Tell HN: Brother printers now locking out non-OEM paraphernalia
445 by bbarnett | 258 comments
I recently bought a Brother colour laser printer, with the understanding that OEM toner was not chip-locked. Wanting to update the firmware, and being on Linux, I started to look at ways to do it manually. After finding a few guides to do so manually: https://ift.tt/8ga6tdB https://ift.tt/uG4sr2c I decided to poll my printer. I then noticed an OSS/python project to just handle it via a package. However, I noticed this issue: https://ift.tt/vosaE1e Startled, I Googled... and the printer listed is an inkjet. For a second I was relieved, but then started to search for other issues, and found this: https://ift.tt/TUsJG5I Not only is the above, post-sale firwmware update a change of what I understood to be Brother's historical policy, the method is beyond evil. Brother seems to be apparently accepting the ink, but then purposefully making the print quality poorer. I literally cannot think of something, product wise, more evil. It's one thing to say "We refuse to use 3rd party toner", and another to accept the toner, and then just purposefully print like garbage. I was a happy HP customer for years, and only switched to Brother (which, by all accounts, is a much smaller / less renowned company) for the sole reason to not be vendor locked. I will likely return this printer, but thought HN should know what Brother seems to be up to.
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