Dear Brother Printers: Eat a bag of dicks!

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨infinitevalence@discuss.online⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.therecycler.com/posts/new-firmware-updates-affect-aftermarket-cartridges/

For a while no I have been a Brother evangelist because they just worked, they did not lock you into first party only printing supplies, and they were overall a good value.

THEN: my printer firmware auto updated and suddenly my toner cartridges were no longer recognized. Its not that they ran out and I put in new ones, simply the ones that had previously worked (3rd party already) just stopped and it reported an error.

I managed to find a guide on downgrading the firmware, and now I am back up and running and auto update is turned off. I am also saving all the little chips from the Brother branded cartridges.

So Dear Brother Printers, Please choke on a bag of dicks. I spent $500ish on a laser color printer so I would not have to deal with the shitification that has happened to inkjet. Seeing hostile and profiteering consumer behavior from other printer companies you decided to copy them for short term gains.

Well I will no longer recommend your products, and I will go out of my way to fix and downgrade your older printers with the sole purposes of putting them back into use and costing you new sales.

1 down, 1 in the cue, feel free to stop being anti consumer and breaking hardware we already paid for.

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Comments

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FawkesGil@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This article is from 20-fkin-19. Why are we posting such old articles? I just bought a Brother DCP-T820DW and 3rd party ink bottles still work even when I updated it’s firmware.

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- JBloodthorn@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  OP said "here's the last time they got caught doing what they just did to me" when they linked it. It's an addendum to their rant, not the main focus of it.
  
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jeena@jemmy.jeena.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Hm, I feel Brother was the last brand which didn’t do that, are there any alternatives?

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- jeena@jemmy.jeena.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Oh, that article is also from 2019
  
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  - tinkeringidiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I bought a new Brother laser printer in 2021 and it has no problem with third party toners.
    
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  - infinitevalence@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah I linked it because it was the best one I could find that was not Reddit.
    
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  - MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    wtf. well. I guess I’ll have to block this user just in case it’s a spam bot.
    
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- The_Eminent_Bon@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’d recommend the Epson EcoTank series. They don’t use cartridges, the ink comes in bottles and are quite cheap and lasts a while. They are inkjet tho, unless you’re doing lots if colour printing, theyre ok. Not sure if theres 3rd party inks.
  
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  - nul9o9@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    My wife has bought 3 of them for her sublimation projects, they’ve all been great. The only issue I’ve had is the god damn windows 11 PC she runs that kills the tcpip port I set up, which deletes her color profiles.
    
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- viking@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  They don’t. This article is a 4 year old hoax.
  
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- slampisko@czech-lemmy.eu ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Get a laser printer. The initial cost is a bit higher, but toner is much cheaper than ink in the long run, and it doesn’t run dry
  
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d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This has been happening for a few years now, yet, I don’t know why people still keep recommending Brother. But I guess to be fair, since there’s no decent printer company left, Brother is the least evil of them?

What we really need though is open hardware printers. I mean, if we can put together frikkin 3D printers on our own these days, surely putting together a regular 2D printer should be a much more easier task. Or maybe there just isn’t any demand for 2D printers these days to justify such a project.

Alternatively: just use an online printing service, most of them even mail your printouts to you so you don’t even need to step out of your home, and this will likely be a far cheaper option for casual users who rarely print stuff.

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- infinitevalence@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Open source would be amazing!
  
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  - realitista@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah I’d go for an open source printer in a heartbeat. I’m so tired of this nonsense.
    
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  - Jasper_Ted_Vidal_Tale@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    @infinitevalence Me too
    
    @d3Xt3r
    
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- ZapBeebz_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I think Brother is typically recommended because their laser printers aren’t anti-consumer bullshit, and are generally well built and supported.
  
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  - d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    * weren’t
    
    At least as of three years ago, even their laser printers have started being subject to enshittification.
    
    Eg: old.reddit.com/…/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nong…
    
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- RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I’d love an open source 2d printer.
  
  I imagine the hardest part would be engineering a sheet feeder (unless you use tractor feed paper, lol)
  
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Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Misleading; this article is from 2019. I don’t believe they do this anymore.

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maniacal_gaff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I spent a bunch of money a few years ago to get the laser(ish) print+scan+telegram+allthethings Brother MFC-3750CDW. Imagine my rage when I found that this thing has a document feeder but no way to scan both sides of a document stack. Not even with a manual step in the their software such as flipping the stack over and running the back sides through. Infuriating and I didn’t realize it until about a year later when I suddenly had to scan a ton of stuff.

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- lemmylommy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  How is it brothers fault that you bought something without checking if it has the features you need?
  
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  - maniacal_gaff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Yeah I mean who doesn’t read up to page 630 of the manual find out that the lack of automatic 2-sided scanning actually means it won’t even do manual 2-sided scanned, despite nearly ever scanner on the market supporting that.
    
    …brother.com/…/cv_hll3290cdw_use_oug_b.pdf
    
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- Rentlar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Many PDF software (the stock scanning app on my Linux distribution, PDF24 and PDFSam for example) can let you merge two documents with alternating pages.
  
  So I scan the stack, flip it over and scan it again. The flipped over ones are mixed in but I have to select reverse order to what was scanned. It works best on small stacks of 10 to 30 pages, you have to double check the page count for them to be the same. If the scanner mistakenly skips scanning one a good chunk of the doc ends up out of order.
  
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  - AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    In Linux I’m pretty sure you can do that directly with xsane too.
    
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- Osa-Eris-Xero512@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  My L3770CDW can. Maybe that's the difference between the two, we could never figure it out when we bought it.
  
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  - maniacal_gaff@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It is. There’s a feature table in the manual and it’s one of the glaring differences between the two. I never even thought to look into the details that closely, and even if it doesn’t have the hardware to flip the paper around and scan the back, it should be a simple software feature to add.
    
    For some big stacks I’ve just got the pair doc_front.pdf and doc_back.pdf and I was thinking about making my own stupid script to interleave the two docs into one.
    
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Lightrider@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Fuckingcapitalists

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badbytes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Yeah I was a previous fan of brother. Just worked in Linux. But if this story is true, not cool.

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i2ndshenanigans@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I just had to get rid of a canon printer that I’ve had for the last 10 years or so and I had been looking for a printer that I didn’t have to deal with this. As much as I hate HP I got one of their printers that use the tanks you fill with bottles of ink and so far so good. Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink. I’ve purchased a 3rd party bottle of ink and it still prints like their first party bottles so I think that’s the route I’m going from now on.

Now they have some other bullshit you have to deal with like having a friggin account to manage the printer locally so I just set it up on the screen itself. I blocked its outbound connection to on the firewall so it can’t connect out and I haven’t had any issues. I sniffed the traffic I did see it trying to upload something after a print so they are more than likely trying to steal my data but I’ve been working on IT for 20 years so they won’t get my shit but I wouldn’t recommend it for someone that doesn’t have the ability to do that.

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- RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink.
  
  Some of them apparently DRM the waste ink pads instead.
  
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  - i2ndshenanigans@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Well shit. I print a few times a year so we will see what kind of crap I have to deal with.
    
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guyrocket@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Well shit. I was recommending Brother laser because my oldish B&W duplexing Brother is going strong. Now I have nothing to recommend.

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- stopthatgirl7@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This article is from 2019, so it’s been an issue for a while now.
  
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  - guyrocket@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I bought their brand toner that I've been using for years and I've not had any problems. But if they're doing this then I'm not going to recommend their brand any longer.
    
    I don't print a lot so I hope this printer and toner last.
    
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- ripcord@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  My new one seems alright
  
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6daemonbag@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I had a sweet Brother for ten years at home. It was huge but reliable in every way that I needed. Finally shit the bed and my wife’s work got her a Canon and it is just garbage.

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