'My Printer Is Extorting Me', Complains Subscriber to HP's 'Instant Ink' Program (theatlantic.com) 253
A writer for the Atlantic complains that their HP printer is shaking them down like a loan shark.
I discovered an error message on my computer indicating that my HP OfficeJet Pro had been remotely disabled by the company. When I logged on to HP's website, I learned why: The credit card I had used to sign up for HP's Instant Ink cartridge-refill program had expired, and the company had effectively bricked my device in response....
Instant Ink is a monthly subscription program that purports to monitor one's printer usage and ink levels and automatically send new cartridges when they run low. The name is misleading, because the monthly fee is not for the ink itself but for the number of pages printed. (The recommended household plan is $5.99 a month for 100 pages). Like others, I signed up in haste during the printer-setup process, only slightly aware of what I was purchasing. Getting ink delivered when I need it sounded convenient enough to me....
The monthly fee is incurred whether you print or not, and the ink cartridges occupy some liminal ownership space. You possess them, but you are, in essence, renting both them and your machine while you're enrolled in the program.... Here was a piece of technology that I had paid more than $200 for, stocked with full ink cartridges. My printer, gently used, was sitting on my desk in perfect working order but rendered useless by Hewlett-Packard, a tech corporation with a $28 billion market cap at the time of writing, because I had failed to make a monthly payment for a service intended to deliver new printer cartridges that I did not yet need....
There are tales of woe across HP's customer-support site, in Reddit threads, and on Twitter. A pending class-action lawsuit in California alleges that the Instant Ink program has "significant catches" and does not deliver new cartridges on time or allow those enrolled to use cartridges purchased outside the subscription service, rendering the consumer frequently unable to print. Parker Truax, a spokesperson for HP, told me, "Instant Ink cartridges will continue working until the end of the current billing cycle in which [a customer cancels]. To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges."
"Nobody told me that if I canceled, then all those cartridges would stop working," complains another owner of an HP printer cited in the article. "I guess this is our future, where your printer ink spies on you."
But the article ultimately concludes that the printer's shakedown is "just one example of how digital subscriptions have permeated physical tech so thoroughly that they are blurring the lines of ownership. Even if I paid for it, can I really say that I own my printer if HP can flip a switch and make it inert?"
Instant Ink is a monthly subscription program that purports to monitor one's printer usage and ink levels and automatically send new cartridges when they run low. The name is misleading, because the monthly fee is not for the ink itself but for the number of pages printed. (The recommended household plan is $5.99 a month for 100 pages). Like others, I signed up in haste during the printer-setup process, only slightly aware of what I was purchasing. Getting ink delivered when I need it sounded convenient enough to me....
The monthly fee is incurred whether you print or not, and the ink cartridges occupy some liminal ownership space. You possess them, but you are, in essence, renting both them and your machine while you're enrolled in the program.... Here was a piece of technology that I had paid more than $200 for, stocked with full ink cartridges. My printer, gently used, was sitting on my desk in perfect working order but rendered useless by Hewlett-Packard, a tech corporation with a $28 billion market cap at the time of writing, because I had failed to make a monthly payment for a service intended to deliver new printer cartridges that I did not yet need....
There are tales of woe across HP's customer-support site, in Reddit threads, and on Twitter. A pending class-action lawsuit in California alleges that the Instant Ink program has "significant catches" and does not deliver new cartridges on time or allow those enrolled to use cartridges purchased outside the subscription service, rendering the consumer frequently unable to print. Parker Truax, a spokesperson for HP, told me, "Instant Ink cartridges will continue working until the end of the current billing cycle in which [a customer cancels]. To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges."
"Nobody told me that if I canceled, then all those cartridges would stop working," complains another owner of an HP printer cited in the article. "I guess this is our future, where your printer ink spies on you."
But the article ultimately concludes that the printer's shakedown is "just one example of how digital subscriptions have permeated physical tech so thoroughly that they are blurring the lines of ownership. Even if I paid for it, can I really say that I own my printer if HP can flip a switch and make it inert?"
That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you replace your cartridges with purchased ones, you can print.
According to the class action lawsuit you can't purchase cartridges outside of the program and the printer print.
Re:That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:4, Informative)
And if you replace your cartridges with purchased ones, you can print.
According to the class action lawsuit you can't purchase cartridges outside of the program and the printer print.
Based on my personal experience, that just is not true.
Re:That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:5, Insightful)
This week I'd recommend Brother Printers. Probably.
Re:That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:4, Interesting)
Bought a Brother two years s back, seems good so far, worked OOTB on Linux for me perfectly.
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I went the same route. Bought a Brother laser all-in-one, works perfectly, doesn't bug me about any subscription, and I only buy original consumables for it.
It also integrates well with Home Assistant, and I see statistics for it. Almost 2K pages printed, no issue.
Fuck HP / Canon / etc with their greed.
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Brother makes the best printers in my experience. I buy a laser printer every 3-4 years when it runs out of toner.
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That's because they come with "starter cartridges" that don't have much toner in them. If you're only going through the starter cartridges every few years, if you buy actual full capacity cartridges they'll last you like 10 years. Or pay slightly more and get the high capacity ones that, depending on the model, have twice as much toner in them.
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You also never have to sign up for that service. Just use purchased cartridges as you normally would. But you can't write a whiny article about that.
By the way HP provides link to cancel the service even before you sign up for it. https://instantink.hpconnected... [hpconnected.com]
Re: That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:2)
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Tried that... Printer wouldn't even recognize the store bought cartridges
Instant Ink sent me a black ink cartridge and my printer would not recognize it. Then support sent me another black ink cartridge and that one did not get recognized. I then had a long debugging session with support to thoroughly document the issue and they sent me yet another black ink cartridge and that one worked (and support followed up too).
So basically what I'm saying is that they had some cartridge compatibility issue with their own cartridges and if that extended to non-Instant Ink cartridges, this
Re:That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:4, Interesting)
Two weeks ago, I bought and set up a HP printer for printing out stuff for tax season. It was easy to decline HP Instant Ink, and I bought ink cartridges with the printer.
I wonder if it might be earlier models or other ones, but mine wasn't a horror story in the least. I didn't choose the "you get extra Internet stuff if you promise you never use third party inks) as an option either. As for drivers, I avoid installing the huge HP driver pack, and just use IPP/Bonjour which works out of the box, no issues.
Overall, the trick is just to avoid the HP options and get the printer set up. Instant Ink -may- work for some people, especially if the pages printer per month is greater than the amount of ink taken up, and they are doing color photos. However, I stick to the old fashioned thing of paying for cartridges when I need them.
The ink cartridges that came with the printer (Score:3)
And if you replace your cartridges with purchased ones, you can print.
According to the class action lawsuit you can't purchase cartridges outside of the program and the printer print.
The most interesting thing from the original article is that it implies the user claimed to still be on his first set of cartridges...
"Here was a piece of technology that I had paid more than $200 for, stocked with full ink cartridges. My printer, gently used, was sitting on my desk in perfect working order but rendered useless"
IN OTHER WORDS: The cartridges he paid for with the printer were bricked because he signed a "contract" and without actually delivering anything, they remotely bricked his original c
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I don't think there's a URI scheme for anuses yet.
There was, but it was removed from the spec because of the Goatse guy.
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That makes sense to me. AT&T is worth $200b, but they will cut off your broadband if you fail to pay your subscription fee.
But your computer and TV that was connected to that broadband service will still function.
Re:That HP is worth $28b is of no concern (Score:5, Insightful)
A corporation makes a deal with you to provide you a service: Ink on subscription.
But that's the point here. It's called "ink on subscription" but in reality it is "printer able to spit out page on subscription". Those are two very different things with two very different implications.
No one has to buy a HP product (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi
Just like with Apple, no one has to buy a HP printer.
TWR
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There are decaffeinated brands that are just as tasty.
Re: No one has to buy a HP product (Score:2)
Just like with Apple this simply isn't true. It's just a thing fanbois tell themselves to justify taking the daily abuse to their own mirrors.
The truth is: it's a kink. Some enjoy getting it rough.
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Random Google search:
Brother, Canon, Dell, Dymo, Epson, Fujisu, HP, IBM, Kodak, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Oki, Panasonic, Pantum, Pitney Bowes, Pyramid, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Tektronix, Toshiba, Xerox
I'm sure there are more. Hardly "limited choices", are they?
Re: No one has to buy a HP product (Score:5, Interesting)
As I sit staring at my wife's printer that WON'T FUCKING SCAN because it...needs ink, I'd appreciate these "alternatives" you speak of.
Tell me, which company won't force me to pay through the nose just to print, oh and I am going to stipulate that if it's multi function, none of them get disabled because I need an utterly unrelated supply.
Shit I'm only half sarcastic here. I'm currently researching a way to address my wife's printer issues with the people who took it hostage.
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Tell me, which company won't force me to pay through the nose just to print, oh and I am going to stipulate that if it's multi function, none of them get disabled because I need an utterly unrelated supply. Shit I'm only half sarcastic here. I'm currently researching a way to address my wife's printer issues with the people who took it hostage.
This is one of the reasons I will not buy an all-in-one color INKJET unit. If I need an AIO, I will only purchase a laser-based version, which admittedly are much harder to find. Brother MFC L2690DW [amazon.com]
Most of what I need to print for archival purposes can be reasonably done monochrome, and the very few times I need a high-quality color print, I visit Staples and pay the 88 cents per page.
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Dunno about all in one, but brother, my man, get a brother.
They are substantially more expensive than other printers spec for spec, to the point where the last time I bough one, the guy in the shop questioned why. But all those smug brother fanbois on slashdot convinced me. And I've joined them.
It's fucking weird owning one. It creepily prints every time. If it runs out of toner, I reset the cartridge and it turns out plenty is left. Or I get crap prints, but it's my choice.
If brother don't do all in ones,
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Dunno about all in one, but brother, my man, get a brother.
They are substantially more expensive than other printers spec for spec, to the point where the last time I bough one, the guy in the shop questioned why. But all those smug brother fanbois on slashdot convinced me. And I've joined them.
It's fucking weird owning one. It creepily prints every time. If it runs out of toner, I reset the cartridge and it turns out plenty is left. Or I get crap prints, but it's my choice.
If brother don't do all in ones, go separate. And get a brother.
Added benefit is that when there is yet another story about astonishingly shitty printers, you can be smug about your choice.
The cool thing about Brother is that they have been (and still are) making highly-complex mechanical sewing machines and sergers for at least a century; so they have all that precision mechanical mechanisms that have to work flawlessly for hundreds of thousands of times, for probably longer than anyone else in the printer/scanner business.
Think about it.
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I have the Officejet Pro X476dn and I absolutely love it.
This thing is called an inkjet but it performs more like a laser printer because the ink cartridges are fixed and massive, so the printhead does not move across the page like an ordinary inkjet. The paper just rolls quickly past the fixed print-head. Things I love about it:
* the huge cartridges hold a ton of ink and rarely need to be replaced
* individual cartridges for each color (and black)
* ink gauges on printer are accurate, and prints well until
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Victim-blame much? Stop carrying water for corporations that don't pay you.
Re: No one has to buy a HP product (Score:5, Insightful)
If you need a printer to print, then buy a printer that prints. If you need to scan, buy a scanner
OMG you're correct! I'm off to buy a camera, music player, pocket sized video display, alarm clock, web client and app platform to go with my fucking PHONE!
Re: No one has to buy a HP product (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not a very insightful take.
Thing is for a, phone 99% of the hardware is shared often all of it.
For an alarm clock, you need a speaker, UI (provided by the touch screen) and control (the CPU), and real-time clock (provided by the cell subsystem). You already need the UI, speaker and control for the phone. Likewise the alarm is just software. A camera is one extra bit of hardware, but shares all the rest.
And they all share the portable battery powered nature.
That doesn't apply in the printer/scanner thing. The two devices don't even share the same paper handling assembly. It's basically two very different things pasted one on top of the other. You get some space savings, but if you get a little shelf you can stack therm anyway so it's not much.
You do lose if you want photocopier like functionality, I'll give you that.
That's not a very insightful take.
A printer/scanner shares a chassis, case, power supply, controller, networking hardware, display and control-panel, and possibly some other stuff. All in a footprint that is essentially a 2:1 space-savings (which is essential for many homes, dorms and even small offices).
In fact, the only things not shared by the scanner portion are the image sensor and lens assembly, a lamp, a stepper-driven slide-arm for the actual scanning function, and a piece of glass.
That sounds like about 90%+ common components in 100% shared physical space at about a 95%+ cost-savings over purchasing separates. Add FAX or direct email capability, and the savings are even greater!
Oh, and I forgot a Copier (or FAX machine), which, as even you admit, uses 100% of the guts of both units!!!
And as a bonus, all this comes with a 2 to 4 X reduction in the eventual e-waste.
As I said, you didn't think it through. There are obviously still higher-end/higher-volume applications where separates are still king; but for the vast majority of home and small office uses, Multifunction printer/scanner/(fax) machines are a wonderful choice, without any significant real-world compromises.
Learn what you're buying (Score:5, Insightful)
This sucks, but it's been pretty common knowledge for years that HP has DRM on their ink cartridges. This is sort of the expectation you should have whenever you buy an ink jet printer from HP.
If you don't want to deal with the ink cartel, my suggestion is don't bother with them. Save the extra couple hundred $ and get a laser. If you use your printer with any regularity, it will pay for itself very quickly. And - as far as I know - laser printers aren't sold using to Gillette model.
Re:Learn what you're buying (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. This says a lot:
"... I signed up in haste during the printer-setup process, only slightly aware of what I was purchasing."
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Re: Learn what you're buying (Score:3)
Yeah... about the victim thing.
Look, it's not rape. They're not being ambushed in the park in after dark and overpowered. They're just supposed to read the text that comes before "Ok", something that's entirely within their power to do.
The fact that they don't is encouraging HP and similarly minded companies to carry on with the treachery ("Look Jason, the business model has been validated!") and if anything, with their behavior they're contributing their bit to fucking over the next guy. The most effective
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You ever heard of dark patterns?
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It says we're heading back to robber barons where the laws are best used to protect companies fucking object people rather than protect people. What's amazing is how many people are cheering on the barons.
Every asshole is trying to add thousand page "licenses" to everything now. You have the choice of not reading them of living like the Amish because the time to read them does not exist. And if you somehow manage to find time, well fuck toy you now have the choice of entering the modern world of living like
Re: Learn what you're buying (Score:2)
Yep. I bought a LJ2100TN in 2009-2010. Still running strong! Generic toner from Amazon is cheap too.
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What are good laser printers with colors for Linux, macOS, and Windows?
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Brother mono 2030 has done me well so far, I would assume their colour range would be fine. I would expect problems on cheaper devices, but I had none.
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Save the extra couple hundred $ and get a laser.
It's not even a couple hundred anymore. You can get a fairly decent laser for $199 these days, and while they usually come with half-filled original toners, that still means they'll last you for hundreds of pages. They're so cheap now that the last time I bought new toners I seriously counted if it's cheaper to just buy a new printer (it wasn't, but barely).
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For that matter, even if you print infrequently. Laser printers are fine with that, many inkjets will dry up and clog with most of the ink unused if they are infrequently used.
Print or just cartridges disabled? (Score:5, Informative)
Even if I paid for it, can I really say that I own my printer if HP can flip a switch and make it inert?"
Seems like they just made the ink cartridges, acquired via the Insta Ink program, "inert" not the printer. Seems like you could buy cartridges to start printing again:
Parker Truax, a spokesperson for HP, told me, "Instant Ink cartridges will continue working until the end of the current billing cycle in which [a customer cancels]. To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges."
Not defending anything, just noting info in TFS...
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> "To continue printing after they discontinue their Instant Ink subscription and their billing cycle ends, they can purchase and use HP original Standard or XL cartridges."
Which makes me wonder, assuming the printer came with a set of 'free' cartridges, what happened to them.
Blindly enter credit card anywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you sign up for a service without having the faintest idea what you are signing up for? I expect HP makes it hard to discern the precise terms, but... would you otherwise think it is normal to need to enter your credit card when installing a printer (that's already sitting in front of you)?
I'm all for going after companies with terrible/hidden terms, but consumers have to take SOME measure of responsibility.
Re: Blindly enter credit card anywhere? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Blindly enter credit card anywhere? (Score:5, Informative)
They only deliver when your cart runs low as long as you haven't printed more than your limit of pages for the month. One cart will print much more than 100 pages, though it depends on your ink coverage.
My neighbor enrolled in that against my advice, and called me over to help her drop it a year later. They make it hard, and for a newbie it looks scarry, like you're going to permanently break the printer. They tell you AT LEAST three times that the unenrollment cannot be undone. You know what it takes to re-enroll? one mouse click. ONE CLICK. ug.
They lie, they cheat, and they intimidate the vulnerable. Let them burn.
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... would you otherwise think it is normal to need to enter your credit card when installing a printer (that's already sitting in front of you)?
I'm not trying to excuse antisocial predatory practices, but IMHO this pretty much says most of what happened.
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He didn't blindly enter his credit card. He signed up for a service that automatically delivers ink to his door when the printer says it's low. That is a perfectly reasonable service for somebody who has to do a lot of printing with an inkjet.
What he didn't know was that HP's printer division is cartoonishly anti-consumer.
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That's true, but disabling your printer when it has plenty of ink in it because you didn't pay for a "we'll send you new ink when yours runs low" service isn't exactly within what you would reasonably suspect.
And this is a guy who can at least read. A considerably portion of the population coming out of our failing education system has problems reading and comprehending stuff that's more complex than a meme. Should society fail them a second time by making it their fault if an intentionally obscured legales
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All printer companies belong in jail. (Score:2)
They are criminals that engange in repeated false advertising.
None of them are honest.
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I have yet to find any real issue with Brother other than some of their software feels trapped in the XP era.
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This right there.
Brother's software is ... well, it does what it should most of the time, but don't expect anything important from it. It's kinda like a flash back to the 90s.
Fortunately the same can be said about their hardware, which works pretty much like printers did in the 90s, i.e. without lock-out chips, phone-home crap and planned bricking after "too many" prints.
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My Brother printer disabled the cartridge because they claimed that I had printed so many pages that subsequent pages would not look good. It took at least an hour of searching the internet, before I found the secret combination to disable that anti-user crap and continued printing. There was NOTHING in the manual or on Brothers page for the printer.
After entering the secret combination, I managed to print at least a hundred pages before I could see a drop in quality. I don't know if they have changed thei
Meanwhile at vintage HP central... (Score:5, Informative)
I have an HP LaserJet 6MP that's about 30 years old. I don't use it much but I could still get a cartridge replacement last time I needed one. Still works with latest windows. From the good old days of HP when they charged a high price up front for first class equipment.
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That's a rebadged Canon.
Re:Meanwhile at vintage HP central... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Meanwhile at vintage HP central... (Score:5, Insightful)
HP printers were rock solid workhorses in the 80s and into the 90s. Reliable and serviceable. Then cheap inkjet printers happened and printer companies became ink cartels.
Or (Score:2)
You could just buy the ink when the printer starts indicating that it is running low.
Better yet, get a laser printer. I've had my current one for over 3 years now and I'm still using the toner cartridges that came with the printer.
Inkjet printers are a waste of money.
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I inherited a LaserJet 6P from my grandmother. I've been running it for over 10 years and I've never put any toner in it. I think I'm still on the cartridge she last bought for it. There's still plenty of toner left, but the image drum is starting to not be very clean, so probably time for a new toner and drum cartridge.
Definitely friends don't let friends buy ink jet printers.
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The last time I checked, laser printers emitted toxic particulate dust, and needed to be used in a well ventilated area removed from the areas that people were working in. Somehow that only occasionally happens, and I couldn't make it happen in my home computer area. And, at that time, they emitted the dust whether they were printing or not. Well, that *was* a few decades ago, and perhaps things have chanced, but I haven't happened to have run across any report that they have.
N.B.: The report was not fr
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Almost anything will emit something. Tires emit rubber particles. Combustion emits soot particles. Heating plastic or putting fluids in them emits particles. Cooking emits lots of particles. Washing clothes emits particles.
Spraying ink from a nozzle onto paper is no exception. That ink certainly won't all stick to the paper.
The real question is if its a problem or not.
Easiest solution ever (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Easiest solution ever (Score:2)
Not my experience.
Re:Easiest solution ever (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't buy fucking HP printers. Ever. Never ever buy HP printers. Even when they're working, they suck ass and require an inordinately large driver suite that doesn't work most of the time and their corpo-spyware is bloated as fuck. Don't buy anything from HP, really. They suck
Do buy old school HP laser printers that were made before HP turned to evil printer ink DRM.
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Do buy old school HP laser printers that were made before HP turned to evil printer ink DRM.
They made some real workhorses, but some of their toners cost more than a replacement printer, and always have.
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That's because they WANT you to buy a replacement printer, in order to sell you this sort of crap, plus if you weren't aware, they ship printers with "starter" cartridges which might have only 50 or so pages in them. When you go to replace those with ones with actual capacity, you will probably find that they also run around the "replacement" cost of the printer. Because the printer is a loss-leader for the cartridges, which is why they work so hard to force you to buy THEIR cartridges, promising doom and
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I'm surprised anyone still buys an inkjet
People who see the low up-front cost and don't realize what a bad value proposition they are (which is just about anyone without a family techie). I agree that there is no reason to have one. If you need pretty-good color stuff with any regularity, a color laser will suit you. If you need presentation quality, pay a print shop to do it because they're amortizing that huge cost over thousands of jobs and the quality is far superior to anything an inkjet will produce.
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So what printer do you recommend? For what systems?
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I have a Brother MFC-L8690CDW. Scans without cartridges (don't laugh, that's not as much a given as one might think it should be), takes 3rd party cartridges just fine and is easily convinced that the cartridges are still full when they are (which also means that it's now your job to check whether there is still toner left because the printer will believe whatever you tell it and happily print with cartridges that ARE actually empty, too). And of course it's 4 toner cartridges, so if you run out of black (a
Cartridges are FREE under InstantInk (Score:3)
Who the hell is still using inkjets? (Score:5, Informative)
Look, the tech is obsolete, and the excessive cost of inkjet cartridges has been clear for decades.
Get a color laser printer. They're cheap. The "ink" doesn't run, smear, dry up, or clog a "print head". The original toner cartridges may last you for years.
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Mod this up please. My wife is a habitual printer and inkjets were driving me crazy. So I bought a Canon color laser a few years ago and it's been wonderful. If I need photographs printed I'll have them done online or at the drug store. Everything is else is better with the laser. An important distinction that the Canon I have has is that the drums are part of the toner cartridge. This is a bit more expensive but it pretty much eliminates maintenance.
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I've been doing that for 15+ years, and saved a shitload of money. Even when printing a lot, they last an eternity.
But - how long until this "service" comes to laser printers as well? There's nothing really stopping them from doing that, is there?
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I kept printing my tax returns for a while
My business tax filings can't be e-filed - I should check for this year, but they haven't in previous years - and that's about the only thing I print out for the entire year. Fortunately, our Canon inkjet just works.
sub printers (Score:2)
Meanwhile in sane world. (Score:5, Informative)
My trusty 12 year old $150 Brother Laser printer is only on its second toner cartrige and I'm printing between 5-20 pages a week of sheet music. And it prints great.
Hard Pass (Score:2)
For the millionth time or so (Score:5, Informative)
Dystopian A.F. (Score:5, Insightful)
Every year things start to look more like a Philip K. Dick and George Orwell collaboration.
In 10 years I'm expecting Ring to lock you out of your apartment if your subscription lapses. "Sorry, your payment failed. Please hold your smartphone to the door to submit a payment, or you may temporarily enter with your Facebook ID."
Good old HP (Score:4, Informative)
As in - the old ones were good. Back in the 80's and 90's I would have told anyone to buy an HP. But for at least 15 years (probably 20) I would never willingly let someone buy an HP.
This week I'd recommend Brother Printers. Probably.
Boo. Hoo. (Score:2)
Sounds like someone didn't do his homework before deciding what
"Nobody told me", huh? Didn't read, did you? (Score:5, Informative)
A family member bought one of those things just before Christmas, and bribed me with dinner to come over and set it up.
I read the documentation that came with it and the installation screens. They clearly stated that the ink included inside the box could only be used with the subscription, only while the subscription service was active, that the printer must have always-on access to the internet and that if the subscription was canceled, the printer would stop working immediately, unless you installed a more expensive ink cartridge. It also said their cheapest plan was some really low number per month, but only applied if it printed a tiny number of pages in a month. The overage charges were excessive.
"Always on, always connected" is a terrible idea. Someone will hack those things eventually, and will start spewing advertising prints ... all the while chewing up the page limited count and triggering the equivalent of overdraft fees.
I told my family member that I was embarrassed that someone like HP would do this, and convinced them to box up and send that pile of manure back where it was purchased. HP has fallen very, very far from their Laserjet 4 days. And that steaming pile burned all my goodwill I once had for the company.
Incidentally, if you rage-quit midway through the installation process, and then restart to show your family member the text that caused you to rage quit ... their installer isn't able to complete on the second pass without restoring to an O/S savepoint.
Brother seems to have act together, so I went and picked one of their models as a replacement.
Cloud enabled hardware = Leopard Eating Faces (Score:2)
Stop buying so much shit, and stop buying things that requires the internet to work!
Dump HP already (Score:3)
Not to be mean but... (Score:2)
The author of this article is fucking retarded, or worse, making shit up to sell an article.
I understand clicking through a licensing agreement without reading it. I can't fathom doing the same when a credit card is involved.
Re: (Score:2)
Keep in mind that most slashdotters aren't "neurotypical", we aren't average. So basically, yes to both.
Keep in mind that the option screens and user agreements are deliberately designed to encourage "normal" people to just click through them without reading or more importantly, comprehending them. They state just enough that they probably won't eat a class action lawsuit over it and lose.
So yeah, he was a dumbass. Yes, he's doing it to sell an article. But for the average person, it's still an importan
the right to... anything (Score:2)
Even RMS didn't forsee that the Right to Read would be prefaced with a Right to Write. (well, print)
How are these guys not in court, being slammed silly with lawsuits ?
It's the new PASS system. (Score:2)
Classic Chokepoint Capitalism (Score:2)
Corporations instant deal killers (Score:3)
There are a few corporations that are instant deal killers for me. Microsoft to an extent, Cisco, Ubisoft, Sony, AT&T, Apple ... and HP. There are others but those are the ones off hand that will be an almost instant "NO" to, including when I am engaged professionally when I can justify it by the scope of work. Otherwise, I simply note in the report that many are unsatisfied with their products/services, including the author, and provide alternatives with the (usually less expensive) TCO and ROI. I keep a running total of what accounts I've got to drop them - it's an impressive amount over the decades.
Switched just in time (Score:3)
My jet printer sputtered it last legible output last fall, I went to print, basically nothing. Scraped it and got a Brother color laser printer for under $300; it's wonderful.
An anecdote (Score:3)
There’s a use case, and would like to offer a counterpoint to much of what I read above. I like the convenience of having a printer at home, but I do not print a lot. But when I want a photo I don’t want to have to go to a store or order online. I also print some things where I want to file a hard copy. Used to own a Canon Pixma printer which seemed to drain all its ink in cleaning cycles, and spent maybe some $80 in cartridges per year for barely any printing.
The 15 page/mo plan (where an additional 15 pages carry over if unused) suits me fine, and after tax I pay a whopping $1.42 per month. And my ink is delivered, plus they take the old ones back for recycling too. The irony was that I was on a more expensive plan and their price change promoted me to reevaluate my usage and downgrade, paying them less than before!
If you print a lot, sure there are other options so ymmv but I read a lot of the comments above and think to myself nobody forced you to sign up. It is fine as long as you know what you’re signing up for.
Re: (Score:3)
No matter what DO NOT SIGN or click "I AGREE" EVER to ANYTHING without reading it.
Ah, the problem stated quite clearly! Don't just sign, be prepared to actually agree.
I recently stopped using an app because the owner changed the terms to include a service I had no interest in using, let alone signing up for. More than half of the new agreement covered using that service.
Since they "needed" my acknowledgment of their new service to get access to what I wanted, I removed the app to make sure I didn't accidentally sign up for it.