The ongoing global chip shortage is affecting Canon's toner cartridges for printers in certain areas after the manufacturer was forced to stop including copy protection chips, leading some printers to mistakenly identify them as counterfeit. products that comply with the official rules.
Users who purchased and also attempted to use cartridges without chips received error messages as Canon printers cannot scan them and recognize them as official Canon products.
These fault messages are reported online, with German Twitter user @Mariowitte saying in a tweet that "Bad world: due to lack of semiconductors, Canon now allegedly generates toner cartridges without "copy protection" and sends e -mails to service customers with instructions on how to avoid counterfeit cartridge failure messages."
As reported by WCCFTech, Canon's German site has since posted a response to the issue, offering a temporary fix until such time as the chips can be restored to the cartridges:
“Due to the current global shortage of semiconductor components, Canon is currently facing difficulties in sourcing certain of the electronic components used in our supplies for our multifunction printers (MFPs). These components carry out, for example, functions such as warning the level of remaining toner.
“To ensure a progressive and reliable supply of consumables, we have chosen to manage consumables without a semiconductor component until such time as normal supply resumes. "
How to locate an alternative solution
Canon has also assured service customers that, despite requiring an alternative solution in order for the cartridges to work, there should be no noticeable loss in print quality. However, it noted that "when using consumables without electronic components, certain auxiliary functions, such as toner level detection, may be affected."
The primary functionality that is lost is the printer's ability to keep track of the number of pages that can be printed, so you may not receive an alarm when ink starts to run low.
Canon has listed each and every printer known to be affected by the issue, along with a solution for each model. You'll need to translate the page in your browser (usually by right-clicking on an empty space and choosing "Translate to English" or the like), but the images that accompany the written instructions are in English.
Opinion: More ways to "hack" printers
Whether printer manufacturers like it or not, users have found creative ways to make printing cheaper over the years, and it's no surprise. Printers are cheap and create a marketing structure akin to razors and razor blades: the basic product is affordable, but the consumables needed to use it are outrageously expensive.
In fact, according to YoyoInk, printer ink is not only more expensive than gold by weight, it's "more expensive than imported Russian caviar by weight and more expensive than XNUMX Krug champagne by the gallon."
It's understandable that some people have taken matters into their own hands, finding ways to refill used cartridges cheaply or bypass existing printer security to use accessible third-party cartridges.
Canon surely knows that it could open a box of worms by offering a workaround that lets customers use unsupported cartridges in their printers as a "hack" in the future. . That being said, Canon has also confirmed its intention to go back to using chips in its cartridges, so there is still a chance that this fix will be fixed in a future firmware update.
I'm a little disappointed, but not really surprised that Canon intends to go back to its old ways rather than ditch chips altogether. Hopefully, this "clean" style system could be phased out over the next few years, allowing us to print more affordably, leaving behind the stories of needing a small mortgage to print valuable family photos to tell our disbelieving grandchildren.
Until something changes, expect to feel that little bubble of anger forming when you need to pick up a cartridge refill at your local office supply store.