As I understand it, or at least as the narrative goes, printer manufacturers subsidise the cost of the printer by expecting people will buy genuine cartridges. It brings down the RRP of the printer, thereby making it look more competitive than it really is.
It is a risk that users might not buy your cartridges. That is a risk these manufacturers accept when they sell their product below market value.
Loading up your printer with DRM is having your cake and eating it. It is anti-competitive and ought be outlawed. Either sell the unit at the real price you want to get from it, or accept the risk that your get rich scheme might not work.
Same with smart tv, phones etc. They all try to subsidize costs by using ads and only gadfly like us grouse over it. Many people simply accept it and moves on.
Also, many people aren't complaining and the competition is fierce. Many user aren't technical enough to find the skullduggery of such companies and at the end we all have to pay.
Regarding outlaw I don't see it happening soon tbh. Politicians simply doesn't care about such issue.
The Nvidea Shield Android TV box was an interesting case in this space. It is much more expensive than a Roku or FireTV box, but has some premium features.
Originally, there weren't ads. But because Google controls Android TV, intrusive ads started appearing. So you paid for a premium product, but ended up with a shitty experience.
I hadn't followed it much, so no idea if NVidea ever addressed it.
This also affected Sony tvs, I was super annoyed by it - I dns blocked their ad servers with pihole and now I get ads for YouTube, play store, and google music. Clearly the baked in placeholder ones.
It’s not ideal but I can tolerate it more then actual ads.
You can disable play services and uninstall the launcher updates to fix this, then running Netflix will prompt you to enable play services.
Clicking the first "enable" prompt in Netflix will start play services without enabling it and bring you to the app settings page to enable it. Don't enable it. (The force stop button is selectable, which tells you it's now running.)
Hitting back without enabling play services brings you back to Netflix, then you can use most drm streaming services, without play services updating your home screen with ads.
Only catch is play store won't work, but you can enable play services occasionally to download updates or new apps, then just repeat these steps.
Not a lie - its how the work the economics out. Lower the upfront cost of getting you on their product. The net present value of all the ink payments / subscription services is the value of the product. They probably have little to no margin on the actual printer purchase.
Items drop in price as more manufacturers pop up- only now they lie to us and tell us the price has stayed the same for over 15 years now, but magically they need to shove ads at us to offset the price? GTFO.
Most tvs are dirt cheap to make. In fact it's probably the OS they all design for every tv now that makes the price go up.
Companies screw us all from every possible angle and people defend this shit.
Companies used to care about customer satisfaction because they needed us, but thanks to regulatory capture they obviously couldn't care less about any of us, they just want as much money as they can squeeze out of us.
I agree. It's ugly, and foul play. It's also just the way a lot of the economy works.
Banks... banks absolutely rely on consumer fear or ignorance of bureaucracy & financials to generate their revenue via fees, charges and other such trifling, consumer hostile methods. There is a definite "get them in, then fleece" mentality to it. Gyms, especially cheap ones, have a business model built on the assumption that many/most members will eventually stop working out, but continue to pay fees.
This is an 'old man yells at cloud' bugbear of mine. I absolutely resent that every single interaction I have with a service provider now feels like a constant fight to not be tricked, bamboozled, or otherwise exploited. Goes hand-in-hand with so many services being deliberately hamstrung in order to shepherd customers into shitty compromises.
Like… I just want to exchange some amount money for goods and services without having to constantly arse around trying to figure out how much I'm being swindled. I'd easily fork over more money for services from a brand that I could generally expect isn't trying to take me for a ride with every interaction.
I totally agree but .. I feel companies evolve in an environment they do not control. If companies could just offer goods and services at a fair price without arsing around and be successful, I feel like we'd have a ton of such companies. I could be overly cynical.
Auto rentals have to the absolute worst in that regard. Everything results in the existing contract being destroyed (along with any favorable rates attached to it) and needing a new contract created at whatever prices they want. It is a cash grab hoping to catch you when you are at your most vulnerable, there is no technical reason for it. In true western fashion you have to want or need the thing the requires the reservation to be altered, so it’s your own fault the rate has to change.
In some states you can’t even use a different credit card without destroying the contract - if you change the number or it gets reissued with a new expiration date then tough cookies to you. I figured out this trick early on so I have a credit card that is only used for car rentals to minimize the chance I’d ever need to replace it.
Luckily I’m not flying these days due to Covid and currently live in a state where rental car companies are required by law to accept cash regardless of how the registration was booked, so they tone down the credit card specificity because they prefer you use a card.
Couldn't many such models be murdered, by having automated transactions standards and apps, that kill contracts that return no value and reinstate them on reuse. Basically auto-kill the gymn contract, if i do not visit and auto-sign in on reentry?
Basically disrupt the abuse of the un-buisness-savy, by providing them a with automated buisness-savyness?
True but even cancelling is a difficult process. My husband had to go in to his old gym with utility bills from our new house and a highlighted version of the paperwork he signed, showing that he could cancel because we had moved.
It is interesting to see how different gym cultures across the world are.
Here people will usually pre-pay a certain # of entries or a certain time period, often with cash, and no one asks for any details except name. Hard-to-cancel recurring membership isn't a thing.
That's one reason I'm long-term hopeful about Smart Contracts. If they are adopted, they may force/encourage a re-evaluation about all kinds of things, including predatory aspects of banking. For example, let's reconsider if poor people should really be hit with extra charges when they hit $.0 on their bank account.
Smart Contracts are not something a normal person can understand. You overestimate your own intelligence and peoples diligence and willingness to tolerate complexity.
But smart contract, demand standardized interaction interfaces to work the world. Basically they depend on the automatability of all legal work / bureaucracy.
They could be defeated in multiple ways, as can most business models... good and ugly. The ones that exist are the ones that survived.
That said, they exist because it works. There's no way FB could make the money it makes by selling its product to consumers, but it can by snooping, manipulating and advertising. Banking goes in cycles and modes, but it's one ugly after another usually. Maybe they make steady, risk free profits while externalizing long tail risks. Maybe they enjoy a low competition regulated market that lets them fleece captive customers. Etc.
The oldest law codes we have show evidence of bankers being bold, usury and whatnot.
In a lot of the big, egregious examples (FB, Citibank, etc.)... killing the abuse would be turning a $1trn industry into a $1bn industry. It's certainly possible to do social media or consumer banking in a much smaller/cheaper way.
"Prosumer" laser printers (often labeled "home office" or "small office") are pretty great.
I had an OKI black and white printer for about a decade before it died. I printed many, many thousands of pages on it. (It was in a period where I was doing a lot of research, and I prefer to read research papers printed out.) In those 10 years, I never finished the original toner cartridge. I paid around €200 for it.
I'm on a Brother black and white laser printer now. I checked my Amazon orders, and I ordered my current toner cartridge in 2015. The printer was €98. Toner is around €20. It has network capability and is full duplex.
They're black and white only, but in the rare case that I need something printed in color, I'd usually rather have it done at a copy shop for a few cents since the quality is far higher. (If I'm printing in color, I usually care about such things, but for day-to-day printing, black and white is sufficient.)
Same here. I use a Brother wireless B/W laser, which is awesome. It cost me approx USD 300 up front but run cost is comparably lower. And you don’t have to deal with the dubious practices of HP.
I actually bought the printer after 5 years of pain with an HP inkjet printer. I had ordered two new cartridges for it, supposedly original HP. After plugging them in, the printer tells me they are not “genuine”. Speaking to support of the cartridge distributer, I’m told I need to rub the chip at the back with a soft cloth (!), which didn’t seem to work. I called HP support who told me it is a firmware error and then I need to do a factory reset. Problem is the printer is now stuck in a doom loop where it will complain about ingenuity of the cartridges and ask me to inset a new cartridge before I can access the system menu, but I didn’t have any replacements (as the empty cartridge wouldn’t work either). I ended up throwing out the printer. For the sake of your own well-being and wallet, don’t buy HP printers!
> "Prosumer" laser printers (often labeled "home office" or "small office") are pretty great.
"Prosumer" printers are pretty good, regardless of technology, I think.
I own an Epson Workforce Pro WF-5620, it's an inkjet MFP, does full duplex for both printing an scanning, wifi connected, scans to google drive/dropbox, etc.
I shed about EUR 220 (250$) for it back in 2016, and I just changed the color cartridges for the first time about one month ago (I had changed the black one about one year ago, and it's 80% full). The newer, larger ones, will probably last forever.
While it IS possible to buy compatible ink for a lower price tag, I think the cartridge price (around ~30 EUR for the XL version) is totally reasonable for the amount of printing it provides.
I must say that the cartridge price increased a bit over the years, but that seems true for most (all?) models.
I got a written off office HP LJ 2500 from 2008, around 10yrs ago for 30€. I added a RaspberryPi for wireless zeroconf/Cups printing. It hasn't required any refills/maintenance yet and is autodetected on Win/Mc/Lin/Android.
Super happy with it, I print a lot of postage labels and other stuff with it.
My 4050 with duplexer must be 15 or more years old. I once had to re-solder the JetDirect network card in the stove. Hooray for the Internet and the kind person who posted that. Apart from that it just works. Can't beat it for correspondence and everything that can be printed b/w or gray.
When the Brother laser printers need a drum change—sooner than I’d like—that plus the next toner cartridge are disturbingly close to the cost of a replacement printer.
It's annoying how much drums cost here in the US. In China, you can buy third party drum units for $15, which makes sense when the actual drum cylinder costs only $3:
The Amazon reviews on third-party drums don’t give me confidence. Dig into the 2- and 1-star reviews, and you see a lot of quality or longevity issues.
I've used third party drums on HP (colour) and Brother (black and white) printers. The only issue I had was printing on transparencies on the HP: the toner would smear instead of adhering. No issues printing on paper.
> Business printers exist, and for those you pay a steeper initial price, but then the cost per page goes dramatically down.
Here's a secret of printer procurement, at least for laser printers: Usually, the more expensive the business printer is, the less it costs to print per page (including toner). With even a moderate amount of use, you save money by purchasing a better printer up front. That is, you can spend your money on a better printer, or spend even more money on toner. It's that obvious a choice.
Just do the math: Estimate pages per month (your old printer may have a log). For various printes, look up the price of a toner cartridge and the number of pages of print it supplies. With a spreadsheet you can calculate the lowest lifetime cost, and I bet it's for a better printer than you expected.
From the consumer perspective, subsidizing the cost of the printer in order to sell more expensive supplies feels like a swindle. Consumers welcome 'loss leaders' where they can take the bargain and choose to walk away at a profit. But when it turns out the bargain is going to end up costing more (ie. you would have been better off buying a more expensive printer), it is a swindle. It is common, and no way to gain customer loyalty. Many customers actually become hostile. Yet these businesses can survive and thrive, which I find sad.
There is a real world advantage to having the quality product get out there at lower cost.
In a perfect world people would know both the total cost of ownership and the value of quality to them, and have the means of financing their purchase over time. But in practice, any of those points can fail, leading to people making worse choices due to lack of information or cash on hand. In the worst case a better product may simply not come to market for fear of people buying low quality but low price.
That's not to say it's what's going on here. But I wouldn't say it's always necessarily immoral to offer low up front costs and make it up on the recurring ones, at least as long as they are open about it.
What if the commonly understood story - ink subsidises printers - wasn’t true? What if printers are actually built and sold at a sustainable price today before considering ink?
If you pulled that off in any other context - hey the only reason we can produce a $6 sandwich toaster on the shelf in any big store is by committing customers to use our premium toasting bread - you’d be a genius of marketing.
I guess I’m just struggling with the idea that large (and therefore historically quite risk averse) companies would choose to enter such competition with peers (sell printers at less than cost) given the very obvious risk that someone else will make premium toaster bread / ink. It’s a hell of a gamble in an established firm.
"Either sell the unit at the real price you want to get from it, or accept the risk that your get rich scheme might not work."
This is something I've starter to wonder about governments developing new or improved road systems: is the cost being recouped via taxes specifically from developments along those roads, or is some of the cost externalized, so then land owners and developers are making additional profit when selling that they otherwise wouldn't if real costs of their accessibility/roads was accurately applied? E.g. are some development costs in specific regions offloaded as a burden for the rest of society, so cost and gains or value created is distributed unevenly?
I go with Epson or Brothers these days. Canon and HP pretty much getting the ban whenever I have the influence or power to affect the procurement: personal, friends or companies. It has been 2 decades. If they are able to do it drm-free they would have done so. People keep on voting them with their wallet to get these kind of anti-competitive behavior. Complain won't work. Laws or congress is a joke for decades now, considering ours have been so dysfunctional. Just ban at the procurements via word of mouth will be way more effective.
In the long term, if all printers get more expensive, it might also mean they get of better quality because people would expect more from their investment rather than seeing them as throwaway devices. Printing technology being mature, I suspect the price difference would not be _that_ much anyway - I'd have no problem paying 250$ for a printer that sells today for 100$ if it meant I no longer had to chase down pirate cartridges and knew I could still get parts for the machine in ten years time.
Exactly. I have printer from HP I bought in the early 2010s and I can’t find the ink cartridge for it, except at a bootlegged version (which aren’t as good). The only way I can the original is to get one from Singapore which will cost a small fortune.
Because it's not obvious to consumers that they are locking themselves into the ecosystem. If printers were required to have a visible tag on them that said "I will only print using genuine $BRAND ink," it would be different. As it is, it's like finding out your car won't start if it doesn't detect Shell brand gasoline in it after you've already bought it.
Problem with laser printer is that scanner combos take up a huge ammount of space. Inkjet combo is usually 1/2 the size which is also a big deal that I'm willing to eat the inconvenience of having to replace ink every year or so.
Huh. I mean, do what's best for you, but I've never cared whether a printer is 7 inches tall or 12 inches tall, and the footprints are about the same in my experience.
Funny how people are adopting the word "DRM" here even though printer cartridges have nothing to do with "digital rights". Of course there's no legal right to ink supply monopoly. And the ink being controlled is not even solid, let alone digital. It's merely a computerized lock on a physical item.
The usage is much more appropriate to RMS's backronym "digital restrictions management".
That's why we should use the term CRAP instead of DRM
Content Restriction Access Management would cover all content, including liquid ink.
Though you can argue that "digital" in this case is referring to the chip and reader. These are infact digital components restricting access to liquid.
I can see the CRAM/CRAP bill advance it's way to the Senate floor. Would love to ask my local congressperson "What's your stance on CRAP?" and watch him try to say "I'm all for CRAP it's good for business, and if CRAM/CRAP is good for business, it's good for the little guy." If someone can get this done, I'm running for office on a NO CRAP platform.
Doesn't DRM on video enforce where the digital content can be played? Is this not exactly what enforcing copyright is since copyright dictates where and how something can be consumed?
DRM controls where you can play things. Copyright controls where you can play things. But 90% of the time those two sets of playback controls don't overlap. DRM stops you from using different devices you own. DRM won't let you skip certain segments. DRM won't stop you from publicly showing the video. etc.
In many legal systems you have a definition of fair use that allows you to do more with the content that you purchased than what producers would like.
For example - you are free to share it with family and close friends, play on as many devices and on whatever software you wish, and share wildly short clips. DRM prevents all that.
> Is this not exactly what enforcing copyright is since copyright dictates where and how something can be consumed?
The copyright on a (printed) book doesn't let the publisher dictate where and how the book can be read. As long as you're not making copies or derivative works or putting on a public performance you can consume it however you wish. Even on those cases there are exceptions for fair use, e.g. parody. The same applies to DRM-free audiovisual recordings. Anyone can make a player for VHS tapes or DRM-free DVDs without running afoul of copyright, but the same is not true once DRM is involved thanks to the anti-circumvention clauses of the DMCA, and that gives publishers far more power to dictate how copyrighted (or even formerly copyrighted) works can be used than they would have under copyright alone.
Sure, it's not DRM classic but it's not that big a leap in logic -- it is still a digital system that manages your rights (to use any cartridge you want).
I switched to a Brother printer not only because of the toner/ink issue, but because it was the only model which afforded a straightforward USB printer. No useless bells and whistles, not even WiFi, which I neither need/nor want in a printer. It has been the best printer I ever bought.
With Brother printer here, WiFi works to print straight from iPhones and Androids. This works excellent for apps that otherwise make you mail a pdf to yourself.
The initial WiFi setup was done straight from the printer using buttons. Never asked to install any driver. Hands down the best one I've ever had.
I have what sounds like the same one, at my business. My employees frequently print things from their phones, which saves me a lot of hassle printing it for them.
I also love it, and hvae set up the wireless twice on the machine, like you say.
I have an EPSON MFP, had the exact same experience. Their mobile app integrates with everything I need and the amount of control I have over printing settings is great.
They introduced recharging cartridges, dropping ink prices by an order of magnitude, while still keeping ink quality very high. Third party ink quality was always hard to predict, I prefer relying on the manufacturer's.
My point is, I've been printing from IOS (via AirPrint) and Android (via Google Cloud Print) for 5 years, never installed an app. I've also printed (wirelessly) from Mac and Windows, never downloaded their drivers, or installed any software, or created an account, or passed any personal data, etc. There's no subscription either. It just works as is.
As long as Brother will make printers that work that way, I will continue to buy them.
You can certainly do that on Epsons and other brands.
The app gave me much better experience by integrating with Dropbox, Drive, Evernote, etc. It's extremely easy to print/scan documents from/to the cloud.
All of the brother printers I've owned have had ethernet so I just plug them into the network -- no wifi problems then either.
Wired networks are so much better than wifi, so anytime I have walls/ceilings open for renovations, I always come in after the contractors leave to run some ethernet wires for future use. After a couple of renovations I've got some really useful runs for hardwiring some of the things I use most: TVs, printers, and an extra wireless access point in my garage for extra range.
That's true, but it's a one-time pain, and if you prefer you can configure it by downloading software and connecting the printer. I really like the fact that no-software option is there, though.
I have a similar printer, the HL2240. Bought it for uni probably 7 years ago now and it just keeps soldiering on. Nothing but USB for input, which admittedly has caused some headache since my spouse and I use it regularly and needed a good central place for it. However, that problem is very quickly remedied with CUPS on a Raspberry Pi.
My Brother printer's Bonjour server is wonky, and sometimes the only way it works is if I myself start advertising its IP on Bonjour. Even that doesn't work perfectly, e.g., double-sided printing does not work.
A family member bought both an Epson and a large flatbed HP printer in the past few years. Neither of them work (recognized, but do not print) while my much older (over a decade and a half) HP printer does work including scanning.
Sadly, not my experience. I bought a Brother HL-L3210CW an my advice is to avoid it.
Cartridges have chips and the printer randomly stops recognizing the third party ones. The official service provider told me it's the cartridges and the solution is to buy original ones at over 3x the price.
Hmm, I have been using generic toner in Brother DCPL2540DW and HL-L2370DWXL laser printers for years without issue.
My vague impression is that Brother printers try to detect whether a cartridge is for the correct printer model, but not whether the cartridge is Brother brand. So long as the generic cartridge has a chip that says "I am designed for this printer", it should work.
(The worst they do is advise you on the website to buy "genuine Brother ink" because of the increased risk of jams, cloggings, etc with generics. Im sure this is overplayed, but its not an altogether imaginary risk.)
Is it possible that your generic cartridge is just crummy? There really are a ton of Chinese generic cartridge brands, and it would not be surprising if some are crap. Maybe try a different brand of generic?
I cannot rule this out. This happened twice so far, with a different cartridge brand each time.
Also, the last time two slots failed at once, or in a very short timespan (black and yellow). Unfortunately I don't remember which slot failed when it happened for the first time.
So, the data suggests it's the printer but as always, more data is needed.
Every time there's talk of printers on HN someone inevitably praises Brother, so there must be something to it. I'm getting really sick of HP's unnecessary and horrible software so once my MFP inevitably dies due to some minor but entirely unfixable issue, I'll definitely be looking into Brother's stuff.
Here's a contrary voice for an underappreciated option, despite the villain in this story.
I wanted a networked color laser MFP that could be used from within Linux without proprietary binary drivers, i.e., needed to natively support PostScript and have PPDs available. I did not want to give HP any business given what it has turned into.
Canon has color "imageClass" devices that fit this bill. I wasn't able to find a Brother unit where the PPD was self-contained, but maybe I missed something. The Brother PPDs I was able to get from their site had additional filter scripts or binaries to which they called out. The scanning function works great on the Canon via the "AirScan" SANE backend (I use it in WSD mode). Third-party toner cartridges are available. I needed support on an occasion and found competent, pleasant, non-outsourced Canon staff via their phone support line. Pretty happy with mine.
Now that WSD and AirScan are popularly supported on business-class MFPs and don't require manufacturer-specific SANE backends, there are probably other choices worth looking at as well. Kyocera is another brand that seems to support first-class PostScript printing.
I bought two HP printers, hated them for the standard reasons, then read HN comments praising Brother printers, bought two of those, and have since been very happy.
This experience led me to permanently distrust Wirecutter recommendations, as they (currently and for many years) have listed HP as their #1 recommendation for both lasers and inkjets.
Got a small b+w brother printer for a couple 100 last year and it’s been great. Wired in with lan, everything can print to it. Solid “just works” experience.
I don't think shipping a binary CUPS filter you're just supposed to trust counts as good Linux support. Never buying a printer without a fully working PPD without blob dependencies.
Brother MFCs support IPP Everywhere (aka AirPrint), so you shouldn't need drivers in the first place. If the UI doesn't let you use the IPP Everywhere driver, you can add it with
One of the posters wondered why disruptive billions aren't being made by new printer companies.
Well not that long ago look what happened with disruptive scooter and ebike rental.
Those things piled up faster than landfills could handle it.
With printers billions were already made in the 20th century.
There are so many thousands of tonnes of surplus printers at any one time, a huge percentage of which have not yet been landfilled, that all I use are rescued printers and I'm in a business where the only deliverable product is paperwork.
Even though I am the pioneer of the paperless approach.
Anyway, recently things like the discontinued Brother HL-2270 series are more common as discards but have plenty of life left in the hardware.
When I got one complete with a couple new toner refills, it was a good time to add it to one of my paperless subnets. Printing which had been non-essential could then become discretionary and the actual cost per page would start at zero and stay that way for the remainder of the toner it had plus the two new cartridges. Well actually only zero compared to other printers considering the cost of the paper is the same.
I like this printer better than the equivalent HP's and Lexmark I have kept running in those offices still largely doing full paperwork output for each job.
When Windows 11 was released the Brother website posted a message having a positive outlook for compatible drivers to become available for download within a few weeks.
That did come true and it turned out better than anticipated since it was still just the same drivers that had been validated for Windows 10.
That's the kind of engineering I like.
Now they have a detailed list of all their printers supported for Windows 11 with a highly respectable array of discontinued models going back many years.
With the printer connected to a regular Windows network, wireless or not, you can fire up a Linux workstation and the printer is easily detected, although you may need to select something like USA Letter Size paper if the default is European A4.
Once again I don't recommend actually purchasing a printer when there are so many homeless needing adoption.
Whatever you're printing will look 100% better/more professional if you get someone else to print it using commercial tools.
Printers are cool if you need to quickly print some black-and-white papers in a jiffy. But anything more than that (and even that) is never going to compare to getting it properly printed.
It's like filming video with your phone: it will always pale in comparison to an actual, video-oriented camera.
What if I don't want to go out, or what if I don't care about quality and what I need isn't about quality anyway...just wanting to print an essay on paper that I can use for pen edits?
So what's the point of your commentary in this entire thread at all then? You're lack of need for printing serves no one except yourself in this thread about people and their printing needs/issues.
Because in every case where a person says they "need" to print one can fine a more economical, more environmental, and easier solution to printing.
None of the examples highlighted in the comment I responded to should be required for ANYONE to print, not just me. Electronic versions of each of them are better, more effective, cheaper, and have less environmental impact
That's just not true. You can have your opinion, but you are not in a place to dictate what is best for anyone except yourself. There are many reasons people prefer not reading electronic items.
One example is all of the missing animal posters people hand out and distribute.
Also, QR codes providing quick access to some electronic info is nice, but you still have to print them. Also, random QR codes placed somewhere are not going to get scanned. You must also print other things along side them to give enough info on why someone should scan the code.
I feel like I'm just feeding a troll at this point
I scan electronic QR Codes all the time. For displays and Such eINK has come a long way.
I remember not too long ago gas stations used printed cards to show the price of gas, now they use electronic signs...
I see digital signage systems that have QR Codes displays for customers to customers to scan all the time.
Menu Boards at fast food places have largely been replaced with Digital signs.
I really can not think of a single thing in the world that is not better in electronic form...
> you are not in a place to dictate what is best for anyone except yourself.
Make up your mind, when I speak of what impacts me then I am selfish and not considerate of others, when I speak for others I am talking out of turn...
My experience with Brother printers has always included having to download a package containing a PPD + binary blob from their support site after someone blindly bought one because they are cheap/someone suggested them. Always check before buying if you stand by good OSS support.
Always check before buying if you stand by good OSS support.
I typically always do. I have a 20 year old HP colour laser, but it is showing its age. All the praise for Brother printers on HN, somehow short circuited, bypassed my check-it filter.
HP ships Open Source support for just about every printer they provide. (You have to bypass the pile of steps in the on-printer portion of setup that desperately want to push you into an ink subscription, though.)
I was sharing what printer I got and that I was happy with it. Nothing more. Yes, it’s a laser printer. No, it wasn’t meant to be a comparison to Canon, ink printers, or any other printers. I’m not sure why you felt like I was trying to compare them.
The article is about Canon inkjets, mostly consumer ones. You said:
"Switched to a Brothers printer well over a decade ago that uses toner instead of ink and couldn’t be happier."
So, you seemed (I may have been mistaken, but your statement was far from being clear and explicit) to make quite an apple-to-oranges comparison. First, you were likely comparing products from different price brackets, then, you were comparing products with different technologies.
How does the brand matter? But the first thing you said was "Brothers", as if it was the most important and relevant info. You really seemed to imply that "Brothers" is what matters here.
If you said "I switched from low-end inkjets a decade ago, now I use SOHO laser printers - mine happens to be a Brother one which I find great", that would have been perfectly fine to me. Or even if you said "Canon low-end inkjets are crap - buy low-end Brother inkjets and they're far better!" - all of those are great contributions. Yours wasn't.
Historically, Brother has done a better job of getting affordable lasers or laser like printers out to consumers. Canon rested on their laurels and played catch up afterwards (much like they did in the mirrorless camera space)
That's totally possible, but laser tech exists beyond Brother nevertheless. And Brother does sell inkjets as well; so there's no 1:1 match between "Brother" and "toner".
Yeah the title is a bit unfortunate, but I think this is interesting news. As an aisde, it seems really wasteful to attach a semiconductor to a disposable/consumable item in the first place...
It's OK. The cartridges are labeled as recyclable, which means (as with a lot of recyclable stuff) it just get sent to India or China by the boatload.
Then someone digs through said random stuff, finds the cartridges, extracts the chips, sells them, feeds their family, and then after market Chinese clone makers use the legit chips to make knockoffs.
So, outside of the cost of shipping this stuff all around the world, and that the recycling just ends up in the trash in another country, it all works out in the end.
* edit.. I notice downvotes, but there have been endless news stories of how recycled trash is sorted, and often categorically sold to specialty companies to deal with. And, how said companies just ship that trash, by the boatload, to India or what not.
And yes, how after usable parts are extracted, it just goes into a landfill.
One big horror is how housing in Canada, has asbesto removed, which ends up going through this same process. A local recycling company just ships it all overseas, and youtube videos show people in India manually working with it, no masks, no protection gear.
Recycling is good. Recycling without a 100% traceable path, is feel goodz, without follow through and is often worse than not even recycling.
Regardless of how well it is recycled, it is worse as putting these parts can be avoided totally. There is no real need for these chips. Just sell your printers in real price and don’t monetize with inks.
Is there a reason consumer printers haven't been disrupted by some bored billionaire? Obviously some brands are better than others, but none stand out as a name everyone knows as a disrupting force (ala Uber, OnePlus, Tesla, etc; ignoring whether they are or not).
I'm just being cynical here but there is probably some element of truth that there's just nothing to disrupt -- printer manufacturers had the billionaire disruption playbook mastered before billionaire disruption was really a thing.
I'll acknowledge that disruption can sometimes bring consumer benefits, but inevitably it's short lived benefits or benefits that are just to hook you and then gouge you later. Printers have been good for decades, and only the limitations built in by manufacturers make them bad†. I think even well into 2010 a friend of mine was using an old Apple laser printer and it was pretty darn reliable for getting text out fast.
Think about all the ways manufacturers have tried/still are monetizing printers:
- DRM on cartridges
- Forcing all cartridges to have ink even to print in black and white
- Per-page subscription models that deliver ink and cap monthly prints
I'm sure I've missed some of the other really sick ways, but I'm not really sure there are that many ways that could've been missed.
Combine that with the fact that increasingly there are more online forms and digital signing has some traction, it's not really that lucrative I think to get into. I don't know the full situation in the US, but when I was last there, the common copy shops were either Kinkos or (sometimes) USPS/UPS/FedEx stores that offered printing services. Outside of the US, copy/print centers are extremely common and fairly cheap/convenient; checking maps, there are 5 within walking distance ( > 500 meters) from my apartment and they're convenient services (+ cheap).
All in all, what is the future to disrupt with consumer printers? The cost of ownership exceeds the number of times _I as an individual_ need to print every year/the cost of just using a copy center. For those with above-average printing needs, a professional printer setup is a better investment than a consumer printer.
>Printers have been good for decades, and only the limitations built in by manufacturers make them bad
This is what I was referring to, maybe using the word disrupt incorrectly. I meant to ask, is there anything stopping someone, like a bored billionaire, from coming in with a consumer friendly line of consumer printers, and capturing the market completely? In my mind, and I could be wrong, printers aren't sophisticated in a way that make it near impossible for new players (like high end semiconductor manufacturing, for example -- like you say, printers have been good for decades) and the software doesn't seem too out there either.
In my mind, I envision something like what Raptor Computing [1] is trying to do for workstations and servers, but unlike Raptor, 1) the problem appears to be far simpler, and 2) the market for printers is larger and to consumers appears more directly beneficial. It's far harder to sell someone on (expensive!) hardware freedom than that the official ink refill isn't a complete rort, the ink is environmentally friendly, no annoying DRM, etc.
Of course, that market is shrinking. I think the anecdotes you and others point out are not uncommon, and your last point about a professional setup makes sense, but then... who's buying these things? The office supply stores near me still dedicate a decent chunk of space to printers and ink cartridges.
I'd imagine such a venture would be mostly marketing. No real innovation, which HN will point out, but lots of hype and your friend who doesn't know tech will buy one and tell you about the great new innovations and how they're disrupting the old monopoly.
Right, that's what I mean (I had understood the term disruption incorrectly). Is there a reason this is not a lucrative venture, to produce something clean and user-friendly that captures the goodwill of customers and force competitors to play nice?
I'd imagine a business would be over the moon with the scenario you're describing.
My guess is mainly that it's not sexy, it's a fairly niche thing. VC will look at it and say "what's your moat" until someone bites and decides that you do have a moat, at which point you'll be like Transfer Wise (now called Wise), basically an old product pretending to be innovative.
I bet it could be done, just needs someone to take a punt.
One could imagine a load of such niches. Come in, act like you're doing something new, get investment, capture market.
I think anyone who has ever tried to get any process optimizations pushed through in a large company, knows that the idea of "the market will automatically do whatever is most profitable" is mostly an ideologically convenient pipedream.
Absolutely. But I think that in the specific case -- if every firm in an entire market is abusing customers -- it implies that the abuse is profitable, and the market success shows consumers are abuse-tolerant. Really it's showing something about the demand side of the market.
To talk about ideological pipedreams the "perfect information" consumer is the other side of it.
Ah, that's why I led of with me being cynical because I am; I absolutely get what you meant and traditionally that is what disruption would be; a new player entering the market and disrupting the incumbents due to the player innovating where the incumbents stalled out trying to maintain their position.
My coy interpretation/version is that frequently this ends up less about innovation and more about shifting consumer bases by simply making a flashy product with a superficially cheaper barrier of entry while introducing other means of having recurring revenue from consumers.
My take is just that with physical office stores in particular, printers are just the sort of thing that people who go to physical stores to buy electronics still want, but I would wager it's dwindling, and a quick search seems to suggest this also [0], while another [1] suggests it's a slow but steadily growing market (note: this report mentions a bit on 3D printers, but the full report is behind paywall so it's not clear if that factors in at all)
I've never heard of Raptor Computing until you mentioned it, and it looks like they have a niche with Power9 processors and that they allow you to get basically kits or prebuilts? I kind of feel that's the "unique" niche that differentiates Raptor Computing from someone who might try to disrupt printers, in that Power9 does have a uniqueness to it, where as the technology for most consumer printers is just the same, it's just the vendor lockdown that differs.
You might get a dedicated following of privacy conscious persons who would like a completely unlocked and non-aggressive home printer that just prints, but I just find myself wondering if the cost of ownership is _really_ worth it for the right to own a printer. As another poster commented on the privacy concerns of copy shops, I'm starting to wonder if maybe that's the next direction that can be done to consolidate the options to professional printing units that make a proper effort to secure the process of printing end to end and make ubiquitous "utility-like" printers that can be placed anywhere to offer scanning/printing/signing services.
But I don't think the answer for this is home-office use anymore, and I don't see it as a market that too many are interested in trying to upset, but instead just making sure everyone gets their cut as the market transitions.
> the common copy shops were either Kinkos or (sometimes) USPS/UPS/FedEx stores that offered printing services. Outside of the US, copy/print centers are extremely common and fairly cheap/convenient; checking maps, there are 5 within walking distance ( > 500 meters) from my apartment and they're convenient services (+ cheap).
The problem is that copy shops are hotbeds of identity theft. What kind of documents do people need to print out nowadays that they would bother going to a copy shop for if they don't have a home printer? For important financial, bureaucratic, etc. ones. This then leaves the risk that the low-paid staff now has a copy of your sensitive files, and if the printer caches jobs, anyone else accessing it may too.
Mmm, I get your point but with government orgs, I see it two ways:
1. Form online you fill out
2. They only accept hand-filled (e.g., with pen) documents
So I'm not really sure which forms you're thinking of; not doubting they exist, but there just doesn't seem to be a lot of crossover on forms that are required to be printed. The only thing I can really think of that is sensitive would be just identity documents, but I think a copy shop scanner caching the job is the _least_ of the worries (the offices/businesses that require such documents really do not have secure practices at all...)
I get what you're saying I just don't think the threat factor is that big compared to the rest of the chain of custody threats with private documents, regardless of where it's printed.
"Is there a reason consumer printers haven't been disrupted.."
Xerox used to sell colour ink printers using solid ink blocks (not ink cartridges). The printer heats the solid ink blocks turning them into a viscous liquid. In case it's not obvious, the solid ink blocks don't require any cartridge encasing. They are simply slotted into ink compartments inside the printer. Here is a short video demo: https://youtu.be/cnd37wYLo-Q?t=104
The cost of the printers were high but the ink blocks worked out to be cheaper (cost-per-page) than traditional ink cartridges. The printers were aimed at business users and are no longer sold by Xerox. The reviews for these types of printer were mixed.
Do solid-ink blocks count as "disruption" to colour ink printers? Not sure, but it's the only example I know where a company attempted try something different to the colour ink cartridge model. There is simply no incentive for inkjet printer manufacturers to think afresh about cartridges, cost-per-page, refills etc.
My own review is mixed. Those wax-block printers (Xerox Phaser) gave good color rendering and resolution even 20 years ago, but at the cost of waxy-feeling pages and poor thermal stability - leave a stack of printed sheets in a hot car for an hour and you'd come back to find them stuck together, and peeling them apart would leave half a given sheet's impression stuck to the back of the one on top of it. Too bad if you find this out after the client visit right before the pitch meeting where you need to hand those printouts around, and without enough time to run back to the office and make more.
I believe this is the same technique (dye sublimation) that Canon uses in their small photo printer range (Selphy line). Those printers work with ink sheets where the ink is transferred one color at a time (yellow, red and blue). After that, a fourth sheet containing some fixing material is printed over the photo which makes it durable.
Quality is much better than comparable inkjet+photo paper solutions. But it's really expensive...
>but it's the only example I know where a company attempted try something different to the colour ink cartridge model.
Epson does sell printers without cartridges (I guess the cartridge is "built-in"), and you just buy bottles and pour them into the machine. That's not innovative though, just what any sane printer manufacturer should have been doing and third parties have been doing. Kind of like selling food from a bulk bin vs. prepackaging tiny quantities in plastic.
With respect to disruption, I was using the term disruption wrong. Moreso I was thinking as to why does no one come in with something normal and consumer friendly and shake things up, force the others to play nice.
They are not new. Xerox bought that technology from Tektronix when they bought their printer division. They date back to the 80s and predate widespread adoption of inkjets by a few years.
I have one. Unfortunately mine dries out like crazy. I had it for a year and already had a major nozzle issue. And that despite being judicious about printing at least a couple of full color pages every week.
More interesting to me is how many people build their own 3D printers, but nobody ever builds their own 2D printer. (Though I guess pen plotters are similar mechanically to 3D printers and serve to produce 2D documents, and people do build those, so maybe that's the state of the art. Can't complain too much about true vector graphics!)
> More interesting to me is how many people build their own 3D printers, but nobody ever builds their own 2D printer.
The cheapest commercial 3D printers sell for hundreds of dolars, while you can buy a cheap printer with wifi and bluetooth and a scanner and mobile phone app to boot for about 50 dollars brand new. Used ones can't even be given away for free.
Furthermore, you can print whatever you want in printer stores for a few cents a page.
Also, 3D printers are much more forgiving regarding low resolution output.
Actually, the cheapest consumer 3d printers are now like $100. They pretty crappy, but so are a lot of the low-end printers. (My mom actually just went through that and had to return a 2d printer that was hot garbage.)
The cheapest business 3d printer are about $1000 pre-built ($750 as a kit), and I think 2d printers of the same quality are about half that. So things are coming down nicely. There's still innovation going on in the 3d printer industry, too, so I expect them to keep getting better and more reliable and cheaper.
People do build their own 2D printers. Why? Because you can guarantee there will be no watermarking or identifying information printed into documents, which is very important if you are planning to do illegal things or some kind of counterfeiting. This is also why you never hear about it.
Because nobody needs to. There’s plenty of non-shitty printers without the shitty cartridges.
Epson Ecotank just accepts ink. Like, you pour ink into a reservoir, and it uses that to print. The ink is really cheap, even cheaper than toner for laser printer, and printed photos on photo paper look like any other decent inkjet printing photos
Back in the twentieth century, laser printing used to be the exclusive realm of high volume shared printers in offices, but that price cliff quickly disappeared in the twentyfirst. But somehow, the printing cartridge industry managed to keep the illusion of "I don't print enough to warrant a printing method that isn't plagued by drying it when not in use" alive even while offering laser printers for tens of dollars right next to them. Apparently the lure of pretty colors is that strong. I suspect that even people too young to be born when it was still true regularly fall for "I don't print enough to warrant a printing method that isn't plagued by drying it when not in use"
Well most of the time I print something myself it's some graphics thing that needs colours. Though yeah some people just print black and white text, even though that hardly makes sense anymore. If you need to get text somewhere just send a PDF. Maybe for signing contracts or something, but for that there's adobe acrobat reader.
Colour lasers remain quite expensive and usually don't include the extra scanner which is handy to have at times. Though lasers do have the benefit of being able to print onto clear transparent sheets which inkjets straight up can't unless you get those special roughened ones.
> Colour lasers remain quite expensive and usually don't include the extra scanner which is handy to have at times.
Looking around it seems like most brands have variants of the cheaper models that also have scanners. The last time I bought a laser printer, both color and black and white, it was a simple choice to have a scanner or not. And $330 at office depot is only 50% more than an inkjet.
I mean, looking at what my local stores have on offer you can get a multifunctional inkjet for $90, cheapest colour laser for $340. But realistically are you going to buy the cheapest possible one? You can probably get a very decent inkjet for $150 but for a decent laser you'll probably need to go into the $500 range. It's a roughly 3X price difference.
Still this does surprise me, last I checked they were all over $600 at the very least, so the prices have come down in recent years I guess.
Given that a full set of replacement ink cartridges can cost $70 or more, it doesn't take very many instances of replacing dried-out but otherwise barely used cartridges to make up the difference in up-front cost.
If you regularly print full-color photos, by all means get an inkjet. (Perhaps consider one of the tank-based models, though.) Otherwise, a laser printer will generally be more economical for home printing in the long run, especially if you can settle for a black-and-white model, and you can always take the rare exceptions requiring full color to a print shop or photo kiosk.
There's nothing to disrupt. Anyone who wants to pay more initially and get cheaper ink/toner can do so. Most home users just go look for a super-cheap printer with a good name and buy it. They don't even do proper review checking.
And if you hate the price of ink cartridges, but still don't want toner, there are multiple printers from at least 2 manufacturers on the market that have ink bottles that you refill reservoirs instead of having cartridges. Canon and Epson both make them, and there are probably others that I didn't find. I think "megatank" was the search I ended up with to find some.
Sure, a few years back maybe someone could have disrupted the market... But it's already been done by the incumbents.
Can nobody do anything about the crunchy mechanics of printers? My printer goes through the most incredible warmup routine, running the motors seemingly at random or about a minute and then twists the paper through a maze of rollers. Can we not make these things more 'solid state'?
Photolithography could work. The trick is to avoid waste and keep speed up, which are both really, really good properties of the drum/roller setup of a normal LED printer. So you'd probably have to use photosensitive paper rolling over a dense row of LEDs (kind of a reverse scanner). Which is basically what an LED printer is, except the paper is electrostatically charged and runs through a fuser to adhere the attracted toner.
I was just recently talking to someone about this and what we realized was that printers are such a specific device the only companies making printer components are the ones making printers and they're probably not going to sell components to a startup clearly trying to compete with them (or at least not for a low price). And since printers and scanners use a lot of very specialised parts, you'd basically have to develop and manufacture them from scratch. High costs->low margins->low return->nobody wants to invest. Plus you'd get destroyed by the incumbents immediately because they'd just lower the prices for a year until you went bankrupt and then raise them again.
>>Is there a reason consumer printers haven't been disrupted by some bored billionaire?
Because it is dying technology where innovation resources are put into paperless conversation of things that still require paper today.
Personally I believe we are already there, a person and business can be 100% paperless today if they choose to, many have chosen not do for some reason.
However people choosing to keep their horse and buggy does not mean a billionaire should invest money on making a better buggy
There will always be some demand for printing, even if it is reduced over time. For example I and several my teammates routinely print research papers so that we can take pens/highlighters and mark them up or put a post-it note on some page of interest. Sure, you can theoretically do all the above on a computer, but even with the highest-end tablets I still find it cumbersome to do something as simple as drawing a big circle around a paragraph of text.
That said, printers are certainly a mature technology at this point and I doubt there is much room for disruption.
But here you have even indicated that you have a personal preference for the "horse and buggy" vs the "car" in this analogy the Paper would be the buggy, where as the car would be something like a Remarkable, SuperNote, or iPAD...
So the paperless technology is there, people just choose not to use it, so if I was a billionaire looking to invest in something I would choose to invest in making this technology better, more appealable, and more accessible to more people than I would in disruption of the printer market
Paperless tech is not there. If it was there it would not be so inconvenient to do simple things like underlining some text or crossing out a word. I have tried all the above and it is still too cumbersome to really be comfortable. It's not just me; despite the widespread availability of these devices and the technology generally, people have not really made the switch.
When cars first came out their technical advantages over draft animals were so obvious and undeniable that the world rapidly switched from animals to machines and has never looked back. We have had tablets with styluses and other paper-replacing technology for decades now, but thus far the advantages compared to just using paper have not clearly outweighed the disadvantages and the world has not rapidly switched. To put that in perspective, I have not had a desk phone for more than a decade now, because cell phones are clearly a better thing to give employees; at the same time my desk is within 100ft of a heavily-used printer/scanner/copier.
I have no problems using paperless tech to mark up documents, I do it every day. Highlighting, scratching out text, making notes, etc all on Manuals, Specs sheets, maps, etc. I use (or have used) Android Tablets, Windows 2n1 systems, Remarkable, Remarkable2, and Supernote's for these tasks
Similarly you talk about cell phones being better than desk phones yet thousands of desk phones are still sold every day and when new communications platforms come out targeted to business there is a clear drive to have "certified" desk phones in additional to mobile clients and other soft phones (see MS Teams Certified Deskphones)
So you say the technology is not there to switch to paperless tech but thousands have done just that, and you claim the technology is there to move away from Deskphones yet thousands have not...
I also rely on a printed copy for making sense of dense research papers and it’s not an affectation. Rather, it’s just that the electronic alternatives are not as good: the markup isn’t as flexible, they’re harder to share, they take up screen real estate I need for other things, etc.
Kodak tried once. They sold pigment based printers which had a very good quality and were way cheaper than regular ink to refill. Then they killed it after they filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
The printer I owned saw a lot of use printing in a business setting and it had some build quality issues requiring a replacement every 9 months or so but they always replaced it under warranty with no major hassle.
That kind of sucks but I’d still take that over any regular inkjet now.
> Printer ink company Canon was forced by the silicon shortage to sell cartridges without the DRM chips used to dissuade customers from using third-party tanks. Accordingly, it is reportedly telling customers how to bypass its "genuine" ink bullshit. (translation)
> for the models I checked all you have to do is ignore onerous error messages—so it seems incorrect to claim Canon blocks the use of third-party cartridges
The ink level readout doesn't work due to a lack of chips.
There is no DRM story here.
Exactly. As per my longer rantlet elsewhere in these comments. It's total bollox. My Canon printer won't print if it doesn't recognise an ink cartridge as being kosher. End of story. The only error message you can ignore and still continue to print is the one about 'ink may have run out'.
> HP's ink DRM is clearly more despised—they not only block non-DRM ink, but the ink is region locked and they expect you to pay for and maintain a subscription to it.
I'm uninformed about this. I have an HP laser printer that's around 5 years old, and while I'm sure the toners have DRM chips, they don't require a subscription. Also, the printer has already been saying for a year that "supplies are very low" but so far it kept printing fine (I don't need to use it that often)
Just to know what to expect: is a subscription for ink required for all new HP printers now, or only some models? Because that kind of bullshittery is an immediate no-go for me, but the issue is I do quite like HP's interface (the UI on the printer itself) compared to some other brands...
E.g. HP supports all PDFs from a USB stick, while another brand I know (that is quite an ethical brand otherwise) cannot parse almost half of all PDFs and when it cannot will actually print a piece of paper with the text "Unsupported PDF" on paper, which is also quite unacceptable to me (not supporting is already a problem, the paper waste is the cherry on top)
AFAIK the ink subscription is just an option, not a requirement.
Sadly, our HP OfficeJet Pro can't print PDF's, and due to some weird driver state after uninstalling and subsequently re-installing it, printing is now impossible...
As a contrarian to some posts here: Have been using larger HP business laserjets privately and am quite happy, no issues over 15+ years each. Never owned an inkjet, switched from an Epson 24 LQ550 needle printer to a laserjet, never looked back.
I have never seen anyone have good things to say about consumer grade printers. Even when recommending printers, it's a matter of arguing why something is less worse than the others.
Printer's and copiers are probably older than computers (or at least civilian computers), and the industry as a whole has yet to find even something as a reasonable/useable/ergonomic user interface for their product. Literally a product type that has been around longer than most of their customers and users, and the manufacturers have yet to make a useable user interface. Even simple things like the cancel job button are unreliable/laggy/obnoxious to use or even find.
I have a Laserjet M203DW and it's brilliant for documents and book blocks.
I also have an Officejet 8610 which works well enough and, thanks to Instant Ink's per-page pricing model that doesn't cost any more no matter how much ink you use, makes a nice little more-or-less free photo printer - you end up just paying for the printer (which I got used anyway), the paper, and $3 a month for all the ink you can eat.
There, now you've seen someone have good things to say about consumer grade printers. :) They really don't suck any more like they used to 10 or 20 or 30 years ago!
This is such a shit clickbait article [in fact hardly even an article. A brief paragraph attached to a Canon press release].
"Canon tells customers how to bypass DRM" = "When your canon printer tells you the cartridge is empty, just ignore the warning and keep printing".
Anyone who has a Canon printer knows this already. Bypassing the DRM would mean Canon providing you with a way to use unchipped cartirdges in their printers, which isn't happening, in spite of what the 'article' claims [or if it is happening, it's not covered at all].
When my lottery ticket comes up, I'm going to take great pleasure in smashing my Canon printer into a million pieces with a sledge-hammer. The 'ink has run out' messages don't bother me [as said above, just hit 'OK' and continue printing]. But what drives me insane is the fact that, if a dust mote lands on one of the cartridges, it can move it so very slightly that the printer no longer recognises it [presumably the chip contacts move out of alignment].
When I send a print job through, the printer then clanks, wheezes and groans for what seems like about 5 minutes, as if it's going to print, then makes an annoying Beep! Beep! Beep! and tells me one of the cartridges canot be recognised.
I open the top of the printer, wait another aeon for the print head to clank into access position, reseat the offending cartridge and close the lid. Then wait another ice-age for it to clank and groan before... Beep! Beep! Beep! Now one of the other cartridges can't be recognised. Sometimes I have to play this game of 'Cartridge Whack-a-Mole' for about half an hour, before the bloody thing decides it will deign to print. And, even then, it'll often print the first page absolutely perfeclty but the second will come out looking as if someone's shoved a tonne of quick-drying cement up the print-head nozzles. Thus leading to running the head cleaning procedure which, in turn is likely to lead to more Beep! Beep! Beep!-ing, as cleaning the heads is almost guaranteed to either empty one of the cartridges, or knock it out of alignment again.
So, forgive my ire about the vacuuous promises of the title of this submission. I dared to believe it was going to reveal an officially sanctioned 'hack' to allow me to lobotomise my Canon printer for once and for all.
Incidentally, although my printer is a Canon and I loathe it with a passion, I don't think Canon's printers are any worse than any others. Printers just seem to be one area of computer technology that has never got any more reliable with the passing years. I used to work in a university Graphics department. We had some big A0 roll printers there which cost thousands of £££s. They were always going wrong too. As were the expensive colour laser printers and high end inkjets.
Basically, printers are bastards sent to torment us.
I totally agree. I'm utterly sick of the banging, crashing and grinding noises whenever I try to print something, followed by "ink out" messages (even though I changed all the cartridges last week). So I recently threw out my newish Cannon printer and purchased an Epson. The reason being that I still have an Epson dot-matrix printer that I bought with my Apple II back in 1976. It still works fine and is still on the original ribbon (albeit re-inked a zillion times). But of course the new Epson is if anything the worst printer I have ever owned. The first company who brings out an affordable but reliable printer is going to make a fortune.
The claim about Instant Ink DRM is narrowly accurate but disingenuously presented.
The printer won't take Instant Ink cartridges if it's not enrolled in the program, that's true. But there aren't supposed to be Instant Ink carts floating around the aftermarket in the first place - when you sign up for that program, part of the deal is agreeing to ship the spent cartridges back to HP, in postage-paid packaging they provide along with each re-up.
I think that's because of the print heads, which are oddly absent from every discussion of printer economics I've ever encountered.
In my gallery-quality photo printer, the print head is a discrete component costing $350 to replace - 3.5x the price of a full OEM set of eight ink tanks. HP cartridges have integral heads, but I see no reason to think they cost meaningfully less per cm^2 to manufacture than the Canon head does.
I think that's why the Instant Ink program prices purely on page count, and not at all by ink usage, which after all would seem to make more sense for an ink subscription. Shipping back the spent cartridges means, excepting wear and damage, HP can turn most of them around for reuse without having to manufacture new carts with expensive new heads.
I think that's what they care about much more than the cost of the ink per se, and even the cost of the printer. The pricing model doesn't entirely make sense otherwise - if you print photos on an Instant Ink-subscribed device, you'll never hit the 100-page threshold for a price bump before you exhaust the carts and get a re-up.
Their BAs have to know this is the case, and they could easily enough address it with a surcharge for relatively frequent re-ups, or just by charging for ink usage past a certain threshold. That all could happen on their end, driven by printer-reported usage data, but they don't, so I can print photos to my heart's content for the cost of paper and $3 a month for all the ink I can eat. (And have! Went through 3 cart sets in a month once, back before I got my Pixma.)
If the subscription fee really is going to pay for the actual ink, that's an absurd amount of money to leave on the table, so I have to figure HP's upside is elsewhere, and the print heads seem like the likeliest place given how much they seem to cost to make.
How come nobody in the "printers suck and printer ink is a scam" discourse ever seems to think about this? I'm just a yahoo with a camera, I can't possibly be the first to have thought about it...
It is a risk that users might not buy your cartridges. That is a risk these manufacturers accept when they sell their product below market value.
Loading up your printer with DRM is having your cake and eating it. It is anti-competitive and ought be outlawed. Either sell the unit at the real price you want to get from it, or accept the risk that your get rich scheme might not work.