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Dear Brother Printers: Eat a [Sponsor friendly words here] (www.therecycler.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by infinitevalence@discuss.online to c/technology@lemmy.world

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For a while now 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.

URL referencing the last time I know they got caught messing with Firmwares: https://www.therecycler.com/posts/new-firmware-updates-affect-aftermarket-cartridges/

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[–] tinkeringidiot@lemmy.world 68 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I bought a new Brother laser printer in 2021 and it has no problem with third party toners.

[–] chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually had a little bit of a panic attack because I just bought a shit tonne of toner for my Brother and I was afraid I might get locked out of it, but I just bought this printer last year and it's not giving me any hassle with third party toner.

[–] infinitevalence@discuss.online 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would still turn off auto updates.

[–] seathru@lemm.ee 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would never let a printer be connected to the outside internet unless there was a specific remote printing option I needed that couldn't be done over remote desktop.

I love my Brother, that thing has been a tank, but it's never going to get to know the world exists out of my office.

[–] fubo@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does it have a USB port? Use that instead of the network interface.

[–] LienNoir@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

U can deny internet acces from your modem settings, it will still be connected on your home network. The best of both worlds

[–] jeena@jemmy.jeena.net 4 points 1 year ago

I would assume that most people have more than one device at home from which they'd like to print like a smartphone or tablet in addition to their laptop.

[–] seathru@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, luckily mine still has both, it's an older model I found as new old stock. The one it replaced was network only, and I had to have a long talk with the router about never letting it play outside.