The basic model XX40 gives you 40 pages a minute. Want the XX80? An engineer comes out and flips the DIP. Exact same hardware.
I'm 100% okay with artificial limitations on hardware I buy, too, so long as they're upfront about capabilities - Running something at half capacity for service reliability reasons is still a valid strategy when dealing with warranties. I have no problem buying an AMD Ryzen 7900 which is literally the same silicon on the same fab as the 7950, but binned differently. They are clear about what they're providing, what the specs are, and it's possible that it could perform better, but I know what they're guaranteeing. Sometimes I don't like it - If yields are good, they could bin many more cards at the higher tier and drop the price, but they're under no obligation to provide me a better product out of charity; They should have competition that forces their hand.
It's where it's unclear or deceptive that it's a problem, and HP's scheme is a shakedown. We should invest in competitors.
John Deere sells you a tractor and you honestly don’t care that you can’t have it repaired by a local tractor shop?
I mean it’s great if you happen to live next to a dealer and are rich, but not everyone is so privileged.
Monopolies are a problem. Businesses exploiting consumers are a problem. Both are worth solving.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AMD_Athlon_Pencil_Tr...
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/hacking-nvid...
The.
Fuck.
Literally every "scan tool" for troubleshooting machinery is like this.
The upgrade consisted of popping open the case to pull an SD card out and update a text file with a list of enabled features. Could be a few grand in new features after the ‘upgrade’.
I can only imagine a few technicians figured this trick out on their own.
AT&T already did this. You were paying not only for the service but all of the equipment as well. You didn't actually own anything from the phone company.
100% fact, at least where I grew up. we had no reception problems (flat farmland) and we were one of the first houses in one of the first towns in the area to get cable service. cable company promised no commercials ever, and that's why he subscribed, after a trial period. there were zero commercials.
I remember my father on the phone with the cable company, the company that owned the cable company, our state representative, and our governor, all within a month after the first commercials started airing. obviously it did no good.
Per Wikipedia [0]:
“The abbreviation "CATV" is used in the US for cable television and originally stood for community antenna television, from cable television's origins in 1948; in areas where over-the-air TV reception was limited by distance from transmitters or mountainous terrain, large community antennas were constructed, and cable was run from them to individual homes. […] The early systems simply received weak (broadcast) channels, amplified them, and sent them over unshielded wires to the subscribers, limited to a community or to adjacent communities. The receiving antenna would be taller than any individual subscriber could afford, thus bringing in stronger signals; in hilly or mountainous terrain it would be placed at a high elevation.”
With electrical equipment like oscilloscopes it is quite common to sell the physically identical unit with different softwarelocks for different prices (Want 350 MHz bandwidth instead of 80? Pay some extra).
Want that HDMI cable to run 8k? Here os a simple subscription. As resolutions go up there comes a point where cable will have to have some active components in them anyways.