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Comment by __jonas | Hacker News Reader

But the sticker has an icon in the lower left corner that suggests it should be pulled off?

Here is a reply from the Mastodon thread that seems more plausible:

> @steeph @netspooky They're not hiding it, they're getting you to set up the printer over wifi, and only use the USB port after that. It seems if you use the USB port straight away it'll only print up to 20 pages then stop. They do this to get you to opt into hp+ and lock the printer in to use official toner. That's why the printer is so cheap

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The phrase "opt into" implies there's a choice, but the rest of that paragraph implies there isn't.

The choice is when you buy it. The models with "e" at the end are less expensive, sometimes significantly so, than their hardware-identical non-e counterparts, but they are locked in to the HP+ service in firmware.

As far as I can tell there is no option to "buy out" an e model to remove the subscription requirement. Given HP's history I suspect once this annoys the wrong person it'll turn out to be pretty trivial to break, but for now if you feel the need to purchase a new HP product you should definitely avoid the ones with an e in the model number.

AFAIK Brother hasn't tried anything like this (yet?) and they're cheap so if they fit your needs I recommend them.

Brother rejected my 3rd party toner on the MFC-L3750CDW after an automatic firmware update. Fuck them, I said at the time.

Then I bought a far cheaper second-hand Brother printer, turned off firmware updates, and have continued using 3rd party toner. So only kind-of fuck them, I guess, because their printers do the job pretty well.

But I am glad I switched to mono, because the colour MFC would have cost AUD$550+ on genuine toner (3 colour + 1 black). Too much for casual usage once a month.

> Brother rejected my 3rd party toner on the MFC-L3750CDW after an automatic firmware update.

Damn, that sucks, I'm happily using my old Brother printer and was thinking about second one. Did it not let you override that warning in service mode[1]?

[1] Brother printers have a hidden menu where you can set cartridge values to different ones than read by printer's sensors. Godsend if you are using very cheap 3rd party cartridges, as they sometimes report their capacity as 0%. The way to access it depends by model, for OP's model I found https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lsUBu1TDg

> but for now if you feel the need to purchase a new HP product you should definitely avoid the ones with an e in the model number.

The simpler solution is to just avoid purchasing HP products.

I did that after I had to bin a HP scanner due to non existent drivers.

Got a scanner instead that was fully supported on Linux and cursed HP for three generations.

My Brother combo laser printer/scanner just flashed a message about some "firmware update, features have been removed" but I can't tell what they were and don't notice anything different with the basic scan/print I do. Other than that, its worked pretty well.

Mandatory opt-in.

Enshit-in

Should be a -h suffix on the model number to indicate a Hobson's choice.

Cake or death?

"Acquiesce to"

And for those who haven't heard about HP+, The Verge did a piece on that too: https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/25/23736811/hp-plus-printer-...

That's even worse. Wow.

I have a similar printer and I think it was just for setup, I remember it saying you can use USB after the initial setup but you need to keep it connected to WiFi as well or something

I agree. I get the impression that the intended message is "USB not necessary" rather than "unavailable". I can imagine that many users seeing the USB port would think that it is required (since it was on older printers), not understanding that WiFi-only is an option.

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