To be fair, this has been pretty standard corporate-speak in most industries for a long time. It’s (typically) referring to giving people a reason to stay with your product - we used to use this exact phrase in reference to our complementary training programmes that were included with the product.
But, this is HP, so locked in means LOCKED IN. So, fuck HP 😂
Yeah, if it was just a subscription and you could halt it but still use what you paid for it would be fine, but they shut off access as soon as you halt your subscription. people have full ink they can’t use. For that reason I will never buy HP printers. ironically this week HP auto insalled an HP printer Assistant app on my workstation, and I don’t have am HP printer. So that got deleted immediately along with all HP support and driver tools.
What they don’t mention is that some of their printers don’t work on the 5ghz band, which means that it’s difficult to get it to work with newer routers and band switching. This also breaks usb printing and wifi direct printing. Print anywhere barely works and other fun times since trying out one of their printers.
I looked into upgrading the ancient HP LaserJet 1200 in our home office because it is 20+ years old and slow to print some black and white documents with embedded graphics. This printer is due for it’s 3rd or 4th toner cartridge.
I briefly thought moving from this network-attached printer (via USB-A to Airport Express) to a newer AirPrint compatible HP laser printer might be nice. Read about the HP printer issues (ink drm, ink subscriptions, reliability problems, etc) and decided another third-party toner cartridge for the LJ 1200 was the right choice. Glad to wait for this old HP to print our few hundred pages per year, considering the alternative! :)
Thanks to everyone for sharing their Brother recommendations. Will look into a light-duty BW laser printer from Brother if the LJ 1200 ever gives up the ghost.
I wonder about these companies that try to lock users into their ecosystem. I’m sure they do the business math, but there must be quite a few of us who won’t by HP because of this. I won’t buy Adobe software any more because of their subscription-only model. I won’t buy Roland software synths for the same reason. And I won’t try an Apple computer or phone because it would not work well with my other devices so for the best experience I’d have to buy a whole bunch of Apple stuff. All these companies are pleased to be locking in their customers, but they’re also locking out other potential customers.
Jokes on you buddy, I've ditched my HP printers because of this nonsense. They literally locked me out of a printer all of a sudden after an update, deciding my cartridge bought from HP was no longer valid. Not to mention, just sitting there the inks use themselves up, I'm guessing just drying out from crappy design.
of course it is... 'instant ink' subscription requires you consent to automatic firmware updates. the very first of which will block 'non genuine hp' ink cartridges (even more than the factory-loaded firmware does) forever.
so they either get the high-margin recurring subscription revenue or they get the high-margin oem ink sales revenue every time a tiny oem cartridge empties or clogs-up to the point of not working.
'instant ink' is only potentially of any value for some users who have a very consistent printer output from month-to-month, every month, that happens to match-up well with their subscription levels, and that output contains a lot of ink coverage like figures, graphics, and pictures.
if you want to print pictures, an online service or retail store with a printing kiosk is usually the more economical choice--so long as you don't mind a third-party 'seeing' them.
For me it’s a big F you to HP and it has been that way for a many years now. I loved their HP 4250 series laser printers for work. Those things were work horses, almost every part could be replaced, and the toner was cheap for what it put out. I had various HP multifunctions after and they were just garbage. Updates breaking them and disabling them. Not being able to function without all ink and the ink being very expensive.
Canon and Epson came in second for me on the F you list. I had some great Canon multifunctions but Canon would just abandon them on the support side. If a windows update came along you would lose the ability to use the printer.
Epson was a true pain in the ass as the driver would constantly break and need to be reinstalled or it would reinstall itself each update and switch back to the default settings. When dealing with many of them in a office environment it was a hell.
The one special gem that deserves it’s own place in hell is the Xerox 7855. That was one of the worst POS they ever made. It was a contract service unit. It was always breaking down, there was never a tech available to fix it, and when they did fix it, it was not long before it broke again. We paid a lot up front for the thing.
We had a office party where we rolled it off the shipping deck in the warehouse into the parking lot below. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. Tears of joy. We never used Xerox again after that.
The multiple home office brother printers we bought just seemed to work. Next time I need to outfit a factory it will be Brother. I currently have a small brother “inkvestment” multifunctions that works great at home due the little printing I need. Comes with a ton of ink and it was cheaper than replacing the ink in my last printer.
HP VARs were calling me and wanting to do business and they do. (Not Printers, servers and that kind of stuff.)
I keep telling them I wont even look at their stuff due to HP anti consumer practices.
Thing is, I’ve never has a problem with this - it works out at £35.88 (£2.99 x 12) per year for my HP Envy 5032. I don’t use their paper and have only once in 3 years run over allowance. I print about 2 or 3 times per week, sometimes more. I don’t change the ink as soon as warning comes on, I’ll wait until prints start deteriorating. Like I say - it’s not a problem. Just under £36 per year for ink isn’t a deal breaker for me. Having the right cartridge available without trying to find a shop selling them is.
Edit. Just to point out I’ve used printers from most of them. Colour/black and white lasers. Multifunction printers, photo, label printers and all.
Samsung colour laser was the best, but can’t justify the price now.
If I want photos, I get them done by a photo service. They will always have a better printer than me, and can afford the overheads.
If HP ever stiff the firmware and I can’t get CUPS to run it I’ll bin it.
Until then, it stays on my shelf and prints every few days. For £2.99 a month.
There's actually a fairly large sweet spot where the sub makes a lot of sense (ignoring the fact that subscriptions inherently suck, of course). If you print infrequently enough that your cartridges are likely to dry out, it's generally quite a bit cheaper.
Of course the correct answer for most people is to just buy a laser printer and go to CVS or something the couple timed you need photo quality prints. Don't have to worry about toner drying out
Having the right cartridge available without trying to find a shop selling them is.
One of the obstacles in this is if your printer only takes a single brand of ink.
I usually just order ink, but it's not too hard to find ones compatible with my brother in a store if I need one immediately.
Yeah if it works for you. For myself I just couldn’t agree to subscription and had an old canon with large black ink tank around $29-$34, but I would wait for the Amazon sale whem they would drop it to $8. That woud last me all year. But after 10 years it was finally was time to move on, so Canon again.
I don’t know how many people print a great deal any more.
Also, many years back, at a time when I printed more, I switched to a black-and-white laser printer when I realized that I only ever printed black-and-white documents, and the consumables cost was significantly lower. They don’t clog up the way inkjets do, and the toner cartridges last for ages. And color lasers are pretty cheap these days too. They won’t print photos as prettily as inkjets will, but they’ll get the job done for most documents.
If you’re printing photos, okay, get yourself an inkjet, but I suspect that for most people, a laser printer is fine.
One quirk: laser printers do tend to briefly draw a lot of power when they first come on, which inkjets do not. If you’re running it on some kind of inverter, that might matter to you.
I wouldn’t have even thought to consider the possibility that my local meth cook would have a better photo printer then the local pharamcy, but i’ll stop by later and ask him. Well, as long as he’s taken down the tinfoil from the windows. If the foils up, then it’s a pretty safe bet he’s been up for at least 3 days straight.
Ages ago when I was in college, I had a little Brother laser printer. It was more than enough, as I was only printing B&W documents. It was wireless and you could easily get a few thousand pages per toner cartridge. Hell it even did duplex via a special duplex tray on the front. I loved that little thing, and eventually gave it away when I graduated as I basically stopped using it. If I ever find myself in a situation where I need to buy a printer, Brother is the only brand on my list.
Also, the lights would flicker whenever I fired it up, lol! that baby drew a lot of power.
This is what I ended up doing. Not specifically because of HP but inkjet printers in general. I don’t print all too much anymore since college so inkjet would sit and clog up, and become unusable. Brother laser printer though? No issue.
We replaced our HP OfficeJet with a Brother this year. I don't even know what we were thinking getting the HP 5 years ago or so, it was gross overkill for us. But of all the things it could do, it was most consistent with printing like shit and jamming paper. Part of the problem was that we just print too infrequently, but having to replace overpriced cartridges from HP didn't help. You also have to install apps for wireless printing (or if there's a workaround we didn't bother with it).
The Brother is a color laser printer and it's perfect for us. No apps needed, super quiet and hassle-free (there have been no paper jams or transmission errors), and the print quality is crisp as hell.
Also get a laser printer. They cost more but are much better suited to infrequent use, with an ink jet the ink will dry out if you don’t use it, a laser printer can be left alone for ling periods. A black and white laser printer is about as expensive as a colour ink jet. I really like my brother b&w laserprinter.
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