HP executive boasts that its controversial ink subscription model is “locking” in customers::undefined

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1151 year ago

    Yeah, locked me right into “brother laser is the only way to go, fuck inkjet and fuck HP.”

    • @silverbax
      link
      English
      29
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      100%. Bought a Brother laser printer about six years ago, only replaced the toner twice and the drums just this week.

      Prints so much better than ink jet, lasts forever, no subscription to anything.

    • @Aurix
      link
      English
      141 year ago

      Can vouch for Brother. Amazing product all around. In a few centuries it will be a myth like Excalibur.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        51 year ago

        I have to add, the app is pretty decent. Not that it’s fancy or anything, but it prints whatever you want. Open an image in a new window and share to the app. Bang. It almost always works without hassle.

  • eric
    link
    English
    641 year ago

    The time for regulating these evil business practices out of existence is now. It’s clear they won’t do the right thing out of moral obligation, so they need to be made an example.

    • @Holyhandgrenade
      link
      English
      51 year ago

      At the very least, no product (printer ink) should be legal to sell at a 2000% markup. Or design cartridges where you can’t use up all the ink.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      31 year ago

      No, that time was about a century ago when the Great Depression hit and USSR was trying their hand at an alternative.

      Our oligarchs, instead, thought the Austrian fellow had it going on.

    • @GaMEChld
      link
      English
      21 year ago

      While I don’t disagree, there is also something to be said for being a savvy consumer. Stop buying their shit. Do your research. If people spent as much time researching their decisions as lamenting them, they’d be happier with their purchases overall.

      I haven’t paid for printer ink in over 10 years. I’m still on my starter cartridge for the laser printer I purchased that far back.

      • eric
        link
        English
        31 year ago

        I’m in the same boat with my laser printer that I bought in 2014, but I still think we need new laws prohibiting predatory practices. Similarly, I’m savvy enough to successfully avoid scam calls, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we need more regulation and harsher punishments for those people making scam phone calls.

        Modern civilized society shouldn’t require everyone to be aware of all the new technological advancements that can hurt them. Our govt should be responsible enough to effectively legislate and punish the offenders, and we should not resort to victim blaming in the absence of such legislation.

        • @GaMEChld
          link
          English
          11 year ago

          Absolutely. But that involves being politically engaged. We have a government that doesn’t serve the people because people aren’t engaged. People spend time arguing politics but can’t be bothered to vote twice a year. We have abysmal voter turnout rates in every metric.

          Our presidential elections are the highest turnout, and even that is laughable, and that’s arguably the LEAST important election. Mid terms are worse turnout than that. Off years worse still. And primaries, which I’d argue are the MOST important election because they let you change the core spirit of the two parties, have the worst turnout of all.

          We need to vote.

          • eric
            link
            English
            1
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Agreed 100%, but this would be under the FTC’s purview, and we don’t directly vote for them, so it’s a bit more complicated than simply “vote.”

            • @GaMEChld
              link
              English
              11 year ago

              Everything is ground up. Local elections first, and so on and so forth. By the time you get to federal, the spirit of the entire government will have already shifted more towards the will of the people.

    • @shalafi
      link
      English
      -61 year ago

      Or, and bear with me here, consumers could wake up and not purchase garbage?

      It’s been plain for a solid decade+ that consumer inkjets are garbage and money pits. If people keep buying, why should HP stop selling?

      Comes down to a basic question, “Does the government owe it to you to not hurt yourself?” Meh, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Crazy complex for a simple question, ain’t it?

      But if one can’t be assed to take 5-minutes of research before purchasing a printer, seeing how fucked up HP and inkjets are, I can’t help them, and it ain’t the government’s business to stop them.

      • @mriormro
        link
        English
        181 year ago

        Consumer protection from predatory practices is literally “government business”.

      • eric
        link
        English
        4
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        What a horribly naive and flawed perspective.

        “If people aren’t smart enough to avoid murderers and not get murdered, I can’t help them, and it ain’t the government’s business to stop murders.”

        • You probably
      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        31 year ago

        Yeah, gambling, then lootboxes demonstrated citizens need to be protected from dark patterns. And their use by government officials (say by the George W. Bush administration) should be felonious.

  • @trumpetmouth
    link
    English
    461 year ago

    Laughs in Brother laser printer ownership

    • @CADmonkey
      link
      English
      121 year ago

      I bought a Brother LH-23200 monochrome laser printer in 2016. The only times it has failed to print it’s either been out of paper or the toner ran out. The toner lasts forever. And a box of four toner cartridges costs $26. It’s the Toyota Hilux of printers.

  • @chronicledmonocle
    link
    English
    271 year ago

    I just switched to an old Dell LaserJet printer. Threw away my HP Inkjet MFP after they pushed a software update to lock out third party ink. I refuse to pay this stupid game.

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    17
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Ignoring the disgusting mentality of leadership for the moment:

    These are actually probably what the vast majority of home printer users (and a lot of small office printers) would want. The main drawback of ink based printers is that they dry out (and the rollers get dirty). But if you are printing even a few sheets a month, you get around that. And buying small amounts of ink makes sense for anything short of a medium/large office that is printing large numbers of documents per day. Get a new 100 pages worth of ink every other month and recycle the cartridges. Carbon footprint largely becomes noise since the postal trucks are going anyway.

    Which is where toner comes into play. Laser/toner printers are awesome. They “never” dry out, tend to be enclosed enough that the rollers are protected, and are fairly cheap to restock if you buy large enough cartridges (and have a printer from the past decade or so). But laser printers are actually HORRIBLE for home use (and the environment) since they are basically aerosolized microplastics. And the cost argument starts getting messy for home users, but that is a huge rabbit hole.

    The reality is that people need to realize that their local library have printers and they just need to bring a thumb drive and a buck. But… I am also the kind of person who has a laser printer next to his 3d printer (that room is fucked anyway).

    • idunnololz
      link
      English
      7
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      We have a printer that appears to be setting a new trend? They are like inkjet in that they use liquid ink but they are tank based. The ink tanks are built into the printer and you buy ink in a glorified squirt bottle that you can dump into the tank via a fancy mechanism. We bought one 3 years ago and it still works today. It’s still using the ink it came with (it comes with a lot of ink). If I don’t print anything for a long time (maybe 4 months+) I do need to run a maintenance job but it starts working again after that. Seems pretty good to me so far.

      The ink refills also appear to be reasonable cheap even if you buy first party.

    • @_number8_
      link
      English
      71 year ago

      i switched from a subscription HP inkjet to a nice brother color laser. the photos are i guess a bit worse quality, as they say, but it’s so worth the tradeoff. it’s built like a tank, is less bad at randomly not connecting to the computer, and i can just print what i want and it does it. i’m not sitting in the print menu thinking ‘hmm if i print this as color, that’s only 4 color pages left on the month, then they’ll charge me $1 for the next allotment’

      and it’s just so fucking tiresome, and you just get bogged down in this pure banality and it’s so insane. like, the printer and ink are sitting right there in my house! why am i thinking like this??

      • @silverbax
        link
        English
        31 year ago

        If your photos are worse on a laser printer than an ink jet, you’ve got something set up incorrectly. Hope I don’t sound off putting, but laser is far superior to ink jet. Hell, pretty anything is superior to ink jet.

        • @ricdeh
          link
          English
          11 year ago

          Definitely a misguided view. Inkjet technology is insanely important for modern manufacturing, and has applications that are far greater than their use in printers. And even with regard to printers, inkjet delivers better photos

        • @Trollception
          link
          English
          11 year ago

          For printing photos? Is a laser really a viable option to a pigment printer?

          • @silverbax
            link
            English
            11 year ago

            That’s a bit of different question. For photos, yes, but most people look to pigment for labels or other because of the UV durability. I suggest going to the gold standard of this: Wilhelm Research

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      51 year ago

      I haven’t owned an inkjet in 20 years. I will never own one again.

      It’s worth the extra money for laser. I just replaced my 1996 laser printer. I don’t remember ever replacing the toner.

      Oh, and it was smaller than most printers you can buy today.

      • @shalafi
        link
        English
        01 year ago

        Took an old HP laser from my last job. It’s tiny and can’t seem to break. Using it now for WFH where I have to print plenty of shipping labels.

        Spent $60 of company money on 4x toner cartridges. Seems like cheating. I’m shocked when one actually runs out, can never remember where I stashed the spares. 1,500+ pages from one cartridge? Like I care.

        (The wifi is a pain, interferes with (more noise) other shit and seemingly can’t be killed. “Hey Google, turn on/off the printer.” Small annoyance.)

    • @Trollception
      link
      English
      01 year ago

      I have an 8 year old wide format photo inkjet and it has yet to dry out or have issues with the rollers.

      • @TK420
        link
        English
        11 year ago

        Pixma something something 1000 by Canon?

        • Wrench Wizard
          link
          English
          11 year ago

          Is that a good printer? Sounds vaguely like what I bought from a thrift store a while back.

          It’s got something stuck somewhere that I haven’t been able to find by dismantling and cleaning. Didn’t know if it was worth fixing?

        • @Trollception
          link
          English
          11 year ago

          It’s a pro 9000 mk ii. Quite a bit older than the 1000

  • @IchNichtenLichten
    link
    English
    151 year ago

    I fucked up once and bought a HP printer. It won’t happen again.

    • @TK420
      link
      English
      41 year ago

      Just remember this simple saying: “HP printers, no thank you”

  • LazaroFilm
    link
    English
    121 year ago

    Boasting about being evil. Nice.

    • @shalafi
      link
      English
      1
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Locking in customers is a sane, normal business practice. Sell razors cheap, get 'em on razor blades. One would hope said business provides a solid product, but what if they don’t?

      If consumers, after a decade or two, can’t recognize how stupid inkjet tech is, what a money-hole it is, and what a clusterfuck HP is, why should HP act differently? 5-minutes of Googling would solve this issue for consumers.

      “Buy a Brother laser.” And we’re done here.

  • @guacupado
    link
    English
    111 year ago

    Anyone who has one of these should be buying a Brother laserjet.

  • @Llamajockey
    link
    English
    81 year ago

    I have a subscription because my parents bought me an HP printer, as soon as it breaks I’m getting a Brother

    • @TK420
      link
      English
      41 year ago

      You could say it’s already broken 🤣

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    21 year ago

    I know everybody is enjoying their brother laser printer but I want to shout out an honorable mention to my homie Dell 3330DN who still works without any hiccups or repairs since 2012 and got me through all of uni. Never had to change the drum.

  • eric
    link
    English
    01 year ago

    deleted by creator