HP 4100 Chip Impact

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Understanding the HP4100 Chip Impact

The Chip is the “Switch” That Turns on Multiple Printer Functions

The chip “turns on” critical printer functions that impact every 4100 printer user in your customer’s business. These functions include cartridge identification, toner low/toner out functionality, supplies status information, and cartridge performance information. The chip enables various information to be available through three interfaces with which the enduser interacts: the printer's LCD control panel, printed information menu pages, and through the printer's embedded Java webserver for networked printers.

The most obvious and critical need for a replacement chip is to enable the printer’s toner low and toner out functionality. A non-chipped aftermarket cartridge disables this function in the printer. This results in the customer potentially printing hundreds of blank pages on the printer. This is the most severe handicap an aftermarket cartridge has ever faced, perhaps even more difficult than density, yield, or various print deficiencies.

A printer that cannot shut itself down and prints blank pages represents a huge annoyance at best, and is an absolute show-stopper to the acceptance of an aftermarket 4100 cartridge by many businesses. More than 70% of HP4100 printers placed in worldwide markets are network models, and approximately 90% of the total pages printed on all these 4100 printers are printed from a networked enduser. The end result is 90% of all 4100 users will not know that they are printing blank pages when the cartridge runs out of toner.

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Multiple Areas of Negative Customer Impact with Non-Chipped Cartridges

Multiple issues arise when using a non-chipped aftermarket cartridge which disables toner-low and toner-out functionality: higher customer support requirements, erosion of the aftermarket value proposition, and negative impact on customer relationships.

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The enduser perceives the aftermarket cartridge as

costing him lost print jobs, lost worker productivity, increasing IT printer support costs, and requiring reprinting of lost print jobs. IT computer staffs have been virtually unanimous in their opposition to using non-chipped aftermarket cartridges from field reports over the past year.

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Organizations that utilize any measurement of TCO

(Total Cost of Ownership) will probably conclude that an OEM cartridge is a superior value. The average hourly value of a U.S. office worker calculated from average annual sales revenue per office worker is about $100 per hour. Reprinting a single job can easily offset a 20% to 30% cost savings offered by the aftermarket cartridge. Direct hourly costs plus benefits of IT staff is around $35 per hour. Again, a single IT support incident can offset any aftermarket product savings.

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Enduser customers who have come to value

aftermarket supplies as the equal or near-equal of OEM supplies will have abruptly had their perceptions altered when presented a vastly inferior product in a nonchipped aftermarket cartridge. This has the potential of undermining the relationship you have spent years nurturing, building and maintaining.

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For wholesale producers, non-chipped cartridges

present huge field support issues that most distribution channels will simply say “no” to. Superstores, catalogers, office product dealers, and internet marketers have no time, no expertise, and no incentive to deal with a product that is clearly inferior and loaded with barriers to acceptance and unending customer support issues.

Non-Chipped versus Chipped Market Summary

Without a chip, the remanufacturer and the aftermarket supplies reseller is fighting a constant battle with his enduser customers attempting to overcome annoyance, inconvenience, lost productivity, lost print jobs, reprinting requirements, fraudulent product accusations, frustrated endusers and irritated IT computer support staffs. The 4100 cartridge with its chip requirements has introduced a new set of acceptance barriers to aftermarket products that are much more intimidating and difficult to overcome than all barriers to acceptance that have existed before. A 4100 aftermarket replacement chip that offers the same Supplies Status cartridge usage information and printer functionality as the OEM chip changes this situation. It erases the market

barriers and provides remanufacturers offering chipped aftermarket cartridges significant marketplace advantages over any competitor attempting to sell non-chipped cartridges.

Detailed information on non-chipped cartridge issues

There are four areas of impact on the enduser customer resulting in the use of non-chipped aftermarket cartridges. The order in which they affect your customer from cartridge installation to end-of-life of the cartridge are:

1) “Non-HP Toner Detected” message,

2) “Remove Sealing Tape” message disablement

3) Supplies Status disablement

4) Toner Low/Toner Out disablement.

“Non-HP Toner Detected” Message at Cartridge Installation

Without a chip, the problems start from the initial installation of an aftermarket cartridge.

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An non-chipped aftermarket cartridge is installed and the enduser is immediately warned with a “Non-HP Toner Detected” message that appears in three printer interfaces:

On the printer’s control panel

On the printed supplies status page available through the control panel information menu

On the printer’s embedded Java webserver pages

In addition, the enduser is advised in these interfaces to contact HP's fraud hotline if they were sold the cartridge as a genuine HP cartridge.

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The “Non-HP Toner Detected” message must either be cleared at the control panel by the enduser or he must wait at least 20 seconds for the message to clear itself. The “Non-HP Toner Detected” will continue to reappear and have to be cleared until 20 to 25 total pages have been printed.

Customer Impact

The “Non-HP Toner Detected” warning creates an immediate annoyance, inconvenience and time delay for the enduser whose main focus is to replace a toner cartridge so they can successfully complete their task at hand, which is to print their document. A non-chipped cartridge creates multiple barriers to achieving their task. The “Non-HP Toner Detected” and fraud hotline messages create a high level of uncertainty and anxiety with the enduser that immediately creates issues for the aftermarket cartridge.

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“Remove Sealing Tape” Control Panel Notification Disabled at Cartridge Installation

In addition to the “Non-HP toner Detected” message, a non-chipped aftermarket cartridge will not enable the “Remove Sealing Tape” control panel notification if the toner seal was not removed prior to installing the cartridge. The printer will operate and print normally, but will print blank pages. This would continue until an enduser observes the problem, and since there would be no warning message to guide them on the source of the problem, they would have to troubleshoot until they found the problem to be a sealed cartridge installed in the printer.

Customer Impact

The lack of a “Remove Sealing Tape” notification if a nonchipped aftermarket cartridge is installed without removing the toner seal creates the same initial issues as the “NonHP toner Detected” message: annoyance, inconvenience and time delay. In addition, printing out blank pages is a productivity loss forcing reprinting of documents and frustrated endusers and their support staffs. All of which reinforces to the enduser that the aftermarket cartridge is inferior to the OEM cartridge.

Supplies Status Information Disabled

A non-chipped aftermarket cartridge disables the Supplies Status information available through both the printed Supplies Status page available through the control panel information menu and the printer's embedded Java webserver Supplies Status Page. The printed version services the walk-up and personal 4100 user, the webserver version is available to every computer user in your customer's business - the secretary, the IT manager, the purchasing manager, the president, and any other employee hooked to the network.

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When an non-chipped aftermarket cartridge is present, both the printed information menu and webserver versions of the Supplies Status page will exhibit the following:

Non-HP Toner Detected”

HP Fraud Hotline message

All cartridge usage history is absent and replaced by the HP Fraud Hotline message.

TonerGuage inaccuracy warning

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The exact message in the Supplies Status Page:

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TTENTION: A non Hewlett-Packard toner cartridge has been detected. Remember HP LaserJet Cartridges and supplies are designed together with you HP LaserJet printer to delivery optimum print quality and performance.

If you were sold this cartridge as a genuine HP product then please call our fraud hot-line. (Refer to your printer User Manual for the telephone number.)

The printer will be unable to report an estimate of the number of pages remaining with this non HewlettPackard toner cartridge. The toner level reported will only be approximate.

Customer Impact

The “Non-HP Toner Detected” message and the absence of the Supplies Status data are constant reminders to every 4100 user that he is using a non-HP cartridge. And for every remote user on the network who did not install the cartridge, an open question of whether they have been sold and are using a counterfeit HP cartridge. For the purchasing department and the IT computer group who are usually the decision-makers in printer hard ware, printer supplies and printer support, they have been cut off from the cartridge usage history they enjoyed with chipped cartridges that gave them much better knowledge and control of the TCO for their HP 4100 printers.

Toner Low, Toner Out Disabled

A non-chipped aftermarket cartridge causes the printer to disable Toner Low and Toner Out functions.

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The printer fails to suspend printing at Toner Low and Toner Out. Also no notice is given of Toner Low or Toner Out through the printer's information interfaces or through its supplies alert automatic notification capability.

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This impacts both a personal user of the 4100 sitting in their office and every network user printing to a

4100. Over 70% of all 4100 printers sold worldwide are networked models and 90% of all 4100 print volume is from network users.

Customer Impact

The obvious problem is lost print jobs, productivity loss, frustrated endusers and irritated IT computer support staffs. From the customer's perspective, they see that they are utilizing a clearly inferior product whose cost in time, resources, and reprinted documents outweighs any savings it represented compared to an OEM cartridge. Most organizations will conclude the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with the OEM cartridge is less, even though it costs more.

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