HP customer claims firmware update shoved printer off support cliff
A Quebec customer claims that a firmware update from HP rendered his OfficeJet 4650 printer unusable. Internal documents suggest that many older printers are losing connectivity due to server updates, leading to frustration among users. HP has acknowledged the issue but has not provided a permanent fix, instead offering a refurbished replacement that the customer declined.
- ▪A customer in Quebec reported that a firmware update disabled his five-year-old OfficeJet 4650 printer.
- ▪Internal HP documents indicate that many Generation 1 printers are experiencing connectivity issues due to server updates.
- ▪The customer has filed complaints with consumer protection agencies and described a frustrating support experience with HP.
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| Original publisher | The Register |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/personal-tech/2026/05/26/hp-customer-claims-firmware-update-shoved-printer-off-support-cliff/5244888 |
| Publication time | Tue, 26 May 2026 11:15:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-26T09:17:47.271Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-26T09:17:47.271Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 0Yg_GibsQvXG |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); Personal Tech HP customer claims firmware update shoved printer off support cliff Internal notes point to cloud connectivity woes for older OfficeJets, though company denies systemic issue Carly Page Carly Page Published tue 26 May 2026 // 10:15 UTC HP appears to have discovered a new subscription tier for printers: "Works until we decide it doesn't."A customer in Quebec claims the company remotely crippled his five-year-old OfficeJet 4650 printer after a firmware update, then spent…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Register.
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