Hold on, the cheap ink's coming!

[Chuckiechan]

Interesting read. I had no idea that some printer companies are considering putting chips in their printers to "kill" a "running low" cartridge to prevent it from being refilled. Also designed to kill a generic replacement to keep it from working!

There should be a special place in hell for these people...

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/...s-zay03.html#3

[Cyclone2]

Thats why you pay so much for factory refills, so they can put in microchips to screw ya!!!

Man, that's a bit much!

They must be following RIAA policy for use.

Now we can't even use our own ink!

The printer manufacturers make most of their money from cartridge sales, so must be hitting them hard if lots of generic/refilled are being used. So I suppose it makes some sort of twisted sense to protect their income. But at what cost to freedom?

Cheers
Mick

[cbuddha42]

yep my epson hassomething like that - when the ink gets too low the printer shuts itself off and the machine claims its not even there........first time it happened to me I eventually called tech supp;ort and when I finally got it out of the guy that my printer had locked itself down because i didnt have enough color ink left (I was trying to print B&W).........well lets just say the guys lucky I cant shoot through telephone lines.

[NeoStarO1]

ya we have two printers like that, you run out of one color it shuts itself down. but not because of refils or generic printers. just shuts down if one ink bay is out. maddening when i only print in black majority of the time so if yellow, cyan or blue goes out it shuts down. arrggg.

[skuz]

Let's go back to dot matrix.

[Gutter Ball]

Hmmmm...that must have been what happened to my gf's Lexmark. Her black ink ran out, I refilled it and it printed VERY poorly. So I figure she must have worn out the head and bought her a new cartridge. Same thing happened to the second cartridge after it went empty. Hmmmmm....funny cause my Canon can be refilled 4 or 5 times before the head burns out.

Geez, my Canon can't even handle a brand new cart and still print nicely. :P

My Epson also shuts down when it runs out of any color (and let me tell you how fast that red runs down...).

What I wouldn't give to have my old 440 back. It'd try and print color even if the cart was dry. I miss that poor guy.

[SeanC]

I'd rather pay more for the printer initially and pay less for replacement cartridges (the way it used to be).

Buying a $150 printer and cartridges for it are a third of the original price that's THEFT!!!

Sean