This may be in the wrong area, if so, sorry. A friend (non-surveyor) posted a link to this reddit thread Reddit Thread titled "What is a "dirty little (or big) secret" on Facebook last night about an industry that you have worked in, that people outside the industry really ought to know?". It is EXTREMELY LONG!! While I could find nothing about surveying on there (really tough to look at it all, especially with collapsed threads), I did find something very interesting about printers/plotters. Apparently "XX" (one of the big boys in plotters and computers for decades) has been building craap on purpose for a few years to get you to re-buy every so often (new world business model). Well, (according to this thread) they went so far as to code up some firmware updates that makes your printer crash if you are not using "XX" specific printer cartridges. Now, I'm not trying to bad mouth "XX" here, I get pestered to update the firmware on my Brother MFC-6490cw fairly often, but I just ignore it. After hearing that poster make mention of that other company ("XX") doing that with the firmware, I'm really glad that I haven't updated in case Brother was going to do the same thing, because I use non-OEM cartridges. Again, I'm not saying that they were or weren't.
It's just some food for thought.
Carl
In general, it's called "planned obsolescence". Just about every half-way major product we buy has that figured into it.
I believe that HP printer cartridges "expire" after a set date--whether or not they are actually empty.
I just found something that sucks up more time than Facebook. reddit. Haha. Thanks Norm!
I've always had bad luck with refilled or generic ink. I've had a Brother, HP, and Epson all give me problems with refilled ink. I'm pretty sure refilled ink killed my HP7000 Wide Format. I wonder from your post if X can equal both H and P. Or is it XeroX? They both seem to fit your description.
> I just found something that sucks up more time than Facebook. reddit. Haha. Thanks Norm!
I know, right?
>I wonder from your post if X can equal both H and P. Or is it XeroX? They both seem to fit your description.
go with your first thought. And again, it was the firmware that was accused of causing the problems, not the non-OEM ink, per se.
My Brother laser printer starts complaining about low toner when the cartridge is about half empty. If you put black electrical tape over a hole you can kill that sensor and not get nagged.
Then after some number of pages there is a gear on the cartridge that gets turned far enough to trip another switch and it nags again. If you ignore it, you get to a point where it refuses to print any more from that cartridge. If you get out a screwdriver, take off a gear, and rotate it before reassembly, you can print about another ream before the image starts to get faded.
-------
Software isn't the only thing getting sold as a service instead of a product. Now printing is starting to look like a service.
I just hope the car manufacturers don't start putting the cars in a cripple mode after so many miles, requiring service at an authorized maintenance shop. They could put the independent mechanics out of business and increase their own profits.
Anything with an embedded computer chip could be rigged with trivial effort. Your microwave oven could only cook so many meals. Your clothes washer do only so many loads. Your car GPS only so many miles.
Is there anything consumers can do? Legislators?
Excellent observations.
