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The Shelf-Life of HP Cartridges
Posted by Rebecca Bolin on Wednesday, February 23 @ 11:32:37 EST Consumers
As reported in BNA and here, a Georgia woman is organizing a class-action lawsuit against HP for using a chip on printer cartridges to "prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer."

Everyone knows the ink level claimed by HP is inaccurate. I actually like this feature because it gives you some warning that your cartridge is almost out of ink. Of course, this could have been done with a more accurate warning, but I don't have a problem with this as is. At least for my HP, ink warnings are minimally annoying and fairly accurate.

As for the expiration date, I realized while reading this article this morning, that this might have actually happened to me a few weeks ago, naturally at a quite inconvenient time. I just assumed my near-full cartridge was defective. It never even occurred to me that perhaps the license to the code in the chip had expired. I believed that I had purchased a physical object containing a physical amount of ink that I had the right to use in my printer. I wish I still had the terms that came with my cartridge, so I could see what I actually contracted to buy. If this happened to me, with a cartridge bought about 1 1/2 years ago as a back-up, I can't wait to see the outrageous stories in the woodwork of cartridges voided by sitting on retailer shelves or in desk drawers like mine.

At the same time, HP has a real interest in keeping consumers from refilling cartridges perpetually or 'recycling' them to after-market refillers. Is this interest fair? In this case, I'm conflicted. HP hasn't commented yet; it is possible they are not even doing this. If they are, this raises tying issues, copyright issues, and R&D issues. With better disclosure--say, a window at installation or a stamp on the cartridge, your cartridge will expire in 2008--and a reasonable time limit--say, three or four years--on the cartridges, I side with HP. I agree something has to change in the status quo, if not legally certainly ethically, but balancing these interests is difficult.

HP had an envelope to return the cartridge for 'recycling' in the box for my replacement (official) HP cartridge; I wonder if they replace the chip or just throw out the whole expired mess with no recycling at all. I was so irritated at HP for my defective (but probably actually expired) cartridge, that I donated it to a local school fund-raising collection instead. Unfortunately, that expired chip probably made it pretty useless to the children too.

 
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Re: The Shelf-Life of HP Cartridges (Score: 1)
by mako on Wednesday, February 23 @ 12:58:14 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://mako.yukidoke.org
With better disclosure--say, a window at installation or a stamp on the cartridge, your cartridge will expire in 2008--and a reasonable time limit--say, three or four years--on the cartridges, I side with HP. Are you serious? What valid R&D interest is there in breaking cartridges prematurely? What copyright interest is there in breaking cartridges prematurely? This in no way serves any consumer interest I can think of. I want to know before I buy the printer that I'm going to be saddled with a broken printer that can only work with broken cartridges. I'm willing to pay more up front for a lower total cost of ownership but that information is hard to get. This situation is exactly the technical reasons why it is important that HP does not have the ability to create printers that can only work with their copyrighted code and cartridges. It boils down to interface copyright or an opportunistic attitude toward the DMCA. Both are rather expansionist attitudes toward copyright. Even if we ignore all this, this is bad technology and is breaking otherwise working technology in order to get users to shell out more cash. It's exploitative and even if it is legal, it's something I never want to subject myself to.



Banned in the EU (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, February 24 @ 04:28:38 EST
The Waste Electronics Environmental Directive makes this kind of thing illegal, on the grounds that it increases the amount of electronics that ends up in landfill.



Re: The Shelf-Life of HP Cartridges (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, February 27 @ 01:24:56 EST
Going forward HP will simply have to change its cartridge practices whether or not they have the right to "expire" a cartridge. In the real world marketplace, one does buys "a physical cartridge containing a physical amount of ink".

HP gains nothing from its expiration scheme if the consumer doesn't embrace it; consumers will buy other cartridges, and if HP engineers their printers to prohibit that, consumers will buy other printers.

Legally HP might be able to win some of the near term battles on such fronts, but it may cost them the war (and their cash cow).



Re: The Shelf-Life of HP Cartridges (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 13 @ 21:10:44 EST
There actually is an expiration date stamped onto cartridges... the cartridges come with a comsumable warranty to be free from defects until the expiry date on the cartridge. However it does not cover running out of ink. And on the box there is an install before date printed on the box so consumers know if the cartridges are too old and retailers are supposed to take them off the shelf if it's near or past the install before date. It's actually not the best idea if you're not going to be changing the cartridges frequently to buy backups. Lets say that you first install the cartridge like 6 months or later after first purchasing it and the expiry date on the cartridge is over ... if it turns out the cartridge is defective too bad for you it's no longer covered under warranty and hp won't replace it.



Re: The Shelf-Life of HP Cartridges (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Thursday, March 17 @ 17:50:04 EST
As a long time user of HP printers I lately discovered some strange things happening with my HP Photosmart 1115 printer which uses 45 & 78 cartridges. Connected to my Mac G4 with OS X.

When using no-name or refilled cartridges my printer driver gave me the same warnings concerning ink-level as with the original HP cartridges.

In january 2005 I downloaded the HP driver update and from then on, whenever I replaced a HP cartridge with a no-name or refilled HP or no-name cartridge the printer driver kept saying no-ink or even no cartridge!

Of course the old drivers are nowhere to be found anymore (except my original CD, but that was too old) My workaround was installing the CUPS printing system (which uses its own driver without these checks) on my Mac and now everything works fine again.

It seems that HP is still trying to keep us from using other brands or stopping refills. I hope this hint will be of some help for other HP/Mac users.

Frits van Heekesen



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