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Has Big Brother taken over YOUR printer...and secretly made sure it can only use ink more expensive than champagne?
29/09/2016
Computer giant HP is facing a backlash after blocking customers from using cheaper ink cartridges in its printers
On Tuesday two weeks ago, in homes and offices all over the world, something very strange started to happen. Without any warning, tens of thousands of printers suddenly stopped working.
Bewildering error messages appeared that stated that there was a 'cartridge problem', or an 'older generation cartridge' was present, or more puzzling still, that 'one or more cartridges are missing or damaged'.
Users were perplexed, and more than a little frustrated. The cartridges in their printers were neither missing, nor damaged, nor indeed old (although they were, of course, expensive), and yet still the troublesome error messages popped up.
So what had happened? Within a few hours, it quickly became clear that the source of the mystery lay in the fact that all the printers were manufactured by the same company — Hewlett-Packard, or HP. More specifically, the models in question all came from the OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X ranges, which cost anywhere between £70 and several hundred pounds.
Unbeknown to the thousands of unsuspecting users around the world, HP had secretly installed the technological equivalent of a time-bomb in their printers, which effectively rendered them useless if their owners had installed cartridges which were not made by HP.
The company is unapologetic about such a move, which it brazenly calls an 'update'. Its aim, a spokesperson said, was 'to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property'.
What HP has done is the equivalent of a car manufacturer such as Vauxhall ensuring that its cars can only run on petrol manufactured by Vauxhall. Such a move would, of course, provoke a huge outcry, and might even be against the law.
But so far, apart from some grumbles on social media, there has been no collective expression of outrage that a computer giant is effectively remotely disabling products that customers have bought in good faith, and then forcing those same customers to buy its own branded products that are more expensive.
Why have we taken this lying down? How are the likes of HP able secretly to access our printers? And what can we do to stop them?
There's no doubt that most of us loathe printers. A necessary evil, we are all too accustomed to their unreliability, the shocking cost of their ink, and their mysterious capacity to stop communicating with our computers, just when we're in a hurry to get a document printed.
And yet most of us need them, as there are times we still want to read something on a piece of old-fashioned A4 paper rather than on an iPad or some other screen.
All of us know that using printers is an expensive business, that firms sell the printers at a loss, then slap horrifically huge margins onto their ink cartridges — which is where the likes of HP really coin it in.
The Good news is: That Cartridge World quality refilled cartridges are fitted with new micro chips that have not been affected and represent great value for money at approximately half the price!
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-3812857/Has-Big-Brother-taken-printer-secretly-sure-use-ink-expensive-champagne.html#ixzz4LelfZeVL
