Logging in for the 1st time in ages to comment....

This post about Brother using a "flag gear" on their cartridges is spot-on. I have a Brother DCP-7040 and a Brother DCP-7065DN, both monochrome laser scanner/copier/printers, and both have the "flag gear" on the replacement cartridges (but not on the "starter"/"teaser" cartridges that come with the printer).

Here's how Brother's consumer-unfriendly method works (as it occurred with my DCP-7040):

It starts out the usual way -- like a lot of printer manufacturers, they sell you the printer with a "starter" cartridge (in my case, one with an advertised 1000-page capacity). In my case, it started warning me about "Toner Low -- Prepare new toner cartridge" after 813 total printed pages. But since the pages were still printing out nice and dark, I did nothing.

Later, at 987 total printed pages on the "starter" cartridge, they started getting noticeably dim. As I'd done for years with my (still-working) HP LaserJet Series II, I did the usual "gently shake the toner cartridge to evenly re-distribute the toner" trick.

But since the 987-page value seemed suspiciously close to the advertised 1000-page limit, I also did some research. I found that there is a clear window on the DCP-7040 "starter" toner cartridge that's used with an optical sensor to detect toner level. As suggested, I covered that clear window with a small piece of black electrical tape and continued printing.

The pages were coming out noticeably darker, presumably from the re-distribution of toner rather than from the "fooling" trick with black tape.

I continued to use the DCP-7040 like that, simply ignoring the ever-present "Toner Low -- Prepare new toner cartridge" message. After a few hundred more pages printed, I had to bump up the page contrast setting a bit to get the darkness I wanted, but the pages were still printing fine.

At 1305 total printed pages, the message from the printer changed to "Toner Life End -- Replace Toner Cartridge". IIRC, the printer refused to print at that point, but my notes are not 100% conclusive.

So I installed the new "TN-360" 2600-page toner cartridge and verified that it worked. But, being the curious and experimental type, I immediately pulled the new 2600-page cartridge out and replaced it with the old 1000-page "starter" cartridge. To my surprise, it started printing again just fine!!!

This led me to do some more research. This is when I learned about Brother's consumer-unfriendly "flag gear" trick. The new cartridge has a gear that rotates just one time -- ever! It essentially tells the printer that a new cartridge has been installed, allowing it to continue printing. Once the printer thinks you've installed the new cartridge, it will happily print with whatever cartridge is installed, even the old, original, 1000-page "starter" cartridge that they wanted you to believe was exhausted!

I continued printing on the "starter" cartridge. It went on to print a total of 1951 pages before it was truly out of toner -- almost twice the advertised life!

At this point, I had to re-install the once-used 2600-page replacement cartridge. And, of course, the printer thinks I've been using it for the last 646 (1951 - 1305) pages, so it will presumably tell me I'm out of toner 646 pages before it normally would. But I intend to do the "flag gear reset" trick mentioned by "TheloniousToady" when the time comes to further fool the printer into continuing to print on my long-from-empty toner cartridge.

The DCP-7065DN is still on the starter cartridge (which curiously lacks the clear window that I put black tape over on the DCP-7040's starter cartridge), but it appears I will have the same issue with the "flag gear" trick when the time comes.

Having said all that, I like both of my Brother printers (using them full-time with Linux as both a sheet-fed + flatbed scanner and as a printer/copier). They are quite cheaply made (very "plastic-y", for lack of a better term), so they're probably not good in a rough-handling (i.e. office-like) environment.

However, due to Brother's anti-consumer "flag gear" nonsense, I've stopped recommending them to people.

It's Brother's loss -- I used to heartily recommend them, but I won't tolerate consumer-hostile policies.

I have. In fact, I posted in detail about it back in Aug 2005: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=158055&cid=13241557

I'd submitted a fair, honest, but harsh review comparing 2 different modems I'd purchased -- 1 great, 1 lousy. NewEgg rejected my review of the lousy modem and took my review of the great one. I couldn't see any point where my rejected submission violated any of NewEgg's guidelines (included in that post).

I even went so far as to "soften" the language of the harsh review and re-submit it, but it was also rejected.

I like NewEgg but make no mistake about it -- they are (or at least were) filtering bad reviews to some extent.

Check your local planetarium, if possible. They often have shows geared to younger children.

I took my niece (then about 6 years old) to one a couple of times after she showed interest in star-gazing. I think these days, she (now 9 years old) might be better than me at picking out constellations!