We no longer own anything, we're all share-croppers on Corporate Estates.
I really never saw printer ink being something else we subscribe to.
I really never saw printer ink being something else we subscribe to.
It's because we finance our printer purchases with future interest payments in the form of ink.
(I bet that really irritates the corporate scumbags...)
Open source, or some binary/blob? I'm increasingly less willing to run binary only code from entities I don't have a way to sue or have some legal recourse against if they do something against my interests.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994
I did sniff the communications it did with the printer, so I could probably write an open-source version if I really wanted to; but I don't think there's all that much value in doing so.
...but someone did think there was, so there's this: https://github.com/lion-simba/reink
So, the question becomes, what's the cost of removing those companies and their supply chains/software after purchase? If it's well trusted software that doesn't require constant attention, that's attractive. If it's random people providing binaries in a country that I may or may not have any chance of getting recourse if they harm me (that is, trajan horse or exploit, not accidental hardware bricking/breakage), then I'm left wondering whether it's worth it.
The way to deal with business practices that harm the consumer or public is to regulate or legislate them in some way. This is why we don't allow child labor. We didn't just tell people "well, choose a company that doesn't employ little children".
The patent deals started with HP, Canon and IBM having a cross-license. Lexmark inherited that deal and was able to enter the market after it spun out from IBM but took the printer patent licenses with it. Things evolved a lot since then, but the same tactics are employed to keep out new entrants.
Except that Brother can do the same if they want. Also, lets me clear to talk about profit, and not sales, as "money they make" can be interpreted either way, and locking someone into your product is a classic way to increase profit. Even if brother sells twice as many printers, and makes three times as much money in profit on hardware sales, are they really better off than HP if HP is making even more money by locking people into ink sales and making 6x the hardware cost on ink?
Vilifying behavior doesn't incentivize companies to stop doing it, it incentivizes them to keep the public from learning about it or making it so they can't do anything about it once they do.
Capitalism and the free market are predicated on accurate information that people can assess in a timely manner. When that breaks down in some way, whether it be negative information being hidden until it's too late or information that is just very hard for the average person to acquire and assess, that's where the government comes in.
> They might be unit profitable, but it doesn't help if you move much fewer units.
It depends entirely on how much more profitable each unit might be, and how much having guaranteed ink sales can be used to leverage other opportunities, and other opportunities that may come up from having a captive customer base.
Small print: "Flu shot is free only if your insurance covers all of it."
So, yeah, pretending to be free has spread to that industry too.
More accurate would be "Flu shot is free if you already paid for it through the insurance contributions that are reducing your take-home pay"
That is literally what they are doing through printer firmware. They are literally preventing you from printing freely.
As I discovered when my UK printer was accidentally shipped with US ink. The printer permanently locked itself and refused to accept any HP ink sold in the UK.
Will never buy anything from HP ever again.
It'd be way too easy to claim that the ink is past it's best-by date, and that they want you to have a trouble free experience with their ink, so they are disabling that bad expired ink.
Plus, since it's a consumable, it's much harder to return a defective ink cartridge once the packaging has been opened.
Actually, it's exactly like that. HP cartridges can and do expire, and printers will refuse to work with them even though they are still full and functional.
My dad's printer is affected by this news, and between this and other recent issues it's having I doubt he'll ever buy a new HP printer again. He's been a lifelong (dare I say lifetime) customer since buying his HP 12C calculator in the 80s, and has owned only HP printers since his first DeskJet 697c in '96.
Buy a non-shit brand that doesn't connect to the internet, eg. something from Brother without internet connectivity.
On the other hand, I have a Brother laser printer that's still working after 17 years - and they still manufacture toner cartridges for it. (It's so old that it has a parallel port[1] in addition to a USB port.)
I was thinking about this a few weeks ago because I found an identical printer at a thrift store for $4. I didn't get it but thought it would be nice to be able to keep using my stash of 3rd-party cartridges.
I also have a dot matrix printer with enough ribbon to last me a decade or so. So I really don't need to look for another printer for a while.
I've got a couple of pre-2008 HP scanners and laser printers that I intend to keep going as long as at all possible, because the alternatives are just so horrible. Fortunately, they're pretty repairable, and all the consumables are still reasonable. And, frankly, I don't print that much any more. SCSI is getting slightly more interesting to support, but not unreasonable.
That first DeskJet lasted us around a decade until we replaced it with a couple of DeskJet 3500s that didn't need a parallel port and were cheaper than new ink. I still have one of those squirreled away just in case.
Those printers are refreshingly simple, with no screen or wifi and only one button (power) and one port (USB).
Fool me twice, can't get fooled again except ink.
This is a common saying in Texas, apparently.
Except they’ve done exactly that. Twice. Issues as “security” updates no less.
It is exactly like that. If you unenroll a printer from Instant Ink, it will no longer accept the cartridges provided under that program.
I use the service and like it - for photo prints, where the per-page pricing model works in my favor; for documents, I have a monochrome laser. But outside my specific and very narrow use case, it is a terrible deal.