Quote:
Originally Posted by Freeshadow
Apart from historically based research about the lighbulbs, artificially added weakening to nylons and how planned obsolescence in general is now part of design teaching, the documentary follows the spanish guy with the printer on his research:
When the counter was full you got an error message saying the printer needed tech maintenance and refused printing.
When contacted Epson service they said "get a new printer" By digging deeper the guy found said counter chip on one of the printers PCBs and a piece of software by a russian hacker resetting it.
Et Voilą; the ah-so-broken printer automagically worked again...
Further there were shown smarter design flaws for printers: make the jets the way they need frequent cleaning and the wasted ink not easily cleanable from the printers inner parts.
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Any of that verified by anyone else, of is that video the only source? Cuz that sure sounds like the sort of thing that, say, Canon, or Brother, or any other printer manufacturer would make big news out of, if it were true. I do see some references to various counters - certainly there's one for replacing ink cartridges, and there's apparently one for the pad that soaks up excess ink. These are not "replace the printer" counters, though, they're "you need to do some maintenance on the printer" counters. Unfortunately, on inkjet printers, parts are usually more than a new printer. This "spanish guy" got the short version from Epson's tech support, sounds like. Instead of "buy a new printer," he probably should have been told "the parts you need are several times as much as a new printer, and there's other parts that will need to be replaced soon anyway."
Inkjet printers really are disposable. That's what you get when you want a printer for $30, instead of $300 or more.