Hacker News Reader

Comment by YPPH | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

We are subsidizing the product is also a lie by companies. They just want the recurring revenue by selling ads/cartridges etc.

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.

It is very much a lie.

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.

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.

Was a pretty hot topic ~7 months ago though. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/4579...

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.

> gadfly

> grouse

> skulduggery

Can I ask where you're from? I'm not sure if your lexicon is different than mine, or much greater than mine.

Fwiw, gadfly was the only term i hadn't come across and didn't know what it meant as a non native speaker that occasionally reads english novels.

These are not unfamiliar words to my northeastern US ear, although one might choose to moderate their use to limit distraction.

> Same with smart tv, phones etc. They all try to subsidize costs by [..]

All? Apple?

Apple TV+ show notification ads litter my iPad ever since I did the free trial of the service.

Never had any of those, and preferences lets you control notifications.

I just install an ad blocker. Nobody is getting paid on my watch.

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.

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?

For the gym it is people who aspire to go to the gym, not simply forget. Canceling the membership is admitting failure in this mindset

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.

We do not have many gym chains, though.

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.

That's fair, but brand reputation can carry society past that.

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.

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.

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.

If you buy a consumer printer.

Business printers exist, and for those you pay a steeper initial price, but then the cost per page goes dramatically down.

My Epson workforce original cartridges seem to last forever.

I've got a PIXMA 925 SOHO MFP. It literally eats ink just cleaning printheads on power up, power down and just regularly if left on.

I printed about 50 graphs+text pages on new cartridges, now one's low the rest are about half.

WTF.

"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!

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:

https://m.tb.cn/h.fknJCKv?sm=88e645

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.

I've had mixed experience with brand-name drums as well.

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.

> "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.

100%. Bought our Brother HL-2340DW, a $97 black and white wireless laser printer, and it is still going strong. Original toner too.

> 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.

The solution here is to repeal DMCA 1201 or add a condition that actual infringement of copyright is necessary for it to apply.

All these bullshit schemes depend on it and absolutely are anticompetitive monopoly behaviour we should not allow.

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.

As far as i understand Canon is selling non genuine cartridges :)

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.

The average person can barely setup a printer let alone worrying about pirating cartridges or doing some other workaround.

That's why I qualified it with at least as the narrative goes. It's an assumption in favour of the manufacturer.

It's even worse if it's not true.

If it's not true, they are selling their DRM-protected product at cost price + margin and double dipping by selling exorbitantly priced cartridges.

"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.

Which is great for us who only buy pirate cartridges. I don't want it outlawed, because that would mean printers would get more expensive.

I’d rather this DRM bullshit just stops. It’s a complete, utter waste of silicon.

It doesn't have to be, there could be a deposit on cartridges and they just get refilled by Canon.

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.

It also aligns with a perverse incentive to make the printers cheaper and more disposable, creating more waste.

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.

> Loading up your printer with DRM is having your cake and eating it. It is anti-competitive and ought be outlawed.

Why? Just don't buy the damn printer.

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.

The subsidisation model is great when you only print rarely. This is increasingly true.

Even then, it's really not. If you only print rarely - print with toner on a cheap laser printer.

It will never dry up, print thousands of pages, work just fine 10 years later, and is easy and cheap to replace.

Mine is 12 years in, and still prints the 5 pages a year I need just fine.

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.

I can buy an inject for $20 at the local post office. I can't buy a laser for the same ballpark price.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com