Healthy-Again Computers
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A Social Justice Issue Resolved
HP Covertly Disabled Printers That Contained Third Party Cartridges
A new tech guide for novices and experts alike is now available

Backdrop

HP's printer business model is to sell their printers for a reasonable price considering their complexity, and then to earn most of the profits of this business sector by selling the cartridges at an enormously inflated price. For a plastic box, a page counting chip, and an ounce or two of ink, HP's retail price is about $30 (color) to $50 (black) per cartridge, or about $120-$140 per set. Re-manufactured cartridges sell for about 1/5 to 1/2 of HP's prices.

This is a serious social justice issue. For millions of working class people their computers and printers (often cast-offs or refurbished) are their lifeline to the mainstream of society, for everything from filing taxes to applying for jobs to filling out government forms. For many of them, using HP Original cartridges is prohibitively expensive, and they had been using re-manufactured cartridges for a long time. Similarly, many non-profit organizations, operating on shoestring budgets, rely on using these less expensive cartridges.

In the fall of 2020, HP covertly installed "updates" to the firmware of millions of computers that completely blocked the use of re-manufactured ink cartridges, disabling printing and making it appear that the printer had some kind of hardware failure. I personally thought that my own printer - an HP OfficeJet 8710 - had been destroyed internally by a power surge. And I am no means a computer novice; I am a retired software engineer and currently a computer consultant.

This happened in the past as well, and large-scale class action lawsuits forced HP to allow re-manufactured cartridges, with a silly (and fraudulent) warning that using non-HP ink would invalidate the printer warranty.

The newest reversion to blocking re-manufactured cartridges was more insidious and - eventually - more public; it included an update several months later to their primier HP Smart display and control software to politely let you know in no uncertain terms that you need to insert HP Original cartridges in order to have your printer work again.

Shortly after this update occurred, two organizations filed a class action lawsuit against HP, and in November 2021 the judge presiding over the lawsuit allowed it to proceed.

In March 2022 HP subsequently began - again covertly - sending out firmware upgrades that restored functionality to many printers.

But the story isn't over. The new HP firmware still posts a (false) warning that using third party cartridges will destroy your printer and void the warranty, there are many printers that still have the third party cartridge blocking firmware, and many people have reverted to paying HP's outrageous prices for new cartridges.

I have crafted a new and complete tech guide for safely using non-HP cartridges and made it available very cheaply on Amazon Kindle.

The HP Third Party Cartridge Retrofit Kit:
How to safely use non-HP cartridges in your HP Printer

Please spread the word. Thanks very much.

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HP Printer Stopped Working? - HP Firmware Downgrades