From: Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>So they do exist? O.K.. (But aren't there kits to refill the cartridges, then?)
I don't know if this is currently in use or was simply being mentioned as a possibility, but I read something awhile back about the chips in the cartridge keeping a count of how many pages were printed, and after n pages the cartridge would simply stop working until it was returned to be refilled and the counter chip reset by the company, so even if you refilled the cartridge yourself, the printer still wouldn't work.
Epson printers for sure are chipped (eeprom, not RFID, tho) to make them hard to refill. The eeprom tracks how much ink is used, so the printer knows when the cartridge is near empty*, and refuses to print with it any further. Lexmark too. HP tracks usage, but I think only gives annoying low-ink warnings rather than blocking use. HP also tracks the expiration date in their ink cartridges; I saw an article a while back about a guy who lost $200 in new ink cartridges because he tried to print to his HP while he had his PC date set a year or two in the future (for some sort of Y2K-ish type testing he was doing). The printer thought the carts were "old", and voided them so they could no longer be used, *even after he set the date back!*. And of course, he wrecked a few sets, swapping them in before he figured out the situation, and also of course HP refused to replace/fix them for him.
Online, you can find gizmos for sale (http://www.epson-chip-resetter.com) or instructions on how to build one that can reset the chips in these cartridges, but even then, the cartridges are often designed to make it extremely difficult to refill them. New HP carts in particular are hard to refill, from what I've heard.
If you want to refill your ink cartridges, there's really only one clear choice, which is Canon printers. Their ink carts are clear so you can see the ink level, they are not chipped, and they are easy to refill, so there's a whole boatload of 3rd-party ink suppliers that support them.
Good for the EU.
Seconded.
Thirded. I hate the razor/razor blade marketing some of these companies do with their printers and ink cartridge pricing, which results in astronomical costs per page for some of these printers, and also cases where a set of ink cartridges for some low-end printers cost nearly as much as buying a brand new printer (which comes with a set of cartridges)!
I was also waiting for one of these chip-resestter companies to get sued under the DMCA. Puke. The EU action makes this less likely, IMHO.
-bryon
* I've seen a someone report that his Epson cartridges still had a useable amount of ink in them when they reported as empty. Probably a big reason that most companies' ink cartridges are opaque.
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