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Re:HP printers try to send data back to HP about your device... by ljoshua on Sunday September 15, 2019 @08:59PM (#20980366)
In my family we use Instant Ink and actually love it. We're on the largest plan (300 pages/mo). We spend less on ink now than we used to, and it is a huge relief to not have to make a late-night run to the big box store because the school project is due the next day and the stupid magenta has run out. The ink is always there, waiting to be swapped out, then you recycle the used cartridges when they're done. It's incredibly convenient for us, is a cost-savings, and I am reasonably okay with the fact that they know how many pages I print and the types of documents.

HOWEVER, I was recently looking at the bandwidth stats from my network switch, and was pretty shocked to see the printer has sent out several hundred megabytes of data back to HP over the past month. I knew it had to communicate with the mothership so they could charge me for my usage, but that should be a packet that says something like "User XYZ just printed 7 pages," which would reasonably be 5kb per job. I have no idea why hundreds of megs of data need to go out, and so I'm planning of on doing some DPI investigation the to set what on the world it feels like it needs to be sending.

Re:HP printers try to send data back to HP about your device... by HarryHirsch on Sunday September 15, 2019 @11:09PM (#20980805)
3 cent per page is surprisingly competitive, especially for an inkjet. I'm using a Color Laserjet 3600, a toner cartridge for which is about 40 dollars on Ebay. A colour cartridge lasts ~ 4000 pages, black ~ 6000 pages, that's 4 cents per page. Even though that is with second-hand supplies off Ebay it's still more than the official automatic ink in the mail.
Re:HP printers try to send data back to HP about your device... by jaclaz on Monday September 16, 2019 @07:27AM (#20982995)
>"User XYZ just printed 7 pages," which would reasonably be 5kb per job

Actually (of course IMHO) that should reasonably be (including the percentage of ink covered/black and a validation hash) below 150 bytes.

Re:HP printers try to send data back to HP about your device... by ljoshua on Monday September 16, 2019 @10:07AM (#20984121)
Sure, but let's face it, I don't think HP's top priority here is actually trying hard to make it small... :|
Re:HP printers try to send data back to HP about your device... by jaclaz on Monday September 16, 2019 @12:31PM (#20985786)
Yep, I surely agree :), the point is only on the use of reasonably , by allowing everyone to "grow" data (both when actually needed and when it is not) shifting everytime the range of "reasonable" we have today's monsters (web sites, OS's, you name it).

And surely I am (more than a bit) old-fashioned, but when you can use the Doom as a unit of measure, JFYI:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13211120

then it isn't reasonable anymore.