this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Laughs in Epson Ecotank
laughs in off-brand toner sitting in my Brother
Laughs in BizHub color laser copier that fell off a truck
God, the amount of times I've had to explain the EcoTank vs HP math to customers in my store, and then STILL have them pick an HP is fucking baffling.
My deepest condolences - the absolutely dire mathematical skills of the purchasing public never cease to horrify me.
They are both terrible. HP for obvious reasons, Epson for its self destruct timers.
If they want a third option, I usually recommend Brother, and even more I tend to recommend used/refurbished. We just don't carry those in my store.
Brother used to be the best choice, until ~2020 when they, too, went over to the dark side and secretly blocked third party toners via firmware auto-updates.
Not sure if any non-shitty printer makers are left, there's only so long that you can recommend "try to find an old Brother printer and disable firmware updates" is an effective choice.
Until the software counter decides that the waste ink pad is full and the thing blows a software fuse.
Epson's official solution to a full pad is to throw out your printer and buy a new one - literally a printer with a self destruct timer. Not very "eco".
Cursory research about this seems you can replace it yourself for $10. Are you sure about this?
Yes, the hardware (a cheap sponge, essentially) that the counter "protects" is easily replaced for little money - but you still can't just reset the counter.
https://epson.com/support/epson-ink-pads-reset-utility-faqs
For "North American users" Epson now offers a tool to reset the self destruct counter one, single, time.
There are third parties now, that offer a reset of the software destruct counter, for a fee.
The fact that a printer sold as "Eco" has a software self destruct that the user requires an unlock key to reset - an occurrence frequent enough to make it a profitable business for third parties to sell such keys - should tell you all you need to know about these printers.
I couldn't confirm, but there supposedly are more premium models with user serviceable waste ink tanks that don't have a self destruct, but most consumer models very much have this limitation.
Thanks for the info, that's absurd. I don't know why more people are talking about this then.