I’m a stupid consumer with printers. I have a HP office jet and pay like $5/month for their ink subscription. I print 30-80 pages a month. The economics work. I have a cheap capable inkjet MFP in the same cost envelope of a bigger, lower toner cost laser.
The printer talks PCL and works with anything I’ve tried including Linux.
The author would pay $12/year for 10 pages per year, without the cost of the cartridge. You need 20 years before you reach the cost of a $240 cartridge. The cartridge would’ve dried out before then.
This entire article is an exercise in “I can’t do math”
More directly to your point - the author plainly acknowledges the sunk cost fallacy at play here. I’m pretty sure he can do the math.
Anyways, he plainly acknowledges the sunk cost fallacy at play here.
I think instant ink is a better product in terms of money saved, especially when you account for the risk of cartridges drying out.
Now, to be clear, when it first came out, I thought “evil capitalists” just like everyone else in this thread. But I think it’s wrong, there’s just a yuckiness factor associated with paying monthly for something you theoretically own.
I think we should just move on as a society from the idea that you somehow “own” cheap personal property like phones and printers and fridges, etc.
Everything is perpetually leased
They created a problem for which the solution was a subscription. Laser toner doesn't have this issue.
> I think we should just move on as a society from the idea that you somehow “own” cheap personal property like phones and printers and fridges, etc.
You do own it. If you want to pay someone a monthly fee to help you manage it, that's your choice. But to say that everyone else should "move on as a society" because of your personal choices is very arrogant.