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Dear Brother Printers: Eat a [Sponsor friendly words here]

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: therecycler.com/…/new-firmware-updates-affect-aft…

Lightrider ,

Fuckingcapitalists

Xylight ,
@Xylight@lemmy.xylight.dev avatar

Misleading; this article is from 2019. I don’t believe they do this anymore.

6daemonbag ,

I had a sweet Brother for ten years at home. It was huge but reliable in every way that I needed. Finally shit the bed and my wife’s work got her a Canon and it is just garbage.

FawkesGil ,
@FawkesGil@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

This article is from 20-fkin-19. Why are we posting such old articles? I just bought a Brother DCP-T820DW and 3rd party ink bottles still work even when I updated it’s firmware.

JBloodthorn ,
@JBloodthorn@kbin.social avatar

OP said (paraphrasing) "here's the last time they got caught doing what they just did to me" when they linked it. It's an addendum to their rant, not the main focus of it.

i2ndshenanigans ,

I just had to get rid of a canon printer that I’ve had for the last 10 years or so and I had been looking for a printer that I didn’t have to deal with this. As much as I hate HP I got one of their printers that use the tanks you fill with bottles of ink and so far so good. Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink. I’ve purchased a 3rd party bottle of ink and it still prints like their first party bottles so I think that’s the route I’m going from now on.

Now they have some other bullshit you have to deal with like having a friggin account to manage the printer locally so I just set it up on the screen itself. I blocked its outbound connection to on the firewall so it can’t connect out and I haven’t had any issues. I sniffed the traffic I did see it trying to upload something after a print so they are more than likely trying to steal my data but I’ve been working on IT for 20 years so they won’t get my shit but I wouldn’t recommend it for someone that doesn’t have the ability to do that.

RobotToaster ,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

Good luck on them trying to DRM the liquid ink.

Some of them apparently DRM the waste ink pads instead.

i2ndshenanigans ,

Well shit. I print a few times a year so we will see what kind of crap I have to deal with.

maniacal_gaff ,

I spent a bunch of money a few years ago to get the laser(ish) print+scan+telegram+allthethings Brother MFC-3750CDW. Imagine my rage when I found that this thing has a document feeder but no way to scan both sides of a document stack. Not even with a manual step in their software such as flipping the stack over and running the back sides through. Infuriating and I didn’t realize it until about a year later when I suddenly had to scan a ton of stuff. If someone knows of a good alternative solution, I’d love to hear it.

Rentlar ,

Many PDF software (the stock scanning app on my Linux distribution, PDF24 and PDFSam for example) can let you merge two documents with alternating pages.

So I scan the stack, flip it over and scan it again. The flipped over ones are mixed in but I have to select reverse order to what was scanned. It works best on small stacks of 10 to 30 pages, you have to double check the page count for them to be the same. If the scanner mistakenly skips scanning one a good chunk of the doc ends up out of order.

AbidanYre , (edited )

In Linux I’m pretty sure you can do that directly with the scanning tool.

Osa-Eris-Xero512 ,

My L3770CDW can. Maybe that's the difference between the two, we could never figure it out when we bought it.

maniacal_gaff ,

It is. There’s a feature table in the manual and it’s one of the glaring differences between the two. I never even thought to look into the details that closely, and even if it doesn’t have the hardware to flip the paper around and scan the back, it should be a simple software feature to add.

For some big stacks I’ve just got the pair doc_front.pdf and doc_back.pdf and I was thinking about making my own stupid script to interleave the two docs into one.

lemmylommy ,

How is it brothers fault that you bought something without checking if it has the features you need?

maniacal_gaff ,

Yeah I mean who doesn’t read up to page 630 of the manual and then interpret the lack of automatic 2-sided scanning to mean it won’t even do manual 2-sided scanning, despite nearly every scanner on the market supporting that.

…brother.com/…/cv_hll3290cdw_use_oug_b.pdf

guyrocket ,
@guyrocket@kbin.social avatar

Well shit. I was recommending Brother laser because my oldish B&W duplexing Brother is going strong. Now I have nothing to recommend.

stopthatgirl7 ,
@stopthatgirl7@kbin.social avatar

This article is from 2019, so it’s been an issue for a while now.

guyrocket ,
@guyrocket@kbin.social avatar

I bought their brand toner that I've been using for years and I've not had any problems. But if they're doing this then I'm not going to recommend their brand any longer.

I don't print a lot so I hope this printer and toner last.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@kbin.social avatar

My new one seems alright

badbytes ,

Yeah I was a previous fan of brother. Just worked in Linux. But if this story is true, not cool.

d3Xt3r ,

This has been happening for a few years now, yet, I don’t know why people still keep recommending Brother. I guess not all models are affected by this? But it’s likely only a matter of time though until they push it out to all printers.

What we really need is open hardware printers. I mean, if we can put together frikkin 3D printers on our own these days, surely putting together a regular 2D printer should be a much more easier task. Or maybe there just isn’t any demand for 2D printers these days to justify such a project.

Alternatively: just use an online printing service, most of them even mail your printouts to you so you don’t even need to step out of your home, and this will likely be a far cheaper option for casual users who rarely print stuff. Another option is local libraries, at least where I live, they allow you to take free printouts for upto 10 pages, and following that it’s only 1c per page.

infinitevalence OP ,
@infinitevalence@discuss.online avatar

Open source would be amazing!

Jasper_Ted_Vidal_Tale ,
@Jasper_Ted_Vidal_Tale@kbin.social avatar

Same

cyberpunk007 ,

Same what?

gullible ,

For your edification and posterity. This. What you just wrote. I totally agree. Like a chef serving a bowl of stew, you stuck your ladel into my brain and from my incoherent abstract thoughts were able to form the exact sentiment of what it is I was feeling. Down to a decimal of a decimal, more perfectly than I ever could have iterated, you captured the essence of every nuance I experienced relating to the subject matter. No words could portray the awe I felt knowing that somebody shared the exact same thought process as me. Not only that, but with the ability to articulate in such a refined manner the depth of said thought process. No words could describe that feeling. Except one. This.

realitista ,

Yeah I’d go for an open source printer in a heartbeat. I’m so tired of this nonsense.

leftzero ,

A printer being stupid (and Xerox’s refusal to give him the source code so he could fix it) was precisely what led Stallman to start the open source software movement.

ZapBeebz_ ,

I think Brother is typically recommended because their laser printers aren’t anti-consumer bullshit, and are generally well built and supported.

d3Xt3r ,
  • weren’t

At least as of three years ago, even their laser printers have started being subject to enshittification.

Eg: old.reddit.com/…/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nong…

And seems to me that this has become even worse since then. See this comment from less than a month ago:

This is a disgusting and unethical practice. I got bricked out of my mfc l3770cdw last week after unconsciously updating the new firmware bc of a data remaining in memory error that refused to clear on the screen. Not only could I not print, I also could not scan to desktop which baffles me since NO toner/ink is needed for that job! I was paying $70/3rd party toner set every 6 months and now have to pay $300+/set just to satisfy shareholder returns. This just adds to my list of why humans suck! I wouldn’t mind paying more for the equipment and then having the freedom to use whichever 3rd party has the best supply price or even double for the set that 3rd parties charge. Too many companies are engaging in this practice and something drastically needs to be done about this bs!

RobotToaster ,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

I’d love an open source 2d printer.

I imagine the hardest part would be engineering a sheet feeder (unless you use tractor feed paper, lol)

jeena ,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

Hm, I feel Brother was the last brand which didn’t do that, are there any alternatives?

jeena ,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

Oh, that article is also from 2019

tinkeringidiot ,

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

chemical_cutthroat ,
@chemical_cutthroat@lemmy.world avatar

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 OP ,
@infinitevalence@discuss.online avatar

I would still turn off auto updates.

seathru ,

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 ,

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

seathru ,

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.

jeena ,
@jeena@jemmy.jeena.net avatar

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.

LienNoir ,

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

infinitevalence OP ,
@infinitevalence@discuss.online avatar

Yeah I linked it because it was the best one I could find that was not Reddit.

MonkCanatella ,

wtf. well. I guess I’ll have to block this user just in case it’s a spam bot.

paul ,

I don’t think there’s any point on spamming articles just for points since there’s no algorithm that would weight their future posts higher. Please just assume the poster had good intentions and found it interesting and wanted to share.

MonkCanatella ,

Thanks for sharing an optimistic opinion. That said I still believe there’s a market for accounts that seem real for astroturfing purposes

infinitevalence OP ,
@infinitevalence@discuss.online avatar

changed it to a link at the bottom of the post because people were confused, I linked to the last time brother was caught doing it by “press” but all the most recent examples are on Reddit, and I wont drive clicks to Reddit.

The_Eminent_Bon ,

I’d recommend the Epson EcoTank series. They don’t use cartridges, the ink comes in bottles and are quite cheap and lasts a while. They are inkjet tho, unless you’re doing lots if colour printing, theyre ok. Not sure if theres 3rd party inks.

nul9o9 ,

My wife has bought 3 of them for her sublimation projects, they’ve all been great. The only issue I’ve had is the god damn windows 11 PC she runs that kills the tcpip port I set up, which deletes her color profiles.

AbidanYre ,

How does killing a tcp port delete color profiles?

MonkCanatella ,

it removes the plumbus link

AtariDump ,

Shit. That’s a bitch to set back up again without fresh fleeb juice.

MonkCanatella ,

and it can’t be just any fleeb juice. It has to be 100% Epson brand fleeb juice

Confused_Emus ,

Because printers are manufactured in Hell so of course deleting a TCP port deletes color profiles because why not?

slampisko ,

Get a laser printer. The initial cost is a bit higher, but toner is much cheaper than ink in the long run, and it doesn’t run dry

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

They don’t. This article is a 4 year old hoax.

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