It's because it has to print a unique watermark by federal law.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Yep. Quit screwing around with color inkjet and get a cheap B&W toner machine.
Fuck inkjet. If someone gave me one I'd go Office Space on it and throw the remnants away so it can never harm someone else.
PC LOAD LETTER!?!?
I thought yellow was mainly used for that, and cyan was used to enrich/enhance the deepness of the black or something. I remember something about blues being combined with black ink for that reason at least. Either way, screw inkjets, all my homies use laser.
From everything that I've heard and seen, you are correct.
The hidden dot pattern is yellow - It's the easiest color to hide. I've always heard that cyan is used to improve the black too.
Bit of a clarification, tracking dots is not a specific federal law, it is worse. Printer manufacturers voluntarily agreed to this deal with the US government and also agreed to keep it a secret.
That's an American thing, isn't it?
I had an all in one a decade ago (think epson?).
I couldn't scan a document because it was low on some color.
You see, the ink helps the printer feel confident enough to scan your documents
Enshittification.
Nah they were shit from day 1
It still got worse somehow. Old printers at least could have been fixed a lot better, the ink cartridges could be filled a few times, and they didn't just hold 2ml of ink.
Chapter 2
So I got a new Cyan capsule and changed it. Now it says low on black.
Huh, now it says "Inserted Ink Cartridge is not original. Self destructing now."
Came across a printer that had the hp instant ink cartridge installed. It will only print with the subscription. They had it, but it was not enrolled. So do the enrollment, which requires you to print and scan a page for some reason. Guess what, can't print out the enrollment as it has an instant ink cartridge in.
Never buying an inkjet again. POS.
Never gets old, sadly
Inserts cyan-ide capsule to printer
PC Load Letter?
lp0 on fire
I so hope that open source printer is successful. It may even be enough to convince me to choose to own a printer.
I returned my brother laser printer to Costco in 2019. I will never buy a printer ever again.
Why is that? Usually I read about brother laser printers being the decent non-enshittified ones. I‘ve had one for half a year now and it’s fine so far.
Go back and read that cartoon up there. That's why. All printers have become enshittified. Brother is no exception.
I have a brother colour laser printer that's been complaining about being low on magenta for like... a year now. Still prints black and white just fine.
But what about all the other phantom functions? Did you ever ask it to print something and it wouldn't, and then 3 months later randomly in the middle of the night it finally printed that thing you wanted 3 months ago? It did that to me several times and I was sick of its shit and it did a lot of other insane things too. It was also one of those things that required Wi-Fi though I have no idea why it wouldn't work without Wi-Fi, and its connectivity was always glitching, which interfered with its ability to print at all. I'm grateful for Costco's generous return policy.
No, it never did anything like that. It also works just fine without wifi using a USB connection.
Did you buy an inkjet and expect it to be amazing and last for ever because it was a Brother printer?
Yeah I don't think a B&W printer will complain about being out of a colour
It was a color laser printer. I had it for less than a year.
"Use black ink only"
I love this.