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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

Why are there not a bunch of cheap no-name printers from overseas companies happy to just make the sale without the subscription? Are they really hard to make? Is there not the right ecosystem of components? Is there somehow more enforceable IP around printers than around other consumer electronics?

It's weird to me that I can get a cheap smart watch/drone/noise cancelling heaphones/android phone or tablet/compact projector from companies I've never heard of, and who aren't trying to get me on a monthly subscription -- but not a printer.

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A cheap no-name printer would be more expensive than all the name brands because the name brands sell at a loss so they can make a profit on ink

decades ago a friend of mine was running out of ink on his printer. he then discovered that buying a new printer with ink was cheaper than buying ink for the old printer.

this practice should be made illegal through environment protection laws

Quite often this is not actually true, the ink cartridges that are bundles have less ink than new cartridges.

But everything is misleading to make you spend more money, so who knows anymore.

true, my friend may as well have been duped by exactly that. or it was a special sale. it's just a memory of an experience that is forever tied to this topic.

Except when you don't use it that much and the actual big cartridges just dry out.

I actually bought three of the same shitty Canon scanner/inkjet combos in a row when I ran out of ink.

Then I came to my senses and got a Brother laser.

At this point, people realize this and realize what a ripoff these subscriptions are and they would leap at the chance to buy a printer that let them buy their ink or toner from anyone.

Yes, but surely there's a market for that. I would very strongly prefer to pay what the printer really costs in exchange for not getting soaked on the consumables.

Those do exist. I've currently got a canon ink tank model, and BOY is the ink affordable when compared to cartridges. It's actually competitive with laser printers. Expensive printer though.

I would be happy if Framework just rebadged some whitebox laser printer from China.

They don't have to develop it, just put a stamp of approval on one that doesn't suck.

I often ask myself the same. I think one of the main reasons could be the fact that, differently from most of the devices you mentioned, a printer is not standalone device that needs firmware to work properly on a plethora of generations of OSs. Add the fact that afaik there's no universal cartridge standard, so to bring value to the table they should distribute their own cartridges globally...

> Add the fact that afaik there's no universal cartridge standard, so to bring value to the table they should distribute their own cartridges globally...

I would have hoped for such a company to target compatibility with the existing generic printer cartridges that HP is working so hard to not accept.

a printer is not standalone device that needs firmware to work properly on a plethora of generations of OSs

Nah, a printer with PostScript and AirPrint will work on every OS.

Ironically, my Brother laser printer required a firmware update to get AirPrint to work well.

I'm afraid that making precise mechanical parts is not very cheap, and the current crop of printers is mostly already being produced on these "overseas" factories (Chinese, I suppose).

Printer driver support is a pain, toner/ink chemistry is non-trivial, and it’s hard to beat Brother. Anyone who cares about printer costs can drop a couple hundred bucks and not think about it again for a decade.

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