Friday File: The HP inkjet cartridge conspiracy 24 February, 2005 By Chris Talbot

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Various news sites are reporting that a Georgia woman has filed a class action lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard Co. The woman claims that HP has outfitted its ink cartridges with the ability to expire on a specific date, no matter whether there is ink still left in the cartridge or not, thereby forcing customers to buy replacement cartridges so they can print their precious documents.

The lawsuit was filed in the Santa Clara Superior Court on Feb. 17, 2005, and the woman behind the suit is representing other Americans who have jumped on board the class action bandwagon in order to nail HP to the wall for programming its cartridges to just up and die. In fact, she's representing Americans who have purchased an HP inkjet cartridge since February 2001.

HP, of course, is the world's top printer maker. Perhaps if some other printer company had been on top and not quite the household name for printers that HP is, the Georgia woman with a chip on her shoulder would be suing the likes of Lexmark, Xerox or even Brother.

But hey, HP is number one, and that's the company that is part of the conspiracy to make people buy ink when they don't need to -- or so would seem is the reasoning of the lawsuit filer. Tort reform anyone?

However, maybe this disgruntled HP customer has something going for her -- but perhaps she just hasn't looked deep enough into the conspiracy. Sure, HP inkjet cartridges might be programmed to stop working on a certain date. That chip in the cartridges that tells computers when ink is low could also instruct the cartridge to stop issuing ink to the printer when, say, Feb. 25, 2005 rolls around. If HP is doing this, then surely there must be other companies in all manner of industries doing similar things.

For instance, how often have you noticed that your coffee pot has a last little trickle of coffee at the bottom that won't fill a cup. Is it that there's no more water in the coffee maker? Is it that the grinds have been flushed clean of all caffeine goodness? Surely not. More than likely, Braun, Black & Decker and their ilk are behind a vast (vast, I tell you!) conspiracy to screw coffee lovers out of brewed coffee.

Razor blades, as the ultimate consumable, go dull just when you're late for a meeting, don't they? Have you just used that blade one too many times, or is Gillette trying to get you fired?

How often do you find that you need to call home, but suddenly your cell phone battery is dead? It's definitely a conspiracy to make you go home and charge up your batteries -- or heck, buy a new one. Or maybe Nokia is just trying to get you in the doghouse? They foisted the N-Gage onto the public. Why can't Nokia be capable of inflicting other miseries on us? Or maybe the company wants you to buy multiple batteries so that you're never out of luck?

Maybe the worst offender is that of battery manufacturers themselves -- not the cell phone type, but those AAs that we use to fuel our portable CD players and other electronics. Is Duracell behind a plot to make batteries run out when you're miles from home and in desperate need of a music fix?

Also, when you want to be sexually aroused, don't you always find that the last condom has somehow up and disappeared? Or maybe that the condoms have up and expired at just the wrong time?

Is it a conspiracy? Or is it that some people, like the Georgia HP customer, should just realize that consumables run out, and it's not because they're programmed that way.