We all are pretty annoyed at how the printer industry is screwing customers over. There are a few printers that are really good but most of them suck and try to suck out your money by demanding ink when none is needed.
And i also know that it’s nearly impossible to create an open-source printer that can be build by smaller businesses like the 3D printing space can do.
But are there any projects underway to reverse-engineer printer firmware and make it possible to flash the custom ROM onto a printer? No specific manufacturer in mind right now, but wouldn’t that make things better? Simply disable all the stupid checks that claim that you NEED ink to scan or that you NEED yellow to print a black text?
You aren’t the only annoyed one!
In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab’s previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person’s job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people’s need to be able to freely modify the software they use.
Now software runs our lives, spies on us, navigates for us and nobody cares. Wild.
That would be cool.
Here’s my new setup that might not work for everyone, but I’d recommend thinking about if you’re able to.
-
Network printers are blocked from Internet by my router. They have static IP addresses allocated (permanent DHCP leases) for convenience.
-
I have some Canon laser printers. I don’t want to install Canon software across my devices, so I setup a cups print server (lxc container) where I installed the software.
-
I setup and shared the printers (local network only), made them discoverable.
-
I use the CUPS web GUI over ssh tunnel if I need to check on job queues and do maintenance/admin tasks (don’t usually have to).
Clients immediately find the printers on the server, no driver required.
As a bonus, I made the margins 0 on the CUPS ppd on the server so that I get to print without margins when so desired (Canon has fixed minimum margins otherwise).
The one caveat is that the Canon drivers don’t work on raspberry pi (arm), so while I have a to-do to get around that by using a virtualization layer, you need a separate Intel/AMD machine for the print server if your printer doesn’t support ARM.
Network printers are blocked from Internet by my router. They have static IP addresses allocated (permanent DHCP leases) for convenience.
I used to have a HP printer that refused to connect to my wifi network if it was blocked from accessing the internet. So I had to unblock it every time I restarted my printer.
Wow, that’s so messed up: I didn’t know HP did that… I think it might just be a matter of time before others follow suit.
Sounds very Wireshark worthy!
Honestly, I don’t even think that it behaved like that for malicious purposes. It looked more like incompetence.
-
dell one me want
If you only need to print a few pages a month or year, send them to a corner store or Walgreens or something. It’s just not worth it. I’m assuming the average person needs to print 10 pages or less a year, and this is why there isn’t a big push to fix this problem. I think the last time I needed to print something was in 2021.
Well in many parts of europe such copy shops arent really that usual.
I’d have to drive 20 min to get to the next one.
That’s a bummer. Just about every pharmacy and shipping store in the US also has a print shop inside of it. And our libraries do cheap printing too. So even if you’re in the boonies you’re usually only a few minutes away from something.
all those “print where you want” gadgets that are on kickstarter are using an hacked hp printhead, so i guess it can be reverse engineered or there’s an arduino/esp32 library
unfortunately, hp printheads are literally the worst quality and least reliable that you can find on the market in the history of inkjet printers (i don’t think anyone ever made worse printheads than HP in any point of history)
edit: searching “HP 6602 printhead arduino” gives many interesting results. But still, an epson printer from the late 90s that has been kept in a humid barn for three decades would be more reliable than an hacked HP. They don’t even work when new and in warranty!
What eludes me is that literally nobody except hp, xerox, canon, brother, dell, epson, kyocera, lenovo, lexmark seems to be making decent printers.
I know that the printer business is rough for sales people for some reason (the guy who I learned sales from 18 yrs ago was a printer salesman before becoming a coach). But what I don’t get is that there does not seem to be good money to make for small companies as they are not gaining on the big ones.
Is everything locked by patents or what is the deal here?
Since when do HP and Lexmark make decent printers?
I would think there’s already too much competition so it’s not a ver lucrative market to enter.Okay. Let me rephrase that: why are these the only brands that make printers except niche ones?
Too much competition in a 10 player market? This is an oligopol and likely the reason why there is an entry problem.
Oki (formerly Okidata) is the lesser of evils. After doing a deep dive studying the ethical problems of all the printer makers, Oki was the one I found the least dirt on. But Oki has pulled out of the US market entirely; probably couldn’t survive in a competition of tricks & traps.
Brother was a small company and made decent printers that aren’t stuffed with anti-consumer nonsense. Recently though, they also seem to be getting on the enshittification train. So to put it simply, it’s the shareholder pressure that leads to a bad market. Patents come in at a close second.
I agree. What do you think would help?
I have heard of a law or precedent that put CEOs under the reign of the shareholders instead of the company, customer and society.
Do you happen to know what legislation did that change? Maybe that needs to be overturned.
Edit: I found at least the term. It is called shareholder primacy.
I don’t know what law that is. It’s also going to be different under different jurisdictions. Frankly though, I believe that the shareholder-driven megacorps are a lost cost for the entire society - be that providing good printers or not dumping CO2 in the atmosphere and causing a mass extinction event.
We need a different type of economy - one that is neither communist nor hyper capitalist (like the one responsible for the current conundrum). One where normal people are involved in production of high tech products. The FOSS ecosystem is a good example of it. We need something similar in all areas.
It’s surprising just how bad printer/scanner software is. The desired function is so so simple but the software gets in the way so bad.
All I want from my printer/scanner is to press print, and have it not change its IP address so Windows can’t find it. And to have a big scan button that scans and uploads to an FTP server, none of this Windows Scanner nonsense. (FWIW I actually use NAPS2 which is quite good)
All I want from my printer/scanner is to press print, and have it not change its IP address so Windows can’t find it.
Easy fix, go into your router and setup a local static IP for your printer. Sometimes called DHCP IP reservation.
It should give a list all devices and their mac address on your network. Select your printer, then put in the current local IP the printer is using or a new local IP (setting a new local IP will require you to turn your printer off and back on after you save the changes to ensure the new local IP is handed out to the printer.)
Save changes, and you should never have to worry about the printer changing local IP’s ever again.
