HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on printers when ink runs low

Even if you only print things once a month, a laser printer is far less wasteful in time, money, and bullshit than ink that's perpetually dry or consumed.

Rather than an entry-level laser printer that cannot be economically repaired, a used mid-level enterprise printer is often the cheapest option long term and saves useful electronics from becoming e-waste. Office furniture rental/repo places and secondary markets like eBay have these.

In large enterprises, a printer's cost per page tends to be inversely proportional to (increased) initial acquisition cost and availability of repair parts. Put another way, giving everyone an entry-level printer would be far more expensive in acquisition costs, per-page costs, and an inability to repair them. (hitting TCO 3 ways).

I had a HP LaserJet 4 (released 1992, purchased new ~1994) until 2013 with a used JetDirect card. It had expansion options with cartridges and SIMM RAM and font options, but they weren't strictly needed.

Because of this kind of thing I haven't actually replaced my printer, since it broke, and have been actively looking for ways to avoid doing so.

- In the UK, Royal mail will now print the label for you, when you order a collection. DPD claims to do so when you drop off but the shops often turn out not to have a printer

- Libraries print more cheaply than shops, neither are suitable for printing where confidentiality is required (your doc is likely to hang round on some random insecure PC)

- They don't advertise it, but some print-to-mail companies (eg CFH docmail) will do print runs down to a single copy. This is considerably cheaper than your local shop, for more than a couple of sheets at least, but has a latency of 5 days. It's suitable for confidential prints (for most plausible threat models), due to their scale. Also, if you intended to mail the doc anyway, you can send it direct from them.

As I sit here I look at my HP-35S and HP-12C calculators that I have on my desk. My 12-C in particular is about 15 years old and still on its original battery. I remember fondly the HP-85a that I learned programming on when I was 8 years old or so. HP used to make amazingly great hardware. The first HP laserjet printers were an absolute marvel. It makes me so sad what has happened to HP.

One thing I've noticed is that the bottom of the standalone scanner market completely disappeared.

You used to be able to easily find parallel-port flatbed scanners for $50 or less, and they eventually shifted to USB. I suspect it was often used to "fluff out" a PC bundle-- "Buy a $1200 AMD-K6 machine and get a scanner and terrible inkjet printer free!" They were probably more than ample for the "scan in this document we need a copy of" use cases-- a few hundred DPI.

While I still see there are a handful of sub-$100 scanners on the market, it's hardly the variety you used to find. It's like a "compliance" product-- being sold because they need to to fill some obligation rather than a vital market full of advancement.

Also note that it's a lot less easy to do the "recycle quality vintage hardware" thing for scanners than printers. Many of them are stranded with ancient drivers and often no support past WinXP or 7. (Yes, there's things like VueScan for ongoing support, but paying for that impacts the overall math).

I ended up finding a scanner I sort of liked used that did have drivers (Epson V39, I wanted something USB powered because I don't have room for any more power bricks) but it involved way too much Googling in the electronics aisle of secondhand shops.

I assume that this is because the market has basically assumed anyone not buying commercial-grade stuff will buy an all-in-one reliability nightmare that won't scan without yellow ink. This sort of thing didn't occur in other markets: They sold low-end VCRs and DVD players built into crappy TVs, but they also still sold standalone ones.

In my case, after one year and an half my HP printer auto-updated (without my consent) and bricked because I was using the ink from a different brand. This happened even if I didn’t subscribe to their shitty Hp instant ink offer.

I’ve immediately returned it, bought a Brother printer and I will avoid any HP product for the rest of my life.

I’m genuinely worried that companies will just perpetually try to get into dark patterns, until laws will be powerless against them. People should spend years in jail for coming up with ideas like these…

These kinds of bugs are common with all consumer electronics since they "went digital" though, basically anything 1999+. The market is so saturated with blatantly broken products like this that you seem like a freak just to complain about it. Just littered with shit design mainly caused by duct taping components together and letting the outcome of that be the design. The solution is for consumers to get a brain and stop wasting it on overcomplicated nonsense like some autoconfiguration crap based on XML that never works except for someone who so happens to have 5 hours of experience with that protocol. Just return bullshit like this. I always do, I decide to return most of my electronics within 5 minutes of first turning it on.

If you come across a newer HP printer, the best thing you can do with it is disassemble it for parts to make other things. They are full of precision rods, rotary encoders, DC motors, and such. If it has a built-in scanner, you'll also get a contact image sensor and a decent pane of glass. But on no circumstances should you ever expect rely on it to function as an output or input device.

It's just so low and shabby. How can anyone work for a company that does this and not feel constant shame? Any decent person should and would.

I don't have a laser simply because I haven't seen an "all in one" full color laser that's as compact as the Epson inkjet I'm using. I can't speak to the color quality of lasers really vs inkjet, but I've printed a bunch of photos that come out "good enough" on photo paper with my printer. Mind, if we need any volume, we ship 'em off to the drugstore, but that can actually be a bit of pot luck when it comes to framing and such.

We use the scanner often enough to make it worthwhile, and we don't have the room for a second, compact B&W laser.

The only real thing I need to do is replace this with a tank version. Ink is still crazy, but momentum keeps us going with it. A full set of ink cartridges cost about 1/2 of a new printer.

Other than that, I'm pretty content with this thing.

My in-laws needed a printer scanner because they are getting old and needed to scan paperwork to move to a retirement community. They went out and bought an HP printer scanner and asked me to help them set it up. It took me multiple hours and I still couldn't figure everything out. It took them the next two days to really get it up and running. Poorly designed actively hostile software.

In the 2010's I had a project I'd do about once a year where I needed to print ~100 pages of directions that was mostly text with light-duty images mixed in for products I was selling. I was using my trusty inkjet printer, but over time the capacity of the carts degraded to the point I could only get ~80 pages of B&W printing out of a single inkjet cartridge. I had tried buying refill carts but they consistently failed and cost me time I couldn't afford to loose so I also gave up on non-authentic carts. So that meant I was having to buy two inkjet carts each run which pushed my cost per print up towards nearly $1 per page... for a product I was selling for $20.

I finally had enough and bought an HP full color laser printer for $250 around 2015 or so. Even with the degraded toner carts that came with it out of the box I was able to cut my cost per sheet down to about 25 cents or better. The last set of toner refills I got hurt my wallet at ~$450, but my price-per-sheet gets down to a dime per sheet on those. I'm thankful my printer proceeds these nutty subscription drivers though! I swore off ever using inkjet again after my first season of use on this laserjet.

But of course I'm thankful this printer proceeded these nutty drivers that disable your printing without a subscription. We've reached the end of the infinite expansion economic system and subscription services are the natural next step to that. Market forces have driven down the cost of durable goods to the point most consumer goods have been disposable for decades now. The next step is subscription models of everything to maintain similar profit margins. Likewise, CBDC's are a natural extension of the banking system as it hits the same growth limits. They outright state in their whitepapers that one of their core purposes is to "prevent recessions" by setting expiration terms on funds held by consumers which will "induce spending" as needed. It's all the same ball of wax.

I have an Epson flatbed scanner for my photography, a V600. It's a lovely little device. Crapware-free functionality. Granted, it seems like the bundled software hasn't been updated since the stone age, but that might be a good thing.

My HP inkjet, on the other hand, is a wreck. I had to install an app on my phone, pair over bluetooth, connect it to wi-fi, and create an account just to get a damn test page. No USB cable included, by the way. Many cursing matches eventually got it working, but I regret buying it. Once the ink runs out, I'll probably send it to Goodwill or something.

Canon 100% does this on my printer/scanner if the ink dries up (long time without printing) or it thinks you have pirate ink.

It throws up some error message that you can't clear until you put in new ink cartridges. This is very annoying as I scan frequently but very, very rarely print.

I'd readily replace it but I cannot find a laser printer with duplex scanner with ADF that isn't obscenely expensive and/or huge.

I bought the best printer on wire cutter a few years ago, it was an HP ink jet. That was the biggest piece of garbage I ever bought. It would refuse to print when it was low on ink. It would be low on some random color despite me printing in black and white, rarely at that. It locked me out over using after market ink.

I bought a brother laser jet and love it.

I know a lot of people say just get a laser, but I just want to shout out to my bottom of the range Canon Pixma inkjet I bought about 3 years ago.

It’s solid, works with third party inks, supports airprinting from my phone and has never caused me any trouble.

It’s the second barebones Pixma I’ve had. Previous one lasted about 7 years.

It's like Mercedes trying to charge a monthly subscription fee for heated seats. When you do something like this to consumers, you lose their trust and you will never gain it back.

Brands like Brother, Epson are far more preferable to HP, etc in the multi function printer category for many reasons.

Still, our only recourse on a good reliable laser jet is the Brothers mid- range printers.

Do not select the models that touts the “Refresh” feature (that one phones home and gives all your LAN deets to Brothers.

It is getting slim pickier nowadays for a privacy-oriented and quality printer.

What is this trend of the headline, sub-headline and first sentence being totally identical? It feels like I've been violated somehow, like a mild brainwashing. One less reason to click on the article link.

I’m looking forward to the day there is a HN post about printers that doesn’t go straight “buy a low priced laser printer… I have a xx from 1987 and it is working just fine”

Maybe I put there a note that HP produced SSD server disks which fault at preengeneered number of writes, making your raid faulty. No one should ever use this brand

I'm surprised how many people are writing about their solutions for printing. I thought by now most people had done what I've done and just set things up not to need to print.

Xournal allows me to fill out anything I could print from PDF with a stylus on my touch screen. If I want to read and highlight something, I convert it to PDF and read it in Logseq with the same stylus. I can highlight in four colors and it automatically collects my notes!

If I need to mail/ship something, I just have the ship shop print it.

What are people intentionally printing to paper for, often enough that it's worth having a printer?

I have been using using the HP P2055 network printer for almost two decades now with bootleg toner. Never had a problem, the thing is built like a tank.

HP's existence has become free advertising for Brother.

"HP is committed to becoming the world's most sustainable and equitable technology company" .. while maximizing device quality, shareholder profit and executive salaries at the same time. Absolutely no conflict of interest. Funny capitalism.