

Obviously, HP Thinks We Are Stupid - revital9
http://thesharklady.com/tech/business/obviously-hp-thinks-we-are-stupid

======
wheels
One of the best investments that I made about 7 years ago was to buy a black
and white laser printer for home:

<http://www.okidata.com/mkt/downloads/B4250_B4350Series.pdf>

I paid about €250 for it (which then was < $300) and not only does it print
higher quality and faster, after printing _thousands_ of pages (I'd
guesstimate 5000 pages), it still hasn't run out of its initial toner
cartridge, and the prices I've seen for when it does are about €25.

With printers, as with much in the electronics world, it makes sense to buy
the lowest end professional device rather than futzing around with consumer-
grade stuff.

~~~
pmjordan
Laser printers are great for many things, but when you do need good colour
prints of photos, etc., you can apply the same advice to inkjets and get good
results.

We got an HP Photosmart 8250 or so 3-4 years back. IIRC it was pretty much the
most expensive A4 inkjet from HP at the time, but even that was only 2-3x as
much as a mid-grade consumer printer. In any case, unlike most printers, it
uses separate tanks for each colour of ink, and the print head isn't
integrated into the cartridge. It makes a huge difference: the jets don't get
blocked as they're designed to last. They also seem to be more precise, and
you only replace the ink that's actually used up, and because the cartridges
are "dumb", they're cheaper. Not quite _cheap_ as such though, and bigger
cartridges would be nice.

As for original manufacturer's ink vs third-party: in my experience, the HP
stuff ages much better (especially when exposed to sunlight), everything else
is probably subjective.

~~~
krschultz
Costco does photos for about 9 cents each at a higher quality than I can print
at home, and I don't have to do it. And you can get up to 30x20" things for
$3. I'm replacing my inkjet with a laser the next time my ink cartridge is
out.

Not to mention I prefer the quality of laser for B&W and that's all I do
anymore.

~~~
pmjordan
OK, with prices like that there really is no point. I'm used to around €1 per
15x10cm photo in small quantities, much more for larger prints + €3-5 for
delivery.

------
po
It's not about greed as the article states… people _are_ stupid. We overvalue
short term savings and undervalue long term savings.

When Apple let AT&T start to subsidize the iPhone the initial price dropped
but the total cost over the lifetime of the phone was about the same or even a
little higher. Sales went gangbusters! The media even went nuts reporting
about how apple _finally_ relented and responded to consumer pressure.

Apple tried to fight it: it didn't work. You can bitch about it: it doesn't
matter. This is how consumers are. Collectively, they're "dumb"

~~~
revital9
People are stupid - but not all of them. Look at the comments around you :)

~~~
oscardelben
Unfortunately collectively means that if you are the only one intelligent
around stupid people, then your group is still considered stupid.

~~~
patio11
I think most people who believe they are "the only intelligent one around
stupid people" are likely mistaken in at least one respect. Probably two.
Possibly even three.

~~~
tokenadult
Yes, the saying of Confucius is "When three men walk together, there is surely
my teacher among them." The smartest people recognize that they can learn from
anyone, and need to.

------
btilly
Why is this issue important to HP _now_? Looking at HP's latest SEC filing in
[http://www.faqs.org/sec-filings/100311/HEWLETT-PACKARD-
CO_10...](http://www.faqs.org/sec-filings/100311/HEWLETT-PACKARD-CO_10-Q/) I
find two interesting lawsuits, Baggett v. HP and Rich v. HP, which may explain
why HP would want to change public opinion.

In Baggett v. HP it is alleged that HP prematurely claims its cartridges are
empty, thus forcing people to buy ink prematurely. The lower district ruled
against the plaintiff on the class action status, but that is under appeal. It
is worth noting that Epson settled a similar lawsuit not that long ago (see
[http://www.inkjetcartridges.com/_epson-offers-credit-for-
ina...](http://www.inkjetcartridges.com/_epson-offers-credit-for-inaccurate-
cartridge-readings.html) for details), and another similar one has been filed
against Dell.

More likely to be relevant is Rich v. HP, which alleged that HP unnecessarily
uses color ink in black and white printing. The hearing for that was scheduled
for May 7. I can't find any press about how that hearing went, but the judge
is likely thinking the case over now.

HP advertising now could be a question of trying to influence the judge in
that case, and/or it could be an attempt to preempt some anticipated bad
publicity.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
I see not a whole lot has changed!

About 14 years ago I wrote the control software for a machine that used high
performance inkjet heads and fast-drying ink. Inkjets were fairly new then and
we went to a LOT of trouble (working directly with Canon) to get good print
quality, and to keep the heads from clogging up with ink & paper dust while
still making it easy for the user to replace ink cartridges. We even had to
design a mechanism to periodically wipe the orifices clean or they would clog
within minutes.

Anyway, the reason I mention that is that after that experience, I never
trusted the reliability of inkjets and have always bought laser printers. I've
owned two and the only reason I had to buy the second one is that after about
10 years of service it made more sense to replace my Canon LBP (Laser Beam
Printer -- love that name!) than to buy a new toner cartridge.

I really can't believe that after all these years and millions of inkjet
printers shipped, the consumables are still so expensive and replacing your
printer's heads with cheaper ones is still a problem for some brands. Clearly
it's in the best interests of some companies to not bother making it
easier/cheaper for the user.

Yeah, I'll stick with lasers!

~~~
viraptor
> _after that experience, I never trusted the reliability of inkjets_

To me, that happened with almost every technology I touched. The more I work
with VoIP, the more amazed I am that it works at all with our networks. When I
was doing web development, seeing some pages made me think about the crazy
data flow they have to handle. etc.

Sometimes, it's probably best not to know and just enjoy...

~~~
matwood
Look into the details of WIFI and/or cell technology sometime if you want to
see something that's best not to know and just be glad it works ;)

------
krupan
I used to work at HP in the inkjet division, and I just wanted to point out
that, down at the individual engineer level of the organization, we all kinda
hated the business model too. You could imagine what would happen though if HP
decided to raise the cost of printers and reduce the cost of ink. Everyone at
Best Buy would see HP printers that cost more than Epson, Cannon, or Lexmark
and guess which printer they'd buy. Kodak tried to go that route and made a
lot of noise about how much cheaper their ink was, but they haven't taken a
whole lot of inkjet market share (yet?).

------
blhack
Sigh, printers. At my office, we have about 40 dell printers...all complete
with little smart card readers on the inside that make sure the toner that
we're using is "genuine".

The problem? Even if we are using toners directly from dell, they will get
errors that say "Invalid Cartridge", meaning we have to take it out, shake it
around, sacrifice something to michael dell, and hope it works when we put it
back in.

Printers are the most frustrating part of any IT persons day (other than
maybe, just maybe, fax machines).

~~~
jacquesm
You forgot about scanners.

~~~
bitwize
The most economical choice today is the combination printer/scanner/fax
machine. Three frustrations in one!

------
midnightmonster
For me, it's Linux support, ease of use, features, and economy.

When my little Samsung laser printer finally died, I bought an HP inkjet
(OfficeJet Pro 8000 Wireless) for a bit over $100. I got home and took off all
the tape, stuck in the large individual-color, separate-from-print-head ink
tanks, plugged it in to power and my network, and printed the network settings
page (which I turned out not to need). Then click-click-click on my Ubuntu
system, and I was printing. _Download driver_ click-click-click on my wife's
macbook, and she was printing. One of the easiest setups I've ever done for
network printing, and even easier on Linux than on Mac.

And it duplexes automatically.

My 6 year old is thrilled to be able to print in color, and I'm happy not
smelling ozone.

So I'm happy with razors and razorblades inkjet, albeit with HP's most
economical cartridges. (And there's a little part of me that is bothered by
the lack of perfectly-sharp text printing that I've always missed when not
using a laser.)

~~~
metageek
For me, the big one is paper handling. Every non-HP printer I've owned mangled
paper; no HP printer ever has.

------
zppx
Just wondering about, how he estimated the price of human blood?

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
My guess would be that it's the cost for a hospital to get it from a blood
bank.

------
edw519
"Give 'em the razors, sell 'em the blades." - King Gillette

~~~
hugh3
Y'know, I use a Gillette Fusion. The blades cost about four dollars each and
consist of six tiny wedges of high-strength steel sharpened to sub-micron
precision and coated with a layer of tetrahedral amorphous carbon.

The "razor" cost ten dollars and is basically a plastic stick.

I'm not sure the old razor/blade analogy applies to razors and blades any
more. Maybe it should be the old printer/cartridge analogy nowadays.

~~~
shpxnvz
_The blades cost about four dollars each and consist of six tiny wedges of
high-strength steel sharpened to sub-micron precision and coated with a layer
of tetrahedral amorphous carbon._

However, double edged razor blades with the exact same characteristics (also
made by Gillette, btw) go for less than 20 cents a piece.

~~~
hugh3
Oh, and I'm sure they're making a healthy profit selling me those cartridges,
but the cartridge is still the high-value part, and not the "razor"/stick.

In my opinion the razor itself is deliberately marked up more than the
cartridges are. Why don't they _actually_ give the razor away for free? Why,
because if Gillette did it then so would Schick. And if Schick started giving
away free razors then I might be tempted to try switching to a Schick razor
next time I bought blades because the Schick cartridges might be twenty cents
cheaper. Pretty soon they'd be having a price war. Instead, they artificially
inflate the price of the little plastic stick, so that I'm kept locked in to
Gillette products since "well heck, I already bought the razor..."

~~~
shpxnvz
_but the cartridge is still the high-value part_

It costs them 8 cents to produce the blade they sell to you for $4. They have
a high perceived value, but that's it.

They've taken double-edged blades that were simple, universally compatible and
cheap and with some product design and major marketing effort convinced people
that they needed 2, then 3, then 4, then 5, and now 6 blades to get a decent
shave. They've deliberately manufactured the idea that the blade has value,
and used patents to protect themselves from competition in that area.

So, you can choose a Gillette razor that is designed from the start to require
constant replacement of a $4 part, or a classic razor with a high-cost stick
that lasts a lifetime and 20 cent replacement blades. Seems right in line with
the inkjet vs. laser printer examples.

 _Why, because if Gillette did it then so would Schick. And if Schick started
giving away free razors then I might be tempted to try switching to a Schick
razor next time I bought blades because the Schick cartridges might be twenty
cents cheaper._

Of course. They do it because they need people to keep thinking of the stick
as valuable. By paying for the stick, you've mentally committed which lessens
the risk of jumping brands when you go to get replacement blades. That doesn't
change the fact that the consumables are still where they make their money off
of you.

~~~
ajscherer
Fusion has 5 blades and Gillette didn't make a razor with 4.

Also, in my experience the additional blades (or some other aspect of the
newer Gillette razors) do make it easier to get a better shave. I was floored
the first time I tried Mach 3 (which I remember getting for free in the mail)
by how close the shave was for the amount of effort and irritation. Fusion has
been a step up from Mach 3, but not nearly as big a step up as Mach 3 was from
my previous razors.

I'm both cynical and cheap, and I don't watch much TV, so it would be really
surprising if Gillette's marketing were strong enough to alter what I feel
when I touch my face after shaving. Particularly with regard to the Mach 3,
which I had never heard of before I tried it that first time.

~~~
hugh3
Fusion has six blades: five on the front and one on the back. I actually find
the back blade "long-hair trimmer" to be really useful when I've forgotten to
shave for a week.

I also testify to the "more blades is better". I had _never_ had a decent
shave until I bought a Mach 3.

~~~
matwood
The mach3 is great. Other things I've noticed about cheap disposable razors is
the blade spacing. When they put the blades too close together it's a PITA to
rince the razor after each stroke. The Mach3 seems to be the perfect balance
between the number of blades and the spacing.

------
artlogic
The first major purchase I made on eBay was a HP LaserJet 5P purchased in 2000
for $200. I still use that printer today, I think I've replaced the toner
cartridge 3 times in the last 10 years. At $75/cartridge, it's been a bargain.
On top of that, I purchased memory upgrades, the postscript SIM, and a used
JetDirect external box for around $50. Now I have a network printer that
doesn't even need drivers to work. On top of that, it's built like a tank.
I'll be surprised if it breaks down in the next 10 years, given my relatively
low usage.

Despite all the personal experience I have indicating a quality laser printer
is a better long term deal, I still have yet to convince anyone else they
should use this solution. Most folks believe color is too important. Even with
the advent of cheap color lasers, most people aren't willing to make the
upfront investment. Then they complain when their ink costs nearly $100 to
replace.

If anything, one of the largest problems I've seen in modern society in the
inability to think in the long term, and by extension make short term
sacrifices for long term gain.

~~~
mmagin
I bought a LaserJet 6MP on ebay about 5 years ago and upgraded the memory to
the maximum. It's served me well since for general text printing.

~~~
Whippet
I bought a LaserJet 4P when it was new for about $1,000

I know it seems like a lot, but like many of HP's products back then, it is
bullet proof. Sure it's not very fast, but it prints text well and I replace
the toner cartridge every 2 to 3 years.

I've had friends and family go through several printers in a row due to
cheaper built quality. When we returned one (a HP inkjet, iirc) to the store,
I asked if they send them back to the manufacturer. I was told it was not cost
effective to do. They threw it away and gave us a new one.

If I do ever decide to buy a color printer, I think I'd go with Canon as some
of my more technical friends have had good experience with them and Canon is
not so anally retentive about 3rd party ink.

------
ErrantX
Great article.

 _The prices of printers and other electronic products are constantly
dropping, so the companies need to make a buck in other ways_

Just as a point of note; this isn't a new phenomena like that line appears to
suggest. This has been their business model for a goodly number of years now.
Any cash they make on the printers has been, for the most part, a bonus.

------
ashbrahma
Personally, I am looking forward to the Memjet printers. Video Demo of Memjet
vs HP Inkjet.

[http://www.memjethomeandoffice.com/technology/video_view/mem...](http://www.memjethomeandoffice.com/technology/video_view/memjet_vs._hp_inkjet/)

Memjet was founded by Kia Silverbrook, one of the leading inventors/patent
filers in the world now.

~~~
krupan
The only difference between memjet and the other inkjet printers is that the
print head doesn't move. It uses ink like all the others, and will probably
still have the same razor/razor blade business model. If they ever productize
it.

------
snom370
I got a big, used HP LaserJet for cheap and I love it. One cartridge will last
10K-15K pages, prints 24 ppm, and it prints duplex, even on A3 paper.

------
cpg
I'm on my second FAILED HP printer. I got them for their better support for
Linux drivers and network printing.

One was a higher end all-in-one and it eventually acted up as if the firmware
actually failed on purpose (acting somewhat erratically!).

The other one failed, out of the blue, with some mechanical gears issue. Their
phone line recognized quickly the issue ("jumped super quick to conclusions,"
I'd say) and said it was not covered. They would ship me a new one fast and
cheap!

After seeing how fast the ink went, we did buy ink and refilled them. It was
not too hard, though it was a hassle.

Needless to say, now we're going for some other brand!

------
westbywest
People are stupid. That's been empirically proven, and the fact continues to
demonstrate itself on a regular basis. This has more to do with the definition
of 'stupid' being quite unrelenting w.r.t. to human nature.

That said, a comment to the original article, purportedly from an HP insider,
described Carly Fiorina's zeal over profiting from HP's inkjet division, and
how it caused some medical research being done by that division (cancer
research?) to be axed because of insufficient profit potential.

The expectation that medical research should be profitable is an entirely
different kind of stupid.

------
kevinelliott
Ok, I agree. So what are we to do? Refills are notoriously messy, and the
quality is often so low, it's even unacceptable for my recipes. And knockoff
cartridges suffer from similar outcomes and strange fates (one time a printer
I had failed to even recognize it since the circuitry in the knockoff failed
to identify itself properly)... How can we buy decent quality carts without
paying these ripoff prices?

~~~
petervandijck
A lot of printers let you hack the cartridges so they last longer (often just
a little piece of tape). Search the internet for your model.

------
tjmaxal
What suggestions do you guys have for printing photos? Is it still cheaper to
go to a print shop or is there an low end professional device that is cheaper
in the long run?

------
sandGorgon
Any recommendations about what is a good printer to buy TODAY ? -monochrome
laser -zeroconf -separate print head -long lasting toner

~~~
whimsy
There are a lot of good recommendations in the other comments, even though no
one has responded directly to you - I recommend taking another look at this
comments page if you haven't already.

------
wendroid
1) buy inkjet printer

2) install continuous ink system

3) ???

4) reduce the baseline

~~~
dhimes
Does the continuous system work ok? I have one for an epson, and when I run
out of ink I intend to install it. I'm also preparing to buy an emergency
backup printer, just in case...

~~~
wendroid
The only problem I had was the usual - leave it for 6 weeks without printing
and it gums up a bit.

I've also had some feed problems where it dumps ink into the printer.

The guys I share an office with got one and didn't read the instructions
properly and we stood their (me laughing) as the ink unloaded into the thing.

But when it's all working you get 6+ months of reliable printing.

And for the price of an inkjet, a spare one is cheap, though I'm lucky - my
local retailer is 5 mins away by foot and when my dried up I just went and got
another one - the dried up one is under my desk waiting for me to clean it!

~~~
dhimes
Nice- that's pretty much how I was hoping it would work.

------
JoeAltmaier
thesharklady was certainly bitter about ink prices, but why? She mentioned
other choices - why get upset about it? HP marketing works great and good for
them. BTW the cartridge matters lightyears more than the printer regarding
print quality. The printer price is almost irrelevant. It only relates to
durability/mtbf of the paper path. Its like razors vs blades.

~~~
derekj
Agree. If she doesn't use HP products, why does she care what they charge?
That Excel-generated graph is terrible too.

Like others, I bought a cheap wireless Brother B&W laser for around $125 over
a year ago and I'm still on the included freebie toner. Got a replacement as I
thought it was getting low but the tape-over-the-hole trick has made it last
months longer. I love being able to print from any laptop around the house.

------
mattmaroon
HP's article was pretty good. I doubt they're lying about spending $1b a year
on R&D for it. They're a publicly traded company so that should be verifiable.

Calling them greedy is just silly. Again, they're a company. It's their job to
maximize revenues. That's what they exist for.

They wouldn't be able to charge as much as they do for ink if people weren't
willing to pay for it. People wouldn't be willing to pay for it if there were
equal quality ink available at half the price. Which means that either HP is
correct and the enormous investment required is what keeps competition from
driving the price down, or they're doing a hell of a branding job by making
people think that generic ink will ruin your printer. Either way HP is just
doing what it's supposed to.

~~~
barrkel
There are two halves to price: supply and demand. The investment is a sunk
cost. Competition in an efficient market should reduce the price to the
marginal cost of production. And if the marginal cost of production was
genuinely so high, why would printer manufacturers be putting in all kinds of
validation electronics? Why not leave it at caveat emptor?

~~~
mattmaroon
The investment required keeps the supply relatively low. It's not fair to call
it a sunk cost when it's an annual $1b. Keeping up with the state of the art
in printers (note the disparity in quality even over the last few years) is a
significant ongoing expense.

And the reason not to leave it caveat emptor is obvious: your brand suffers.
When someone's printer goes bad they don't blame the manufacturer of the ink,
they blame the manufacturer of the printer. This is part of why Steve Jobs
doesn't want Flash on the iPad. He spent enough years denigrating Windows for
crashing due to third party programs to not want the same thing done to him.

~~~
barrkel
Are you saying that producing inks of the same quality as (say) 2006 requires
a continual investment of $1B per year? Or that the quality of printing in
2006 was so bad that it would be completely unacceptable by the mass of
consumers today? I don't find either of these even remotely credible.

As to brand: I don't buy it, not for a moment. In fact, I have difficulty
believing that you're serious. Anyone can go online now and buy generic inks
for their printer if they care to look, for less cost (often with hacked
refurbished containers). When this generic ink gets worse results than the
original stock ink (which came with the printer), do you believe that people
will blame the printer? Seriously?

As to iPad / iPhone crashing, that wouldn't be very new, would it? Safari on
my iPod Touch crashed (silently, to the home screen) maybe 8 times a day back
when I still used it. My iPod Nano regularly crashes (hard lock, needs
resetting) after adding and removing mp3s in iTunes, when playback was paused
at the time of device insertion on an mp3 that was removed. My estimation of
the quality of Apple software, from my experience, is not high. But this is
all besides the point.

~~~
mattmaroon
Yes, people definitely blame the printer, not the ink. The printer is what is
broken and has a big logo on the front of it. Anyone buying generic ink in the
first place probably doesn't think it could harm their machine. If you think
people are logical enough to know that generic ink could harm their machine,
use generic ink anyway, have their machine harmed, and then blame it on the
ink, you don't know very many people.

Print quality clearly improves annually. I'm assuming people who use ink do so
for the quality. Anyone printing things in bulk where quality is not an issue
(like businesses) is using toner, which is far cheaper. Other than photos, I'm
not sure why anyone who printed enough that the extra price of brand name ink
vs generic would amount to a dollar figure they cared about would use ink.

I wasn't claiming Apple products don't crash. Far from it. I was pointing out
that Steve Jobs said he didn't want Flash on the iPad or iPhone because it
causes crashes. He knows that the user will always assume responsibility lies
with the company whose logo is on the device. How many snide remarks have you
heard about the Blue Screen of Death, which was always caused by third party
applications yet is used as evidence of Windows' suckiness.

If you don't understand that, don't take up a career in marketing.

