Technology

73792 readers

3823 users here now

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

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
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, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

L3s@lemmy.world

enu@lemmy.world

technopagan@lemmy.world

L4s@lemmy.world

L3s@hackingne.ws

L4s@hackingne.ws

481

Brother denies using firmware updates to brick printers with third-party ink (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@lemmy.world

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 81 points 5 months ago (3 children)

This sounds accurate based on the user reports. They're not bricking anything, they just make you do manual registration if you use third party toner.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 40 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Which is weird because one of Rossman's sources claimed that they were on the phone with Brother, asked how to do manual registration, and were told it couldn't be done unless a genuine Brother toner cartridge was installed.

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 28 points 5 months ago

That person was just plain wrong. The same source showed the manual registration sheets under their reddit post.

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 12 points 5 months ago

Maybe support agent was being lazy, or ignorant.

The portal the agents use should be able to bring up internal info via keywords like "colour registration"

[–] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 10 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Customer service reps have almost the same information that a customer would have. The only difference is they have a few more tools available to them.

Asking policy questions or anything at this level would likely get no useful info.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Only if the customer service is unempowered garbage.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago

Welcome to the real world.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Rossman's "source" was a 3 year old unconfirmed Reddit post.

[–] LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 5 months ago

I have a black and white brother laser printer that had 3rd party toner that worked fine for years, it was even a two pack of toner. Then I installed a firmware update and immediately it threw an error stating trouble with the toner and refused to print. Tried the unopened 2nd toner, same error. Looked and searched all over online and could not find the previous firmware to try a roll back.

I then purchased a new two pack of 3rd party toner from a different brand and it worked just fine. My guess is with each new firmware they also have a set of chips to block (each toner has a chip on it) that they bundle into to update.

I'll never install another firmware update for that printer now.

I would consider what they did as bricking my toner.

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Link? Where does it say that and how does one do that?

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 8 points 5 months ago

The links are in the article.

I don't know the specific process, but usually it's printing a registration page and then entering the offsets on the printer's control panel.