One of my responsibilities during the first half of my career in technology was deciding on peripheral devices the company’s customers — hospitals — could use with our software system. Peripherals included things like terminals, modems and printers.
The first widely successful laser printer was Hewlett-Packard’s LaserJet. I got my hands on one right away after it was introduced in 1984. 8 ppm at 300 dpi for $3500, or about $9000 today, and competitors entered the market.
Some years later our biggest customer was interested in laser printers made by a very big corporation. One printer ran at 12 ppm, the other at 16 ppm. The faster model cost significantly more money. They looked identical, and by accessing the hidden service menu I discovered they were exactly the same printer. The less expensive model was set to wait between each page. The setting could be turned off, and suddenly the 12 ppm printer was spitting out test pages at 16 ppm.
If this sneaky bit of profit padding secrecy got out I’d be forced to admit I knew about it, or claim ignorance and appear incompetent. Not a good place to be, but nothing came of it, and I suspected the technicians at the hospital chain who were pushing for support had figured it out anyway.
Back in those days technical support was provided remotely via dialup modems, and I was also in charge of that bit of technology. CompuServe and AOL, and the early ISP’s, had cabinets filled with modem cards that answered incoming calls. We mostly used ours to dial out to customers. I could dial into a hospital and target a particular printer to send commands and generate test printouts. Ideally, somebody would be on the phone with me to describe what they were seeing on paper.
Some printer problems were in our software, but others were caused by printer firmware changes that were released without my approval. Way back then, a printer could do only what the firmware allowed, but the firmware itself couldn’t be changed without physically opening up a unit and replacing a chip. Today, firmware can easily be changed remotely.
Manufacturers continue to be sneaky in chasing a dollar, and they take advantage of their ability to send instructions en masse to printers remotely. With that in mind, listen to this Planey Money podcast.