02/23/2005: 
Stuff That Doesn't Suck
Finally, Shenanigans Called on the Printer Industry
from Reuters
A Georgia woman has sued Hewlett-Packard Co. , claiming the ink cartridges for their printers are secretly programmed to expire on a certain date, in some cases rendering them useless before they are even installed in a printer.
HP ink cartridges use a chip technology to sense when they are low on ink and advise the user to make a change. But, the suit claims, those chips also shut down the cartridges at a predetermined date regardless of whether they are empty. "The smart chip is dually engineered to prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer"
Fun Fact: Printer ink costs approximately $2,701.52 per gallon.
