Technology

59440 readers

4729 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

226

Dear Brother Printers: Eat a [Sponsor friendly words here] (www.therecycler.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

53 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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)

load more comments (8 replies)