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/
This article is from 20-fkin-19. Why are we posting such old articles? I just bought a Brother DCP-T820DW and 3rd party ink bottles still work even when I updated it’s firmware.
OP said (paraphrasing) “here’s the last time they got caught doing what they just did to me” when they linked it. It’s an addendum to their rant, not the main focus of it.
Hm, I feel Brother was the last brand which didn’t do that, are there any alternatives?
Oh, that article is also from 2019
Yeah I linked it because it was the best one I could find that was not Reddit.
wtf. well. I guess I’ll have to block this user just in case it’s a spam bot.
changed it to a link at the bottom of the post because people were confused, I linked to the last time brother was caught doing it by “press” but all the most recent examples are on Reddit, and I wont drive clicks to Reddit.
I don’t think there’s any point on spamming articles just for points since there’s no algorithm that would weight their future posts higher. Please just assume the poster had good intentions and found it interesting and wanted to share.
Thanks for sharing an optimistic opinion. That said I still believe there’s a market for accounts that seem real for astroturfing purposes
Get a laser printer. The initial cost is a bit higher, but toner is much cheaper than ink in the long run, and it doesn’t run dry
They don’t. This article is a 4 year old hoax.
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This has been happening for a few years now, yet, I don’t know why people still keep recommending Brother. I guess not all models are affected by this? But it’s likely only a matter of time though until they push it out to all printers.
What we really need is open hardware printers. I mean, if we can put together frikkin 3D printers on our own these days, surely putting together a regular 2D printer should be a much more easier task. Or maybe there just isn’t any demand for 2D printers these days to justify such a project.
Alternatively: just use an online printing service, most of them even mail your printouts to you so you don’t even need to step out of your home, and this will likely be a far cheaper option for casual users who rarely print stuff. Another option is local libraries, at least where I live, they allow you to take free printouts for upto 10 pages, and following that it’s only 1c per page.
I’d love an open source 2d printer.
I imagine the hardest part would be engineering a sheet feeder (unless you use tractor feed paper, lol)
Open source would be amazing!
A printer being stupid (and Xerox’s refusal to give him the source code so he could fix it) was precisely what led Stallman to start the open source software movement.
Yeah I’d go for an open source printer in a heartbeat. I’m so tired of this nonsense.
Same
Same what?
Misleading; this article is from 2019. I don’t believe they do this anymore.
Well shit. I was recommending Brother laser because my oldish B&W duplexing Brother is going strong. Now I have nothing to recommend.
This article is from 2019, so it’s been an issue for a while now.
My new one seems alright
