For people who enjoy using their computers and have an entire home office, moving can be an especially frustrating time. This is because of regionalization. What is regionalization you may ask? Well, it is programming that is set up on many manufacturers' printers. If you have one of these printers, you can only buy ink cartridges from the same zone as where you bought your printer. So if you move to a country halfway around the world, your printer will not work unless you buy your ink cartridges from the same area as where your printer was originally purchased. For example, if you live in New Zealand you are in zone 1, but if you move to England you are in zone 2. These zones have been set apart to reduce any potential for piracy and help the control the market.
Imagine you have an expensive and newer HP printer. Once you use up its ink cartridge and need to refill, you go to buy another cartridge in your new zone, say “Staples” in Japan. Of course when you get home to your printer, you have a new paperweight. HP, as well as others, is using regionalization programming on their printer cartridges in the same way that some DVD movies are encoded with regional coding. If you find that you need to buy a new cartridge where you are living, there is a company that will ship anywhere in the world. It is InkMart.com. This is one path to a resolution, if you aren’t able to get the printer working. Email them at info@InkMart.com about your problem, and ask if they have your region in stock.
HP has set up their marketing scope to cover the world, marketing into 2 regions or zones. New Zealand (Pacific) is in Zone 1 and then there is London (Atlantic) is in Zone 2. The printers purchased in zone 1 would also work well in zone 2, until the units were sold and the ink runs out. Once they run out of ink and you go to buy a cartridge in a different zone, you will have problems with the printing after that. The printer will have to be reset or re-regionalized; however, the third time you re-regionalize the printer it will stick with that particular regional preference forever.
There have been rumors that HP will send replacement printers to those who are having problems with their printer. This is for people who are having problems due their printers not being regionalized with the zone in which they are currently living. If you want to try and you really have this problem, then go for it. Email them laptop_support_en@mail.support.hp.com This isn’t an email for the printer department, but it’s much deeper into the company’s structure than you will get using the web form, which doesn’t work so well, I’m sorry to say. I wish you the best with your efforts. Good Luck!
