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HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on multifunction printers when ink runs low

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/hp-fails-derail-claims-bricks-scanners-multifunction-printers-102286365

HP Inc. has failed to shunt aside claims in a lawsuit that it disables scanners and other functions on its multifunction printers whenever the ink runs low

HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on multifunction printers when ink runs low::HP Inc. has failed to shunt aside claims in a lawsuit that it disables scanners and other functions on its multifunction printers whenever the ink runs low

37 comments

hoot

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Do people not know what "bricking" means? This article is about HP disabling features if the printer runs out of ink.

If they bricked it, it would be unrecoverably broken, never to function again.

mwguy

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A more accurate term would be that they ransom the functionality of the product they sold until you pay the ransom.

fubo

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Or maybe they engineered a "multifunction" device with shitty error handling: if any subsystem has an error, all functions fail, even those that don't depend on that subsystem.

A junior engineer filed a bug report about it and submitted a patch that allows subsystem errors to gray-out only certain functions in the UI.

The PM didn't consider the bug launch-critical enough to merit an engineer's time to review the patch. One senior engineer did briefly look at the patch and said "sorry, we can't alter the UI without brand & design review, i18n, and a lot of shit you don't wanna do."

The system shipped with the bug intact. The PM was rewarded for launching the product on time, and got promoted into a different position.

A year later when the users start fussing, the people on the team say "we never heard of that problem."

(This is hypothetical. Tech companies do be like that sometimes though.)

mwguy

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Just because they accidentally made ransomware doesn't make it not ransomware.

fubo

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Exactly, yeah. The incentives within the company generate shitty behavior towards users, even if no individual wrote out a design for that shitty behavior.

SlopppyEngineer

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And if this was in the first version, everybody would understand. If it's still in version 5, it's by design.

ozymandias117

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“Bricking,” “hard bricking,” and “soft bricking” became inexorably intertwined during the early days of flashing custom Android ROMs

Rai

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HTC Dream and G2 user/modder here

I’m not familiar with that. Brick means “your item is now a brick.”

I’ve never heard of hard or soft.

bitwolf

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Soft brick afaik is like when you mess up fastboot and need to use Qualcomms tool to repartition and repair fastboot.

Generally you cannot do this, but the tool leaked for some devices, this it's softbricked

ozymandias117

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QC uses the firehose protocol to load software that early, but that’s a good overview

The tools are generally available to flash, but manufacturers may not offer the next signed bootloader as something you can easily download (that one then implements fastboot)

You also need some mechanism to force the PBL to jump to download mode instead of trying to load the next bootloader

ozymandias117

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At that time, “Hard Brick” was getting used for the hardware was damaged

“Soft brick” was something like a boot loop where the device was unusable, but something like a DFU flash could repair (using DFU since every manufacturer had their own boot flash implementation back then)

At some point after that, people just went back to saying “bricked” for both

Misconduct

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As someone that rooted their phones a lot back in the day it's wild how vividly I remember this and it went down exactly as you described lol

lemann

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A bit like most Inkjets when the unreplaceable waste ink pad dries up 😭

Sit through a whole turn on sequence, just for the screen to say the manufacturer's equivalent of "Bin me, I'm dead" with the only option being to power off

MonkderZweite

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phoneymouse

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I bought an HP printer scanner once. They tried to make me opt into accepting Google and Facebook tracking on the device. It’s a damn printer, not a website. That’s when I sent it back and found the dumbest black and white laser printer I could find.

When it comes to printers, the dumber they are the better.

Perditija

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I still have my HP PSC 1400, the software is stored on an old drive. This thing still works and is so old that I can refill the bootleg ink cartridges and this thing just takes them. It scans even when the cartridges are empty. It's a simple device and I hope it keeps working as long as possible

user224

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I have HP PSC 1315. I tried removing the color cartridge, and it would just print without it. Unfortunately that stops working after you restart the printer. Anyway, I am not sure what the use case for that could be.

It has partial support on HPLIP, so it works nicely with Linux. For high DPI printing, I can use Windows 7 VM.
By the way, try downloading the NokoPrint app from Google Play Store if you have Android. It allows you to print directly from phone over a USB cable.

I just wish I wasn't such an idiot when I got it. I never soldered before, and the first thing I tried was to replace the USB port on this. Somebody should have told me about flux. 30 minutes, no flux, 520°C of heat, burned board, and drunk USB port at an angle later, it somehow works. I don't even know if the solder pads are still present or it's just the blobs somehow making a connection 💀

Noerttipertti

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Old Laserjet III and Jetdirect 500x. Can't go much dumber than that.

Nurse_Robot

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"HP fails to lie"

ryannathans

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HP = horrific practices

Oneobi

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HP, permanent member of my shit list.

MeanEYE

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The thing is, HP is too big to be labeled like this. Their measurement equipment was and still some of the best, although Agilent bought them. Their calculators are awesome. Just printer department, god damn it. It's as if their HR requires list of asshole moves for each potential employee and then choses worst.

burrito

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Their servers and storage systems are absolute garbage.

tony

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Their servers aren't terrible, but they check at boot for HP memory and HP hard drives.. all at a significant markup. We ditched HP kit completely due to that.. just upgrading a set of hard drives was going to cost four times the going rate for 3rd party.

HP printers used to be the gold standard back in the day.. a laserjet would 'just work' and often not even need drivers, was nicely servicable too.. then they went to shit, and nobody with any sense would touch them these days.

burrito

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The number of bugs I've encountered on HPE server hardware that cause full system lockups is insane. They've sent out engineering and collected logs and released new firmwares based on bugs I've found and been able to reliably replicate. Unfortunately, it took years of tickets, and wasted weekends to finally get them to admit it was their issue. Their iLO firmware is pretty buggy and I've had many problems with it over the years. To be fair Dell's iDRAC has bugs too, and their lifecycle controllers leave much to be desired, but thankfully none have been showstoppers like I've experienced with HPE gear.

HPE's storage systems have been quite problematic for me as well. I ran some of their EVA P6000 arrays back in the day and had too many scary moments keeping those online. I switched to Compellent arrays after that and they were awesome. Unfortunately, Dell retired that line in 2021, so now I'm giving their Powerstore arrays a try and so far the experience has been good.

lemann

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Their low-end laptops are hot garbage too, either the hinge fails, or brittle plastic breaks loose in the case and jams up the cooling fan blades

SlopppyEngineer

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They probably do the marshmallow test on applicants. If they fail the test and lie about it, they go to the printer department.

Iamdanno

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If enough people quit buying ANY HP product because of their shitty printers, they would be incentivized to make it better.

Mojojojo1993

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Do you mean lie. It failed to lie about things it does.

MonkderZweite

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Do you mean lie. It failed to lie about things it doesn't do.

Mojojojo1993

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No. The things it does

MonkderZweite

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It does not scan?

edit Oh, we talking about HP, not the MP?

randombullet

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All of my printers are on a VLAN with a dead gateway.

LAN access only. And if it doesn't work from day one on that dead VLAN, then I return it.

fruitleatherpostcard

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Greedy shits.

COASTER1921

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What would they even try to argue here? There's no way to bypass the ink reload screen to scan anything, the functionality is certainly blocked.

It's kind of weird that they integrate scanners into their printers in the first place really, scanners are quite reliable and newer inkjet printers are the polar opposite.

jasondj

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I think for most homes, an MFP is a nice-to-have. I have one and I never use the scanner, the vast majority of times, it’s sufficient to “scan” with my phone to send as a PDF. My next printer will probably be a color laser printer-only.

For SOHO, SMB, and enterprise, though, I think it comes down to square footage. Especially when you start getting into the bigger ones. Turns out that a copying machine does a lot of the same things a printer and a scanner do. A separate, discrete copying machine doesn’t make sense in a lot of places, and I’d imagine it’s very cost-effective to get a big MFP instead of three discrete devices. Especially when you’re dealing with leased equipment.

danielfgom

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They are super guilty of this, I've seen it in action. Never buying anything HP every again. And to thinks that as an IT Admin I used to always order HP PC's for the business over other brands whenever possible. Never again. They can kiss my ass

Darkbug

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This is why I left HP 15 years ago...