Printers - and a potential legal issue

[kellys_eye]

ISTR that HP came under scrutiny recently when their printers were discovered to be programmed-to-fail (or something - anyone expand?) after a set time.

Led me to consider what I've recently noticed....

I came across an HP printer and (after cleaning up the mess - giggidy) tested it by printing text/graphics and then a photo-quality output. Both were more than acceptable.

Then I fitted after-market cartridges and did the same. The text/graphics were just as good but the photo quality output was appalling - washed out, hardly any colour content etc. Are HP DELIBERATELY telling the printer to degrade the print quality when it detects after-market cartridges?

If they are, is this legal - especially if they don't tell the customer before purchase? I'm of a mind to swap the brains of an OEM and after-market cartridge just to prove the point but wonder if anyone else has come across this problem?

[Bob225]

that's a bit tin foil hat, aftermarket carts are usually recycled as such the jets have worn in turn it can not produce the finer droplets for the higher resolution

chipped carts have been used for years and yes everything can be monitored, and yes its buried in the eula

[kellys_eye]

Tin foil hat?

How does that equate with my actual results? The text/graphics being as-near-as-dammit identical in quality but any 'photo' - regardless of what kind of paper you try to print on - comes out almost transparent when using after-market cartridges?

Like I said, I'm planing on swapping the chips to see if the effect remains - and even if they put it in their EULA surely they can be had for not making it "clear to the customer" at the time of purchase i.e. small print laws?

[Bob225]

laser printers water mark paper, photocopiers store images on a hard drive/ssd

A worn cart will cause degradation of the print, aftermarket carts use random grades of ink some water based others not

I find the chip on the cart that changes the print quality a bit of a stretch, when most aftermarket carts are recycled, the levels are just reset and its good to go

These chips have been hacked for years anything like this would of been picked up a long time ago

[big-all]

similar idea
several freeveiw recorder boxes over the years after several months start to lock up play up need resetting /disc clean and factory reset
then eventually becoming fairly unusable getting throw in a cupboard after perhaps a year
now around 2012 when we went digital decided these would make good ana-digi converters
guess what they all fired up and worked again recording and playback ok some for a few days or weeks before playing most for months at least one lasting a further year
so the moral is throw them in a cupboard for at least six months and try again you have nothing to loose

[Dave54]

What I found was that the after market cartridges were OK for printing text, but when I occasionally print photos, they were carp.
Faded in a matter of a few weeks.
So I buy the proper HP XL capacity ones as cheap as I can find.
But I don't do a lot of printing.

[Rossl1985]

i wont buy aftermarket printer ink after the last lost messed up my printer to the point i had to throw it away. granted if i had a cheap printer the issues is not so bad but when you have a £200 plus printer it just really not worth the risk.

when i did use them in a printer i found they were hit and miss. so would work nice for photos and some would be really bad with the colours way off and then after it clogged the printer up i gave up using them

[gas4you]

Same here, I only ever use original and new cartridges.

My HP printer does display ‘genuine HP cartridges fitted’ when I replace them, so the printer obviously knows what is fitted.

[kellys_eye]

The issue I have is an inkjet printer but it's one that I was given as 'dud' (that I repaired) so isn't specifically a problem for me, more a curiosity. But we do use after market cartridges in our laser printer (HP) that work just fine - never had a problem.

But since our laser cartridges are £300+ a set (and that's aftermarket prices, OEM set would set us back £800+ ) there is no question that the manufacturers have a high stake in the aftermarket/OEM supply!

[Bob225]

Its the ink and toner where they make their margin, I run a network inkjet and a 2600n colour laser - no issue with HP with in the 25+ years I have use there printers

aftermarket toner is a lot different as its the heat/fuser that does the bulk of the work

Where I use to work we had 12 HP 4+ laserjet's most with 500k pages on them, I changed the supplier and got the genuine toners in bulk at less then half the aftermarket/recycled price