If anything it proves money is a disconnect from everyday people and usage. Using an inkjet with cartridges already feels like a subscription as you need to replace them so frequently. Which is...
If anything it proves money is a disconnect from everyday people and usage. Using an inkjet with cartridges already feels like a subscription as you need to replace them so frequently. Which is why I switched to a color laser and a tank printer for photos.
Either way this probably will be a Louis Rossman video if it hasn't already.
For context, I believe that 20 pages would cost me between $.60 and $2.00 (for color) at my local library. If you print off less than 20 pages per month, there is almost no way that it makes sense...
$6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages
For context, I believe that 20 pages would cost me between $.60 and $2.00 (for color) at my local library. If you print off less than 20 pages per month, there is almost no way that it makes sense to deal with your own rented printer. You would need some edge case where you need stuff printed urgently off hours, or had very sensitive data (in which case, a printer connected to the internet would be dubious at best).
To add to this, prints at Office Max or an equivalent are pretty cheap. And for photo prints, Walgreens and CVS are constantly running deals with discount codes. The only thing we use our home...
To add to this, prints at Office Max or an equivalent are pretty cheap. And for photo prints, Walgreens and CVS are constantly running deals with discount codes.
The only thing we use our home printer for these days is printing docs that need an ink signature before being scanned again and emailed back. And this practice has gone down in popularity with the rise of e-signature services.
What we really need is a printer with open source printer soft- and hardware for home use. Let's be honest - it just needs to be able to print some office documents now- and then for the average...
What we really need is a printer with open source printer soft- and hardware for home use. Let's be honest - it just needs to be able to print some office documents now- and then for the average user. And for this even 20 year old technology would be more than enough.
All the 'features' recently added by printer manufacturers are mostly ways to try and intergrate online-services into the printing process, collect user data, and bind users to the printer brand. Innovation in printing is relevant for the professional sector. But there's not been much innovation in printing that is overly relevant for home use in a long time.
Also the level of planned obsolescence in printers and hurdles with regards to cartriges is infuriating. Just charge me the actual price for the hardware, let me use my generic simple refill ink, and be done with it.
For one thing it's not sustainable to buy those litlle printer-specific plastic cartriges all the time that will just stop printing after a fixed page-count instead of simply refilling them when they're empty. Additionally it's infuriating how so many printers simply decide to break when the internal page counter reaches a certain level. Also the current cost of cartriges does not reflect the actual cost of development and production in any reasonable way.
It's fine with me if these big printer companies earn their money on expensive and actually innovative printer technologies for the professional sector. It's also fine with me if they do so with actual improvements for home printers. But please stop gatekeeping age-old tech by adding pseudo-features, drm mechanisms, online-services and planned-obsolescence without actually improving upon the core technology...
Not surprised. I bought an HP laser printer/scanner in 2022 and the TOS required me to: create an HP account connect my printer to the internet share all my printed data with HP Moreover, the...
Not surprised. I bought an HP laser printer/scanner in 2022 and the TOS required me to:
create an HP account
connect my printer to the internet
share all my printed data with HP
Moreover, the printer would refuse to print until I complied with the above.
I promptly returned it for a Xerox. Never again will I pay HP for anything.
This industry has been ripe for an upheaval for a long time. Between the security of network connected printers, cartridge lock-in, and even machine ID coding (MIC -...
This industry has been ripe for an upheaval for a long time. Between the security of network connected printers, cartridge lock-in, and even machine ID coding (MIC - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code) I’ve been hoping for some alternative.
Does anyone know of any startup projects- I’m dreaming of like some of the those open laptop projects - where you might buy the guts/print head and rollers, 3d print the housing, and make or buy some recommended inks. Seems like some startup could build a community around that and end up with a simple black and white printer that actually works for 30+ years.
Ahh to dream…
Edit: in case anyone skipped over that MIC mention and isn’t familiar, it’s worth a click. It’s the kind of crap that makes me sound like a tinfoil-hat-nutjob when I try and talk about it.
“The EFF stated in 2015 that the documents that they previously received through the FOIA[10] suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable.”
I wouldn't buy this but I see what they're getting at. You're essentially leasing a printer and its usage/consumables. One pre-defined price for a pre-defined period and usage level. I don't...
I wouldn't buy this but I see what they're getting at. You're essentially leasing a printer and its usage/consumables. One pre-defined price for a pre-defined period and usage level. I don't really see anything wrong with this as long as they're up front about it. It doesn't fit my needs, but I can see the appeal to some people. There are plenty of better printer offerings out there for people who want to own the actual printer and use aftermarket ink.
The thing about these plans is that they are completely reasonable if you understand the terms. The problem is that people will not understand. HP already has a terrible reputation for their...
The thing about these plans is that they are completely reasonable if you understand the terms. The problem is that people will not understand. HP already has a terrible reputation for their Instant Ink program for this exact reason. Everyone is buying into these and not reading about how it works and getting very angry about it. From what I hear HP is selling their printers with only Instant Ink cartridges bundled in them so people are just clicking OK on the clickwrap agreement and assuming everything is going to be OK, so you really can't blame it all on them; HP engineered this to happen.
Yeah, I thought this was interesting, because for the first roughly half of the article, I was just like "this is a corporate printing contract but scaled down for a household". The former are...
Yeah, I thought this was interesting, because for the first roughly half of the article, I was just like "this is a corporate printing contract but scaled down for a household". The former are super reasonable and uncontroversial, so why are Ars and commenters so averse to the latter?
…And then the second half of the article clarifies: it's adware (ad-equipment, maybe?), apparently scanning the documents you print and selling data about them (and your LAN…?) to ill-defined third parties.
But, like, it seems like there's a decent product here, waiting for almost literally anyone other than HP to produce it.
Could you elaborate on what makes this a decent product in comparison to it's predecessor, paying for a printer once and supplying your own ink/paper without your printing habits or it's contents...
Could you elaborate on what makes this a decent product in comparison to it's predecessor, paying for a printer once and supplying your own ink/paper without your printing habits or it's contents being monetized to feed a hungry corporation's profit margin?
edit: I'm not intending to ask a slanted question, just including the commentary at the end to insinuate my opinion at the onset. I'm genuinely curious what convinces you this is a good product.
The obnoxious aspects of owning a printer are, to most people (I think, I'll definitely grant that my personal printer ownership is highly nontypical and so I'm extrapolating), dealing with...
The obnoxious aspects of owning a printer are, to most people (I think, I'll definitely grant that my personal printer ownership is highly nontypical and so I'm extrapolating), dealing with unreliable printer hardware and worrying about consumables (and especially the cost thereof). Consumer printers are unreliable because they are literally built as cheaply as is capitalistically possible, and consumables are spectacularly overpriced because they're subsidizing the impossibly cheap printers. A subscription model eliminates the incentives that lead to those: the company doesn't want to lease unreliable garbage that they have to replace on their own dime, and the costs of consumables are wrapped into the subscription cost and can't just be jacked up separately.
The biggest obvious mismatch is that I suspect most people's printing is extremely bursty (for example, I do probably 95% of my printing around tax season), so an "n-pages-per-month" model doesn't match well.
This relies on the price being set appropriately, of course. (As someone upthread pointed out, B&W printing at a library or print shop is incredibly cheap, cents per page.) And on the company not mining its customers' printing data for monetization, which is why I don't think HP can do it. And it may not be for everyone. But I don't think that, generally speaking, a household-scale printer lease deal is a universally bad idea.
I don’t think you would be correct to assume that these printers will be higher quality. There is an early termination fee which is likely to be the pro-rated retail cost of the machine, which...
I don’t think you would be correct to assume that these printers will be higher quality. There is an early termination fee which is likely to be the pro-rated retail cost of the machine, which appears to be under $300 still. Why would HP “give away money” when people are expecting the printer to be as crappy as they already are?
Presumably since it’s for a set period they are contractually obligated. But then again it seems like a lot of these agreements these days get a clause that says they can change anything they want...
Presumably since it’s for a set period they are contractually obligated. But then again it seems like a lot of these agreements these days get a clause that says they can change anything they want any time for any reason.
They can jack up the price on consumables because the customer has already sunk the cost of the printer. Getting off Mr. HP's Wild Ride requires buying a whole new printer. With a subscription,...
They can jack up the price on consumables because the customer has already sunk the cost of the printer. Getting off Mr. HP's Wild Ride requires buying a whole new printer. With a subscription, once the subscription period is up, if they don't like new terms, they can just not renew and mail the printer back.
Yeah, I hate the idea of paying for ink, paper and a subscription to my printer to begin with. But On top of all that I'm STILL serving ads to 3rd parties from my printer? These don't seem like...
Yeah, I hate the idea of paying for ink, paper and a subscription to my printer to begin with. But On top of all that I'm STILL serving ads to 3rd parties from my printer?
it seems like there's a decent product here, waiting for almost literally anyone other than HP to produce it.
These don't seem like super extravagent entrprise printers (if they were, the 20 page plan for $7 is a joke and a half), so I really don't see the audience here. Especially since consumer grade printers are not expensive to begin with. The 2nd result on Amazon for an HP printer runs $60, 2 months subscription would outprice that.
Is there something in these subscription printers that a non-enterprise consumer would need?
Consumer inkjet printers tend to be cheap because they are subsidized. They are sold in a razor and blades model, which is why ink cartridges are crazy overpriced and have DRM chips on them. Much...
Consumer inkjet printers tend to be cheap because they are subsidized. They are sold in a razor and blades model, which is why ink cartridges are crazy overpriced and have DRM chips on them. Much like razor blades, ink doesn't cost that much to produce.
Consumer printers are all trash anyways, and I mean that more-or-less literally. They make them to be disposable. They theoretically have replacement parts for them but they are only supported for a few years to cover warranty issues while the printer gets silently discontinued and replaced with a subtly different model with no real improvements, and the prices for those replacement parts can potentially be roughly equivalent to what you paid for the printer in the first place if not more.
If you don't print on a near-daily basis you really should not own a printer.
By that metric, I shouldn’t own one. However, if I don’t have one on standby, the documents will never be printed because I won’t remember to do it or will be too stingy to pay postage.
if you don’t print on a nearly daily basis, you shouldn’t own a printer
By that metric, I shouldn’t own one. However, if I don’t have one on standby, the documents will never be printed because I won’t remember to do it or will be too stingy to pay postage.
I’ll say I fully agree with that statement for inkjet printers, but only partially for lasers. I got a colour laser printer for myself a few years ago, and I’ve already printed enough that I need...
If you don't print on a near-daily basis you really should not own a printer.
I’ll say I fully agree with that statement for inkjet printers, but only partially for lasers.
I got a colour laser printer for myself a few years ago, and I’ve already printed enough that I need to replace the black toner soon, so while it’s usually sitting on my shelf untouched for big blocks of three or four months at a time, I occasionally have enough to print in a single week to be worth owning.
And given the price per page for toner in a laser printer, I’ve probably just about broken even with the alternate reality version of me that prints at the local library or print-shop instead — if not yet, then certainly before the next time I’ll need to replace the toner.
You get the overpriced ink for "free". Also, I'm curious (but not curious enough to spend any time looking into it) whether they extend warranty and provide service in the event of breakage, like...
Is there something in these subscription printers that a non-enterprise consumer would need?
You get the overpriced ink for "free". Also, I'm curious (but not curious enough to spend any time looking into it) whether they extend warranty and provide service in the event of breakage, like you get in a typical corporate copier lease.
The article says "offsite repairs and parts replacements are not included," though I'm not quite sure what they mean by that. To my mind, "offsite repairs" means shipping the machine back to them...
The article says "offsite repairs and parts replacements are not included," though I'm not quite sure what they mean by that. To my mind, "offsite repairs" means shipping the machine back to them for repairs, and thus onsite repairs by a field technician would be suggested. But then parts replacements not being included suggests they'll charge you for onsite repairs.
Ugh. I'm so sick of everyone trying to charge subscriptions and do "as a service" type stuff with literally everything. Not everything needs to have/be a subscription.
Ugh. I'm so sick of everyone trying to charge subscriptions and do "as a service" type stuff with literally everything. Not everything needs to have/be a subscription.
The person making these decisions is making millions of dollars a year in salary for these decisions.
If anything it proves money is a disconnect from everyday people and usage. Using an inkjet with cartridges already feels like a subscription as you need to replace them so frequently. Which is why I switched to a color laser and a tank printer for photos.
Either way this probably will be a Louis Rossman video if it hasn't already.
For context, I believe that 20 pages would cost me between $.60 and $2.00 (for color) at my local library. If you print off less than 20 pages per month, there is almost no way that it makes sense to deal with your
ownrented printer. You would need some edge case where you need stuff printed urgently off hours, or had very sensitive data (in which case, a printer connected to the internet would be dubious at best).To add to this, prints at Office Max or an equivalent are pretty cheap. And for photo prints, Walgreens and CVS are constantly running deals with discount codes.
The only thing we use our home printer for these days is printing docs that need an ink signature before being scanned again and emailed back. And this practice has gone down in popularity with the rise of e-signature services.
You can even use services to
So the printer isn’t necessary.
Yeah. Absolutely. I did something similar the other day. But depending on the importance of the doc i don't want for push my luck.
What we really need is a printer with open source printer soft- and hardware for home use. Let's be honest - it just needs to be able to print some office documents now- and then for the average user. And for this even 20 year old technology would be more than enough.
All the 'features' recently added by printer manufacturers are mostly ways to try and intergrate online-services into the printing process, collect user data, and bind users to the printer brand. Innovation in printing is relevant for the professional sector. But there's not been much innovation in printing that is overly relevant for home use in a long time.
Also the level of planned obsolescence in printers and hurdles with regards to cartriges is infuriating. Just charge me the actual price for the hardware, let me use my generic simple refill ink, and be done with it.
For one thing it's not sustainable to buy those litlle printer-specific plastic cartriges all the time that will just stop printing after a fixed page-count instead of simply refilling them when they're empty. Additionally it's infuriating how so many printers simply decide to break when the internal page counter reaches a certain level. Also the current cost of cartriges does not reflect the actual cost of development and production in any reasonable way.
It's fine with me if these big printer companies earn their money on expensive and actually innovative printer technologies for the professional sector. It's also fine with me if they do so with actual improvements for home printers. But please stop gatekeeping age-old tech by adding pseudo-features, drm mechanisms, online-services and planned-obsolescence without actually improving upon the core technology...
Funny enough, printers are the origin of the free software movement.
Not surprised. I bought an HP laser printer/scanner in 2022 and the TOS required me to:
Moreover, the printer would refuse to print until I complied with the above.
I promptly returned it for a Xerox. Never again will I pay HP for anything.
Brother is the printer company you want. Get a laser one too. Absolutely fantastic.
Seconded. Years of reliable service from my Brother MFC, and very Linux-compatible, too.
Absolutely unhinged.
This industry has been ripe for an upheaval for a long time. Between the security of network connected printers, cartridge lock-in, and even machine ID coding (MIC - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code) I’ve been hoping for some alternative.
Does anyone know of any startup projects- I’m dreaming of like some of the those open laptop projects - where you might buy the guts/print head and rollers, 3d print the housing, and make or buy some recommended inks. Seems like some startup could build a community around that and end up with a simple black and white printer that actually works for 30+ years.
Ahh to dream…
Edit: in case anyone skipped over that MIC mention and isn’t familiar, it’s worth a click. It’s the kind of crap that makes me sound like a tinfoil-hat-nutjob when I try and talk about it.
“The EFF stated in 2015 that the documents that they previously received through the FOIA[10] suggested that all major manufacturers of color laser printers entered a secret agreement with governments to ensure that the output of those printers is forensically traceable.”
I wouldn't buy this but I see what they're getting at. You're essentially leasing a printer and its usage/consumables. One pre-defined price for a pre-defined period and usage level. I don't really see anything wrong with this as long as they're up front about it. It doesn't fit my needs, but I can see the appeal to some people. There are plenty of better printer offerings out there for people who want to own the actual printer and use aftermarket ink.
The thing about these plans is that they are completely reasonable if you understand the terms. The problem is that people will not understand. HP already has a terrible reputation for their Instant Ink program for this exact reason. Everyone is buying into these and not reading about how it works and getting very angry about it. From what I hear HP is selling their printers with only Instant Ink cartridges bundled in them so people are just clicking OK on the clickwrap agreement and assuming everything is going to be OK, so you really can't blame it all on them; HP engineered this to happen.
Yeah, I thought this was interesting, because for the first roughly half of the article, I was just like "this is a corporate printing contract but scaled down for a household". The former are super reasonable and uncontroversial, so why are Ars and commenters so averse to the latter?
…And then the second half of the article clarifies: it's adware (ad-equipment, maybe?), apparently scanning the documents you print and selling data about them (and your LAN…?) to ill-defined third parties.
But, like, it seems like there's a decent product here, waiting for almost literally anyone other than HP to produce it.
Could you elaborate on what makes this a decent product in comparison to it's predecessor, paying for a printer once and supplying your own ink/paper without your printing habits or it's contents being monetized to feed a hungry corporation's profit margin?
edit: I'm not intending to ask a slanted question, just including the commentary at the end to insinuate my opinion at the onset. I'm genuinely curious what convinces you this is a good product.
The obnoxious aspects of owning a printer are, to most people (I think, I'll definitely grant that my personal printer ownership is highly nontypical and so I'm extrapolating), dealing with unreliable printer hardware and worrying about consumables (and especially the cost thereof). Consumer printers are unreliable because they are literally built as cheaply as is capitalistically possible, and consumables are spectacularly overpriced because they're subsidizing the impossibly cheap printers. A subscription model eliminates the incentives that lead to those: the company doesn't want to lease unreliable garbage that they have to replace on their own dime, and the costs of consumables are wrapped into the subscription cost and can't just be jacked up separately.
The biggest obvious mismatch is that I suspect most people's printing is extremely bursty (for example, I do probably 95% of my printing around tax season), so an "n-pages-per-month" model doesn't match well.
This relies on the price being set appropriately, of course. (As someone upthread pointed out, B&W printing at a library or print shop is incredibly cheap, cents per page.) And on the company not mining its customers' printing data for monetization, which is why I don't think HP can do it. And it may not be for everyone. But I don't think that, generally speaking, a household-scale printer lease deal is a universally bad idea.
I don’t think you would be correct to assume that these printers will be higher quality. There is an early termination fee which is likely to be the pro-rated retail cost of the machine, which appears to be under $300 still. Why would HP “give away money” when people are expecting the printer to be as crappy as they already are?
What stops them from jacking up the subscription price instead?
Presumably since it’s for a set period they are contractually obligated. But then again it seems like a lot of these agreements these days get a clause that says they can change anything they want any time for any reason.
Ah yes, the “I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further” clause.
They can jack up the price on consumables because the customer has already sunk the cost of the printer. Getting off Mr. HP's Wild Ride requires buying a whole new printer. With a subscription, once the subscription period is up, if they don't like new terms, they can just not renew and mail the printer back.
Yeah, I hate the idea of paying for ink, paper and a subscription to my printer to begin with. But On top of all that I'm STILL serving ads to 3rd parties from my printer?
These don't seem like super extravagent entrprise printers (if they were, the 20 page plan for $7 is a joke and a half), so I really don't see the audience here. Especially since consumer grade printers are not expensive to begin with. The 2nd result on Amazon for an HP printer runs $60, 2 months subscription would outprice that.
Is there something in these subscription printers that a non-enterprise consumer would need?
Consumer inkjet printers tend to be cheap because they are subsidized. They are sold in a razor and blades model, which is why ink cartridges are crazy overpriced and have DRM chips on them. Much like razor blades, ink doesn't cost that much to produce.
Consumer printers are all trash anyways, and I mean that more-or-less literally. They make them to be disposable. They theoretically have replacement parts for them but they are only supported for a few years to cover warranty issues while the printer gets silently discontinued and replaced with a subtly different model with no real improvements, and the prices for those replacement parts can potentially be roughly equivalent to what you paid for the printer in the first place if not more.
If you don't print on a near-daily basis you really should not own a printer.
By that metric, I shouldn’t own one. However, if I don’t have one on standby, the documents will never be printed because I won’t remember to do it or will be too stingy to pay postage.
That’s a sacrifice I am willing to make.
Seriously though, I don’t mean this as a hard and fast rule.
I’ll say I fully agree with that statement for inkjet printers, but only partially for lasers.
I got a colour laser printer for myself a few years ago, and I’ve already printed enough that I need to replace the black toner soon, so while it’s usually sitting on my shelf untouched for big blocks of three or four months at a time, I occasionally have enough to print in a single week to be worth owning.
And given the price per page for toner in a laser printer, I’ve probably just about broken even with the alternate reality version of me that prints at the local library or print-shop instead — if not yet, then certainly before the next time I’ll need to replace the toner.
You get the overpriced ink for "free". Also, I'm curious (but not curious enough to spend any time looking into it) whether they extend warranty and provide service in the event of breakage, like you get in a typical corporate copier lease.
The article says "offsite repairs and parts replacements are not included," though I'm not quite sure what they mean by that. To my mind, "offsite repairs" means shipping the machine back to them for repairs, and thus onsite repairs by a field technician would be suggested. But then parts replacements not being included suggests they'll charge you for onsite repairs.
"You will own nothing, and you will be happy".
Ugh. I'm so sick of everyone trying to charge subscriptions and do "as a service" type stuff with literally everything. Not everything needs to have/be a subscription.