watch dodogg MAXIMUM PC TAKES A BITE OUT OF BAD GEAR dog
Hewlett-Packard is getting heat—and fac-
ing a lawsuit—for preventing some of its
printers from using “expired” ink.and install drivers from ATI won’t call ATI for
help, they’ll call Dell. With each new driver rev,
Dell would have to train all of its support people
to handle issues related to the new drivers. On a
new notebook, companies are willing to accept
this cost, but on a three-year-old notebook?
Dell isn’t the only vendor guilty of this. Toshiba,
Hewlett-Packard, Fujitsu, IBM, and many other
first-tier notebook PC companies rarely bother to
qualify drivers given to them by graphics vendors.
The real tragedy is that some of these ven-
dors target their notebooks at gamers and enthu-
siasts who are used to regular driver updates and
actually may need them to keep their games run-
ning. For a company to abandon these customers
within two years is just pathetic.
There is a partial solution, however.
Consumers with older ATI parts that are
badly in need of driver updates can visit
http://www.driverheaven.net. This site features a
tool called the DH Mod Tool V4 that converts a
desktop driver’s INF file, so it can be installed
on a notebook. The downside to the modded
drivers is that they don’t support the power-
saving modes of a notebook or some special
hot-key functionality. According to ATI, those
functions are only part of the Mobility Catalyst
drivers, and they cannot be hacked with a
simple INF fix.
The Dog has a strong recommendation
for PC makers who are targeting gamers and
enthusiasts with expensive notebooks: Keep
updating those drivers even after you can’t
squeeze more money out of the people who
bought your products. It builds brand loyalty
and increases the chances that a customer
might actually come back to you the next time
he buys a notebook. Woof.WHAT’S NEXT, EXPIRING KEYBOARDS?
I’ve been meaning for months to write to you to
ask what you think about the HP policy concerning
expiring ink in its 7110 series of Officejet all-in-one
printers. The machine warns me about 10 to 14
days before the ink’s expiration date that it will no
longer work if I do not replace the cartridge. The ink
is good and in most cases half to two-thirds full. I’ve
contacted HP about this and asked for an explana-
tion, but they tell me I need to replace the ink or the
printer won’t work! Is this the definition of extortion?
Any help in this matter will be appreciated.
— KurtisThe Dog pinged HP to get its side and was told,
“Certain HP ink cartridges utilize an expiration
date; the expiration date is only used on inkjetproducts in which the print head and ink supply
are separate (like the HP Officejet 7110), and this
feature serves to protect the printing system and
ensure ink quality, which degrades over time
through air ingestion and water evaporation.
“Less than three percent of HP’s inkjet
printers utilize print heads with separate ink
supplies. For these models, ink-cartridge
expiration prevents, among other things, the
degradation of printer components and print
quality due to changes over time in ink prop-
erties, cartridge properties, and interactions
between the ink and the cartridge.
“For many printing systems with ink
expiration dates, the maximum cartridge
lifetime is more than four years (54 months)
and the in-printer life maximum is two and a
half years, and in the other systems with ink-
cartridge expiration the maximum lifetime is
three years and in-printer life is 18 months,
which exceeds the normal usage period for
the vast majority of customers.”
Sounds reasonable, but is it? Are you
really going to keep a cartridge in your printer
for 18 months? That’s pretty unlikely, but what
if you stocked up on ink and don’t use some
of the cartridges by their expiration dates?
They’re landfill. Although HP says it has your
best interests in mind, others have suggested
a different reason for the expiration dates: the
refill guys. Print cartridges contain proprietary
chips that let them work with a particular
printer, and many ink-refill companies can
obtain the chip only by buying used cartridges
from office supply stores. Making these car-
tridges expire would effectively neuter how
refill companies obtain their cartridges and
drive consumers away from refilled products.
HP’s expiration strategy could be just anoth-
er sign of how hot the inkjet war has gotten. In
2005, Epson settled a lawsuit that claimed many
of its printers stopped printing before the ink
cartridges were actually empty. The same year,
HP sued an ink-refilling company for not telling
consumers they were purchasing used HP ink
cartridges. HP also took two ink-refilling compa-
nies to court for violating its patents on ink. The
suits were settled.