Nowadays, you seem not to even "own" the printer nor the cartridges. Everything becomes a service where you should be in the loop continuously paying for it. And we are consciously supporting such economy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1GWHfg2P5Y
HP has a subscription printer, there's no printer apocalypse.
Needless to say, most of us employees (who were students at the same university) had everything printed. Textbooks, assignments, posters. Thousands upon thousands of pages got printed on those Saturdays, some days you'd swear it just went continuously from the minute we opened to well after we closed. With my family having owned nothing but lasers, I was incredibly impressed by it. Being able to refill the tanks while the printer was going was just incredible, leading to zero downtime or the suffering quality you start to see when cartridges run low.
For the low volume of printing I personally do, I'll stick to laser, but for those who do a lot of colour printing and want the high-quality inkjet offers, I'd go as far to say there's no competiton.
The best printer-related job for Shaq would seem to be crushing them in his giant hands. Can you picture him wearing bi-focals, trying to type on a standard keyboard with those frying pans?
some printers now use an "ink pad": "Caution: Power Cleaning may cause the ink pads to reach their capacity sooner. When an ink pad reaches the end of its service life, the product stops printing and you must contact Epson for support."
A year later she reports everything working out just how she wanted and no regrets. She's on one of the middle tiers so it's not an inconsiderable amount of money but she prints quite a lot of stuff, she does craft projects with local kids in various organisations and does dress making, these days mostly for dolls because we (her kids) grew up - and it all ends up using paper patterns. She enjoys the small puzzle of managing the page budget to avoid excess fees, and she very much likes never finding that it's low on ink unexpectedly without a spare cartridge ready to go because of course HP ensures that frustration won't happen.
This model is there for a very long time, and makes our lives much easier. And if it doesn't lock you in, is offered for quite cheap (we are talking about $3-5 per month, or even the free tier) I don't see the problem with it. As long as you have the freedom of choice (to switch vendors, or do it yourself), I don't see the problem.
And as a result of all this it's heavily regulated unlike printer ink.
You are right, the model is great for some people in some cases. However, its a model where companies use software to lock you out of being able to use your hardware. This is becoming extremely widespread. Consider also the farmers having to deal with the John Deere tractor licenses and being unable to maintain their own equipment (or Apple preventing you from being able to upgrade or repair your macs/iphones).
The problem is that as the practice scales, people end up with no real property rights, and are just ensnared in a hundred terms of service agreements that they literally cannot escape while living a normal life.
Lots of potentially dangerous things are harmless or even pleasant on a small scale.
If you are occasionally forced to send in a paper form or your flight carrier insists on a printed boarding pass etc. it doesn't make economic sense to keep a printer functional at normal cost.
I see HP free tier as a legacy support system.
Ideally I'd print nothing. It's maddening how much bureaucracy still requires printing.
But I agree that on devices that you depend on it is weird.
I live in Amsterdam and have a subscription bike (and I pay for the fact that I will always have a replacement bike if any issues come up)... but I guess I wouldn't like a situation where I couldn't buy (and repair) a regular bike.
If you can plan ahead a little, you don't ever need to actually have a printer on hand.
However, if you print frequently, a B&W laser printer is probably a worthwhile investment. I bought one when my wife needed to do immigration paper work and it has been great. We still use it quite frequently to print out coloring sheets or whatever for my kids, as well as for sending in the occasional form. I haven't needed to buy a new toner cartridge, and I have printed around 1000 pages and it still prints as clearly as the day I bought it. I think we've spent about the same as printing at our library, but from the convenience of our home, and I've used the scanner function several times, as well as the bulk copy feature (insert stack of paper and it copies them all).
If you only print occasionally (1-2x/year), check out your local library or office supply store. If you print more frequently, a laser printer is most likely what you want, especially if you only need black and white. If you print a lot of color, maybe getting a color inkjet is worthwhile if you like the look of ink over toner. Most people shouldn't own an inkjet printer.
I do write the address on envelopes by hand, which I would use a printer for if I'd own one.
- Some of my forms for UK electoral registration.
- For 30% ruling the firm doing my application sent a form to print band return
- I set up a sole trader company and had to print and bring form to my setup meeting.
There were a few others too. The NL itself is generally good for digital services though. I only need to print a few things a year. Nothing frequent.
Here I can print a piece of paper with an address and 2D bar code on it (which is the postage), tape the label to a box, and leave it where the mailman can find it (usually on my front porch), drop it in the outgoing mail at work, or hand it to any mailman I see. No visiting a post office to mail things.
I have high hopes for a technology like that though. Natural contrast ratio as brightness increases is a wonderful thing.
Phones have got ridiculously bright backlights to solve this, and still sunglasses and a sunny day completely ruin the experience.
However, in this case, I like the idea that if tomorrow I wanted to print with Epson, I can sell / abandon this given HP printer and my future printing needs won't depend on my relationship with HP now. (OTOH, I am using HP printer/scanners for 10y now and this is the only brand I am satisfied with, especially for their Linux support).
> the model is great for some people in some cases. I know that my needs might be not the same as others'. For me the model immediately clicked because of my preferences (environmental friendliness, automated ink orders - this one is super convenient since I travel a lot and in the past the ink ran out EXACTLY when I needed on that only weekend when I was finally at home, etc.)
Anyhow, to me this only tells that this dude should probably rethink his finances if he has no idea what subscriptions he has. After that, maybe he should be aware what terms and conditions he accepted, instead of making a fool of himself on twitter.
Also, sometimes the lengthy T&C is a trick to make you buy a shitty service with a lot of hidden fees. Now if you check out their webpage[1], it's crystal clear what it is about, and what are their prices.
It does no such thing. He could send the subscription ink cartridge back and buy a regular cartridge for his printer.
To be clear: Anyone using HP Instant Ink (II) can cancel II and buy a non-II cartridge and be on their merry way. As noted in other parts of this post: The only thing OP was blocked from doing was using an II cartridge after he stopped paying for the II service.
Disclaimer: I do agree the tractor licensing situation is not good, but it's also not the same as this situation.
People in the industry it "Product as a Service": you buy a widget, but you don't own it, and have to keep paying the seller for the right to use it.
Just google: instantInk and scam
This is not a sarcasm, I'm just trying to adapt myself to this brand new world and not to cringe when hearing words like this from myself or anyone else.
The guy has been criticised numerous times in this thread, yet nobody resorted to name calling.
Please refrain from insulting people on public forums.
People seem to be missing this part. It's like returning a rental car.
You are technically obliged to return the cartridges contractually I believe. The fact that they don't pursue you if you don't is at least a small positive.
I can see why some think it's a dark pattern, but it's usual in a rental type scenario to return the thing that was on loan to you
These days, a duplex, 600 dpi color laser is < $200 (though the first hit is a Canon that is not postscript, smb, or lpr compatible, so watch your wallet...)
My last N inkjets died due to dried up heads (a Brother all in one scanner printer dried out and ruined the permanent heads in a month or two, on the starter cartridge!) or removal of windows driver support (It was an HP; Linux still worked fine...).
Sadly, Samsung sold their printer business to HP. The model I have costs more used than I paid for it new. :-(
Generic toner cartridges are $15, and last months to years for me. The printer still has a “Department of Defense” inventory sticker on it.
Also amazing that people will get angry that a company would dare offer a product that doesn’t exactly conform to their own ideological bent.
Your comment extolling the virtues of subscription locked rental ink has me here.
Edit: stop downvoting me, I am a printing industry expert
>pay the minimal 2USD for it (if I exceed the monthly printable 50 pages, I get another 10p/$1, or upgrade my subscription. Unused quota accumulates up to 100p), and I get a monthly email about the detailed pricing.
This model doesn't make sense to me. Why are you paying by the page and not by the amount of ink actually used?
That's like paying for internet by the number of webpages you visit as opposed to the bandwidth you use.
The ink is the product you are using. Unless they're supplying the paper too? It makes sense to charge by the page in a place like Staples or something, but as a subscription for a home printer it seems ridiculous to pay by the page.
You can think of the ink as an implementation detail. With this model you're paying for a capability that happens to be priced on a per-page basis. That's simpler/more understandable for most people than pricing by, say, ink volume.
Yes, this can seem very strange, and it won't make sense for everybody.
Mostly, people aren't printing full coverage (unless it's photos), because it makes the paper soggy.
Postage is probably a bigger cost than ink for HP here; especially for lower volume users who need new cartridges based on time rather than volume.
You don't need a subscription model for this. At least for laser printers, HP allows you to mail back your used cartridges to them, free of charge to you.
"Whines! Whines!" NOT "wines"!
Whine - intransitive verb. (1)To produce a sustained, high-pitched, plaintive sound, as in pain, fear, or complaint. (2)To complain or protest in a childish or annoying fashion.
To _wine_ is to drink wine!
I am whining in sense (1), although you are not here to witness my anguish at your language. I might be whining in sense (2) in this post, b/c I am fairly certain that no one but myself cares.
Otherwise, nice note on the good points of the subscription model for print cartridges.
I can understand if you forgot all of this I guess, but it seems hard to forget to me, when it’s such a unique setup flow to a printer and they warn multiple times.
Edit: oh no, it seems that OP actually got shafted by a change to this experience... bummer.
If your subscribers don’t understand that to which they are subscribed, that seems like a problem to me.
Lots more explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
He could have chosen the old way and buying the cartridges himself on a regular basis, but he chose the subscription model and now he wines about it.
What you need to understand about the subscription model is that you DON'T own the cartridge and you DON'T pay for the cartridge. You pay for printed pages. If the ink runs out, the printer automatically orders a set of new ones, for no additional cost. You receive a package to your preferred postal address, that contains the new ink and a sealable, labeled, post-stamped bag in which you will put the old ones and send it back to HP.
I absolutely love this model. I pay the minimal 2USD for it (if I exceed the monthly printable 50 pages, I get another 10p/$1, or upgrade my subscription. Unused quota accumulates up to 100p), and I get a monthly email about the detailed pricing.
Also, this way the used cartridges (dangerous waste) are handled properly and an environmentally friendly way.