Technology

We’re in the “dropping the act” phase of capitalism.

This is just standard monopoly-speak these days.

ink

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.

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 They literally locked me out of a printer all of a sudden after an update, deciding my cartridge bought from HP was no longer valid.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.

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.

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 well HP, fuck you too

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.