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Comment by jammygit | Hacker News Reader

"I absolutely love this model."

You are right, the model is great for some people in some cases. However, its a model where companies use software to lock you out of being able to use your hardware. This is becoming extremely widespread. Consider also the farmers having to deal with the John Deere tractor licenses and being unable to maintain their own equipment (or Apple preventing you from being able to upgrade or repair your macs/iphones).

The problem is that as the practice scales, people end up with no real property rights, and are just ensnared in a hundred terms of service agreements that they literally cannot escape while living a normal life.

Lots of potentially dangerous things are harmless or even pleasant on a small scale.

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While I agree I think that domestic printing is and should be increasingly obsolete so I opted for free tier printing specifically because I wanted a fallback (like keeping an old USB CD-ROM drive in case - like my canon camera firmware was not online and only on the CD they sent me).

If you are occasionally forced to send in a paper form or your flight carrier insists on a printed boarding pass etc. it doesn't make economic sense to keep a printer functional at normal cost.

I see HP free tier as a legacy support system.

Ideally I'd print nothing. It's maddening how much bureaucracy still requires printing.

But I agree that on devices that you depend on it is weird.

I live in Amsterdam and have a subscription bike (and I pay for the fact that I will always have a replacement bike if any issues come up)... but I guess I wouldn't like a situation where I couldn't buy (and repair) a regular bike.

Why not just go to your local library and print for $0.10/page or whatever? Our library is super small and still supports WiFi printing (I assume with a credit card to release print jobs). For photos, I go to Costco or the local pharmacy, which seems to always have decent photo printers.

If you can plan ahead a little, you don't ever need to actually have a printer on hand.

However, if you print frequently, a B&W laser printer is probably a worthwhile investment. I bought one when my wife needed to do immigration paper work and it has been great. We still use it quite frequently to print out coloring sheets or whatever for my kids, as well as for sending in the occasional form. I haven't needed to buy a new toner cartridge, and I have printed around 1000 pages and it still prints as clearly as the day I bought it. I think we've spent about the same as printing at our library, but from the convenience of our home, and I've used the scanner function several times, as well as the bulk copy feature (insert stack of paper and it copies them all).

If you only print occasionally (1-2x/year), check out your local library or office supply store. If you print more frequently, a laser printer is most likely what you want, especially if you only need black and white. If you print a lot of color, maybe getting a color inkjet is worthwhile if you like the look of ink over toner. Most people shouldn't own an inkjet printer.

For some engineering stuff it’s useful too, checking the size or fit of something.

Really? I live in the Netherlands as well and haven't had to print something in ages. If I have to I'll just go to the library which is right next to the supermarket.

I do write the address on envelopes by hand, which I would use a printer for if I'd own one.

Things I print: manuscripts to edit (easier to mark up), crosswords to solve, sheets for PnP RPGs, print and play games, patterns for children, etc

I basically markup manuscripts 50% of my day, I live in OneNote (on Surface Pro). For MS I'm quite impressed, there's a few annoyances (and work won't let me try OneTastic) but overall it works -- I've not printed anything for my own use since I started using it.

I'm a British expat and for example:

- Some of my forms for UK electoral registration.

- For 30% ruling the firm doing my application sent a form to print band return

- I set up a sole trader company and had to print and bring form to my setup meeting.

There were a few others too. The NL itself is generally good for digital services though. I only need to print a few things a year. Nothing frequent.

The main thing I use my printer for is printing postage when I send packages. Is that not a thing in the Netherlands?

At least in Germany I usually get a QR code for the online bought postage I just show at the local post office on my phone. They print out the the postage thing on a sticker. I need to go there anyways with the package.

Ah, that's a little more involved than what I'm used to in the United States.

Here I can print a piece of paper with an address and 2D bar code on it (which is the postage), tape the label to a box, and leave it where the mailman can find it (usually on my front porch), drop it in the outgoing mail at work, or hand it to any mailman I see. No visiting a post office to mail things.

Some of us still have problems reading off of LCDs all day and tablets still don't cut it. Maybe e-ink will eventually be ok.

Yeah that's true. I bought a USB e-ink monitor na few years back, but the refresh rate was intolerable.

I have high hopes for a technology like that though. Natural contrast ratio as brightness increases is a wonderful thing.

Phones have got ridiculously bright backlights to solve this, and still sunglasses and a sunny day completely ruin the experience.

I just print stuff at work.

That's why when you buy an HP printer, you can choose whether you use Instant Ink or buy your cartridges, the old fashioned way.

You are right. Same as with vendor lock-in when a business chooses platforms (hello, Oracle).

However, in this case, I like the idea that if tomorrow I wanted to print with Epson, I can sell / abandon this given HP printer and my future printing needs won't depend on my relationship with HP now. (OTOH, I am using HP printer/scanners for 10y now and this is the only brand I am satisfied with, especially for their Linux support).

> the model is great for some people in some cases. I know that my needs might be not the same as others'. For me the model immediately clicked because of my preferences (environmental friendliness, automated ink orders - this one is super convenient since I travel a lot and in the past the ink ran out EXACTLY when I needed on that only weekend when I was finally at home, etc.)

Anyhow, to me this only tells that this dude should probably rethink his finances if he has no idea what subscriptions he has. After that, maybe he should be aware what terms and conditions he accepted, instead of making a fool of himself on twitter.

Also, sometimes the lengthy T&C is a trick to make you buy a shitty service with a lot of hidden fees. Now if you check out their webpage[1], it's crystal clear what it is about, and what are their prices.

[1]: https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/

Now that I look at it. This is actually an excellent idea. I would go for the free plan in a heartbeat and pay $1 more for just the rare times I want to print some vacation photos.

However, its a model where companies use software to lock you out of being able to use your hardware.

It does no such thing. He could send the subscription ink cartridge back and buy a regular cartridge for his printer.

> However, its a model where companies use software to lock you out of being able to use your hardware.

To be clear: Anyone using HP Instant Ink (II) can cancel II and buy a non-II cartridge and be on their merry way. As noted in other parts of this post: The only thing OP was blocked from doing was using an II cartridge after he stopped paying for the II service.

Disclaimer: I do agree the tractor licensing situation is not good, but it's also not the same as this situation.

This is a very devious business model, yet it is something that HBR reading PHBs seem to be completely obsessed now:

People in the industry it "Product as a Service": you buy a widget, but you don't own it, and have to keep paying the seller for the right to use it.

Just google: instantInk and scam

This is just not "your" hardware anymore, like the Kindle e-books you bought at Amazon are not your books or music you paid for to iTunes is not your music.

This is not a sarcasm, I'm just trying to adapt myself to this brand new world and not to cringe when hearing words like this from myself or anyone else.

Not to take away from your point, but music purchased from iTunes is your music. Purchased iTunes music is completely DRM free and can be played anyway you want by just copying the files. I'm pretty sure Amazon digital music purchases are DRM free as well.

Would you say that a pinball machine uses it's software to lock it's hardwsre if you don't play ?

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