.
Cartridge Problem.
Until cartridges are replaced, make sure the printer is turned on to avoid damage to the printer.
One or more cartridges are missing or damaged.
The ink cartridge listed above is an older generation ink cartridge that does not work in your printer. It can still be used with some older printer models.
If you do not own an older printer model and your ink cartridge is a genuine HP cartridge, contract HP support for more information.
Have some fun checking out the HP forum customers storming once the new implementation came to effect: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/forums/searchpage/tab/message?filter=location&q=cartridge+problem+damaged&location=forum-board%3APostPrint&sort_by=-topicPostDate&s=ec&s2=my
If you are the happy owner of one of the above printers, RIP printing :(
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