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Best printer 2024: a humorous critique of the Google search engine, LLMs and printer enshittification (www.theverge.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/technology

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think they do (or at least did) put some form of DRM on their toner cartridges, but it is fairly easy to bypass as you mentioned. There was an article about the fact they had to instruct customers how to bypass it due to COVID related chip shortages a while back. https://www.techspot.com/news/92915-canon-printer-owners-get-official-guidance-bypass-printer.html

I did like the quality and longevity of my (very) old Canon MF8350cdn from 2011 - it was a workhorse! But my new(ish) Brother MFCL2710DW has been great so far too. Only time will tell if it lasts as long as the old Canon though.

[–] dual_sport_dork 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This appears to be for their business class and workgroup size printers, which makes a little more sense to have some manner of toner DRM in because they're typically leased or at the very leased serviced under some kind of contract. Sticking a toner cart some bean counter ordered from Wish or whatever in there is probably a nonzero probability of a malfunction (even if it's just the "colors being wrong") that'll result in a complaint from some PHB type who doesn't know shit about shit, and is thus something the manufacturer would really rather you not do.

Obviously I'd still rather they just not DRM anything at all, but this never applied to their consumer models as far as I can tell.