With a long history of nearly universal hate for their products, you’d think printer manufacturers would by now have found ways to back off from the policies that only seem to keep aggravating customers. But rather than make it a financially wiser decision to throw out a printer and buy a new one than to buy new ink cartridges or toners, manufacturers keep coming up with new and devious ways to piss customers off. Case in point: Hewlett-Packard now seems to be bricking printers with third-party ink cartridges. Reports from users say that a new error message has popped up on screens of printers with non-HP cartridges installed warning that further use of the printer has been blocked. Previously, printers just warned about potential quality issues from non-HP consumables, but now they’re essentially bricked until you cough up the money for legit HP cartridges. Users who have contacted HP support say that they were told the change occurred because of a recent firmware update sent to the printer, so that’s comforting.
In other news of corporate unpleasantness, if you’ve bought into the Ring ecosystem, prepare to take out your wallet. The Amazon-owned maker of the wildly and inexplicably popular doorbell cameras is set to lock some previously free features behind a paywall. Starting March 29, users will have to sign up for a Ring Protect subscription for $3.99 per month to access either the Home or Away modes within the Ring smartphone app. If you don’t want to pony up, you’ll still be able to control your Ring camera, but only locally through their Ring Keypad, which is pretty much a deal kille ..
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