Well, it finally happened. The last printer brand standing, the one that wasn’t trying to shake you down for ink money like a street-corner toner dealer, has fallen. Brother—yes, the company that tech enthusiasts swore by—has stealthily locked down its printers through forced firmware updates, blocking third-party cartridges and making sure you can’t roll back to older versions.

Louis Rossmann, the repair guru and longtime champion of “just get a Brother printer and be free,” has officially thrown in the towel. In a recent video, he breaks the bad news: Brother is “among the rest of them now.” The company that once offered an escape from HP’s and Canon’s ink extortion has taken a page from their playbook.

The situation is dire for anyone hoping to save money on printing. Brother’s updates do two nasty things:

1. They block third-party cartridges. If you had a working setup with budget-friendly ink, a firmware update might suddenly turn your printer into an expensive paperweight.
2. They remove older firmware versions. No rolling back, no undoing the damage—once your printer updates, there’s no going back to the good old days.

And if you have a color printer? Things get even worse. Users have reported that color calibration stops working with non-Brother toner, rendering cheaper options useless.

Rossmann’s advice? Keep your printer offline. Turn off updates. If you haven’t been hit yet, protect your machine before it’s too late. Otherwise, you might wake up one morning to find your printer demanding official Brother ink like a high-end espresso machine that only works with name-brand pods.

So, what printer should you buy now? Even Rossmann doesn’t have an answer, but if you absolutely need an ink printer, get a Canon Megatank or Epson Ecotank printer, so you can refill them with actual ink, not a cartridge.

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