HP goes FTDI

[rrinker]

For very occasional use, I find the laser to be just as fast as the inkjet as the inkjet spends as much time squirting out half of each cartridge as it wakes up and cleans irself as the laser does to warm up.  And at least the laser isn't burning through a bunch of toner each time you start it.

Like everything, horses for courses. Each is better than the other for certain things. Use whichever best meets your needs.

-Pat

 Exactly why I switched to a color laser. My once in a whole every few weeks printing led to most of the ink cartridge being wasted. To make matters worse, after it sat for a while my HP printer with a genuine HP cartridge (NOT a refilled one, first use) would start complaining that one or more of them were not genuine HP - at that point it would work, after I OK'd the warning message on the printer control panel. Only - it WAS a genuine HP cartridge 

[Richard Crowley]

What @Karel and @Jeff_Birt are missing is the fact that NOBODY is going out and intentionally buying COUNTERFEIT FTDI chips. The manufacturers, assemblers, and even the distributors have no way of telling what is genuine FTDI vs. the identically-marked counterfeit chips.  THAT is why it was so incredibly offensive when FTDI deliberately bricked the products bought by innocent end-users from innocent manufacturers and assembled by innocent board-stuffers with parts from innocent chip distributors.

The situation is completely different with the HP printers. End-users are going out and buying HP printers which have had no warning about 3rd party supplies and historically have operated with 3rd party supplies for decades.  Then HP comes along after the fact and modifies the hardware which is YOUR property (no longer theirs!) so that it behaves more to THEIR economic benefit.  That is simply not justifiable to any logical way of thinking. And to do it surreptitiously over a long timeline sounds like the very definition of legal conspiracy. *

I embrace the "walk-away" solution.  I will never again intentionally buy anything with an FTDI chip in it, and HP is now on my boycott list as well.  These companies have fouled their own nest and created massive ill-will with customers. Neither company deserves any more of my business.

* On second thought. While you bought the HARD-ware from HP, you only bought a "license" to "use" the firmware inside. I'm sure that somewhere in the fine-print, throw-away, "shrink-wrap license-agreement" there is a notification that you don't OWN the firmware that makes the hardware operate.  However, it is not clear that gives HP free license to come in and change the firmware without your knowledge of the implications.

[rdl]

The situation is completely different with the HP printers. End-users are going out and buying HP printers which have had no warning about 3rd party supplies and historically have operated with 3rd party supplies for decades.  Then HP comes along after the fact and modifies the hardware which is YOUR property (no longer theirs!) so that it behaves more to THEIR economic benefit.
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I actually sort of brought this up before.

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It would be interesting to know if the purchaser was made aware or could at least find out, before actually buying the printer, that:

HP cartridges were the only type that could be used in these printers?

HP could make changes to the printer in the future without the owner's knowledge or permission?

Is this any different from the manufacturer of an automobile sneaking new firmware into an unsuspecting customer's vehicle which causes it to no longer run on anything but the manufacturer's brand of fuel?