Brother used to be the good guys… Damn.
Right? I used to recommend friends and family invest in a brother laser printer instead of inkjet, especially if they didn’t need color
In case anyone was thinking this applies only to inkjet printers: no, it ONLY seems to apply to laser printers – the thing that Brother used to be known for. Where the article says “ink”, they mean “toner”. There is no ink in a laser printer.
Could this be anything related to government printer tracking requirements?
I believe that only applies to ink jet. You can hardly make secret dots in B&W.
There is something similar for B&W laser printing. Text is never 100% black, but rastered. You can digitally hide a whole lot of information in microraster on a page of printed text.
My first thought was that HP is framing them
Anyone know which ip addresses to block to stop the updates?
If you set the wrong gateway in the static IP settings or a reserved DHCP lease, it won’t be able to get out.
Why? Does the printer need to be connected to the internet at all, if not for firmware upgrades? (Note: LAN != internet)
It’s like every company that wasn’t complete shit just suddenly decided to…go to complete shit.
If regulators don’t stop them from doing it, the CEO’s of publicly traded companies will get the boot from the board for not doing it. They have a fiduciary duty to be as shitty as humanly possible.
We need laws to stop this, but the politicians are all bribed not to.
Unrestrained Capitalism. Without those pesky regulations, companies can charge us all unlimited amounts and not have to consider our rights or health/safety.
That’s what happens when the government allows it openly.
Oh FFS. Not Brother as well. I used to recommend them to everyone. Who is left with unshittified printers?
I’ve got a Lexmark laser printer, and while there are cheaper subscription toners, you can pay the higher price for normal toner, and buy compatibles, for now at least.
Epson inkjets with refillable tanks probably.
Did they ever make the excess ink parts user replaceable?
That they weren’t in some models kept me from getting one when I was in the market a few years ago.
Depending on the frequency of your printing, they can suck as well. Chronically clogged nozzles are maddening.
This. My partner’s office is stuck with “it has to be inkjet” and not toner, and on January their printer got clogged…
You can run a power clean cycle which should help, then just replace the foam pads they saturate with ink for the cleaning
They’re not perfect but they’re still the most consumer friendly option on the market at this point
After talking to support 15 times, they never suggested replacing anything, and power clean wasn’t enough. I’ve long since destroyed the thing out of malignant rage and turned to libraries and copy shops, but it’s good to know that there might have been a solution.
Wait until copy shops start raising their prices cause nobody has printers anymore and you have no choice but to use them
Still cost me less than a new printer every two years if they multiplied their prices by 10.
Yeah, that’s true. That was a pain in the ass when my wife needed good color accuracy.
I don’t know if it matters, but I just bought a Canon laser printer. Didn’t see anywhere about forced subscription options for toner.
If it’s not already under the umbrella of right to repair, do we now need right to refill?
Good that we did not buy a Brother printer.
Nooo, you were the only remaining printer company that wasn’t a customer-hating dumpster fire of a company!
I suggest whoever has old firmware files to upload them to the Internet Archive (if they allow those).
And once again the only available good tech is old 2nd hand.
I got a tiny HP laser from an old job. Must be 15+ years old, runs perfectly and toner is $20 for god knows how many pages.
Looks like nobody can or is willing to do decent printers anymore. I’ll run my Laserjet 1100 till it dies, then I’m done with printing.
Yep. Just getting ready to replace the color laser printer I bought almost 10 years ago. I had been considering a new Brother before this but looks like I’m going the 2nd hand route again (last one was an open box HP from microcenter for $200 lol)
Nice, Brother was the last one standing in my mind.
I’m glad I have an IoT vlan without internet access. Nothing is allowed to phone home here.
I think its time we deprecate most forms of printing. Clearly corporations cannot be trusted to operate these kinds of companies.
Oh, Brother.
