HP discontinues online-only LaserJet printers in response to backlash
tomshardware.com
tomshardware.com
Somewhere in the HP hierarchy reality is removed. I feel like at least one of the lower level people saw this coming. Somewhere in the management layers this became a good idea, an idea completely removed from reality.
The only logic that makes sense is that you have a segment of users that doesn't need to print much, so rather than doing a large upfront purchase, they basically rent a printer, but where is the break even for HP, where is the break even for the customer? When you cancel your subscription does the printer then go back to HP for refurbishment so that another customer can rent it? I doubt it, it becomes e-waste.
The article even says: "To provide our customers with an exceptional printing experience in all office environments, we will no longer offer LaserJet series products with HP+. " So the HP+ didn't provide exceptional printing experiences? I could understand the reasoning that "Some customers purchased an HP product that would not work in their environment, so we're now more clearly communicating the limitations of HP+", but no, they are cancelling it entirely, so it's not about those office environments where always online didn't work. This is an entirely predictably failure of a product, except HP management wasn't smart enough to realise it, because they f-ing priorities are not their customers.
This has been the case for well over a decade at least by now, unfortunately :(
They just don’t care. Corporate tactics 101 - push limits until someone screams bloody murder.
It’s the big corporate equivalent of move fast and Break things that is so beloved of SV
Difference being that HP won’t shoot me for buying a printer from Brother.
"We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. "
https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Claude_Juncker
It is just rare, that a EU president says stuff like this loud in the open. Otherwise it is politics 101.
Honestly this page is a treasure trove of honest quotes, dang.
How is it possible that Putin wasn't aware of the state of Russian army on the eve of the invasion? Is it possible that all generals constantly lied to him because he killed everyone who disagreed with him and surrounded himself with yes-men, creating an alternative reality for himself? Still, being an ex-KGB agent, and maneuvering through all the quirks of Russian politics, he should be perfectly aware of how the system works. Yet, he sent to Ukraine tanks without fuel nor ammunition. How come?
The more I read about the shortcomings of totalitarian states the more I understand why corporations work the way they do.
I remember when US airlines started charging for checked baggage. Many more people started carrying on their bags, resulting in slower boarding and deplaning, and therefore problems for the airlines.
I read an interview with an executive at one of the airlines, saying that he didn't see this coming and was taken totally by surprise.
I am bewildered at how these people rise to positions of authority without even the most basic ability to predict obvious consumer behavior.
Me too. It seems to be some kind of selective blindness as they'll happily pay advertising money in an effort to influence consumers and then not realise that consumers are influenced by product changes too.
You know damn well what happened - it was well known what was going to happen but the bean counters drowned it out and won out by enshittifying the process and "generating revenue"
Forcing a massive change all at once to shock the market, gain short term profit, and then change jobs to wreck a different company or industry deserves a different word.
All airlines suck!
The assumption is the executives are not attuned to what is happening on the ground. While I would like to believe in a level of naivety, lack of knowledge, or even incompetence, years of living on this earth made me somewhat cynical and I no longer trust that. I personally see it as a way to break the customer resistance. Few companies want to be the first one to do it, but once its done successfully, they all jump on the bandwagon.
I would like to give you the example of games. Games used to be offline, they didn't have excessive telemetry, required internet connection, DLCs, day zero patches or pre-purchases. All those things were slowly, but consistently implemented ( and briefly scaled back if there was a pushback ).
I personally believe the same appears to be the case with printers. Execs are not unaware of reality. They are simply trying to create a new one.
edit: changed question to example
What this says to me more then anything that it makes total sense for companies to squeeze their consumers to an extreme degree. They might just accept it.
Believe it or not, a lot of large organisations opt into systems like this. A cloud-based print queue lets you tie printing to your single-sign-on system, bill each print to the right department, and simplify sending the print to the right printer.
If you can have a third party deal with all the routine maintenance and toner orders and whatnot, so you just get billed $0.10 per page with everything taken care of, that's one less thing to worry about.
With that said, I can well believe this specific HP product would be a deceptively marketed, overpriced, locked down piece of shit. Inkjet printers have been that way for decades, after all.
First off, their printing, copying, and scanning products used to be outstanding. They made some of the only devices that just worked, straight out of the box, with no hassle. They were so good that other companies adopted their proprietary tech as a quasi-standard. Remember hearing the phrase "HP ScanJet compatible?"
Second, they're just about the very worst among major brands today. These e-series printers were heinous enough to get discontinued, but their other products are hardly any better. My Envy was a doorstop until I installed an app on my phone, created an HP account, and paired to the damn thing over bluetooth. It won't print black-and-white unless there's a color cartridge installed. It constantly just stops printing, and I have to go unplug it and plug it back in, wait an hour, and try printing again. I can't be alone in these frustrations.
HP had to fall further than anyone else to reach where they are today.
The way you describe it, I can see that being a viable product. To some extend this could be HP so focused on a very niche segment, like Microsoft with Recall, that HP+ actually seems like a sensible idea. They then forget about the fact that this is just a small segment of they customer base, but they don't really communicate with the rest, so they just roll out this product to everyone and it fails.
However, HP isn't keeping this around, they are discontinuing the product line all together, and from the article it seems like they also forgot about the needs of those large organisations (can't assume that the printers are allowed online, for good reason).
It does seems like it could be a reasonable, but probably less profitable business, if it had been better designed and targeted.
However, I'm not aware of these services being offered directly from the manufacturer, it seemed to be via local office supply houses that were dealers for the manufacturers. That being said, this service was probably available direct from the manufacturers for large organizations.
ETA: One thing I didn't mention that I feel is the main reason the service contract model went away is that printers are cheap enough it doesn't make tons of sense to service vs replace. We still have a service contract with guaranteed fix/replacement times for our specialized zebra printers at work. Still makes sense on a 3k+ printer that you can't buy locally off the shelf.
Just print a few pages of ads before every print job.
But even in 2013, there were managers in power positions that knew and were talking about how much the subscription models were going to hurt their base. But at the same time market dynamics being as they are, everyone also felt the only way to demand multiples for the stock price was to be seen as a software subscription company instead of a hardware company. Otherwise the revenue multiples on the stock were going to go down.
The stock market reaction leads the consumer market reaction, so executives at public companies are generally incentivized to "sell" a vision that sounds good even to investors even if they believe it will long-term hurt the business. That is, unless the executives plan to stay around a long time (another decade+). Modern companies don't reward that long term tenure so that's dissolved and now all these huge public companies have a slew of upper managers that expect to leave before the fires really take hold and make a pretty penny in the process
Well, CAD software, smart TVs, and electric cars all get away with doing the same thing somehow.
Printers are still needed, btw. Maybe not in the USA, but Germany requires all kinds of paper documentation to be mailed. Many other countries as well.
Nice everything is wrong beyond redemption, basically toxic eWaste that somehow manage to also waste your time as an added bonus... job well done !
To the point that I wonder how it is still functioning.
Only one country away: Denmark.
You are provided with a state issued secure email address for all official communication. No paper. Minimal environmental impact. No looking through the 2013 brief to find a paper from the finanzamt.
It's a symptom of other dysfunction alright, but mail did and does work, so the superficial answer is: same as it always did?
When I read about banking in the US involving checks and bills, I don't say "the system is collapsing", it's just... an aspect that sucks.
Horses did work, and would still work if we still used them.
But for an official service to necessitate a physical form lettered to them, that is simply unnecessary overhead for the individual, for society, and for the environment.
Edit: here's some proper example why paper is not all that bad to have, and actually beneficial in some cases (reverse engineering of Ticketmaster online-only tickets, bound to app)[1]
[0]: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-declares-vi...
- keeping verifiable trail for digital documents is difficult. You have to go to notary, and print verified copy at cost of 1$ per page. Old paper system just sends you hard verified copy for free.
- there is a fiction of delivery for digital mail.
- digital documents get deleted from mail box after 6 months. There is paid version that preserves them. There is no way to archive them outside of government servers, because signature trail expires.
- good luck with using digital documents at the court, there are laws, but those are unenforceable. Your fancy digital doc may just get thrown out as a fake.
- government owns all servers, and may just decide to delete some digital documents.
In short new "digital" system is buggy, cumbersome, abd very expensive if you want safety and reliability. Cost of paper is negligible.
Canon make very good printers with massive tanks and no online bullshit.
Lasers are really only needed for super high volumes at this point. With megatank printers there is no real cost saving with a laser and they are much more limited. They don’t do good photos and the paper choices are restricted. Worse than that the prints themselves are less robust.
Invest in a large tank printer from a solid non HO brand and it will last decades.
After yet another clogged inkjet which might print again if I buy a full set of inks for more than the replacement cost of the printer, I’m shopping for a small laser printer.
As the sibling comment says, Brother B&W lasers are god-tier for their purpose. They’re cheap, they last forever, and they just work. I had one for well over a decade, until my wife finally convinced me we needed a color printer, because she needed to print hundreds of pages in color for a project. I got a Brother color laser, and so far, I love it. Toner replacement is going to suck, but at least it’s a rare occurrence.
As to photos, it does a shockingly good job at the type you’d see in a brochure, report, etc. It’s not going to replace an actual photo printer, no, but I’ve never found a compelling reason to print photos at home anyway.
While dm might hope you buy other stuff from them you definitely don't have to. If you are suggesting that their print service is a loss leader then please show some evidence backing that up.
Anyway, the 10c/page (A4 b/w) is still a good estimate, at least when I looked pre-pandemic (it might've increased slightly to 12 or 15c by now). A lot of cities, especially those with a University, have dedicated small "Copyshops" where you can walk in and get your 100+ pages thesis printed and bound within 20min. So the prices and service are aimed mostly at Students. It's true colored pages are significantly more expensive than b/w, but overall that's still cheaper.
And why does that matter? If there is a shop (idc how it's called) that lets me print for 10c then I chose that.
> Though already colored pages cost 55 cents.
The GP was about documents that you may have to send in / bring physically. I've never seen such institutions demanding the forms being printed on premium paper in color.
That PC is prime malware target (easy access vector since anyone can pay a few Euros to put a USB device into it, lots of opportunity for identity theft, plus the chance of accidental infection from all the thousands of random USB sticks it'll see in its lifetme), and there's no way the employees are security-conscious enough to engage in the appropriate mitigations (re-imaging the PC every day). And the scenario of the print shop employee (probably not paid very much) earning extra cash on the side by selling any valuable personal details they get isn't unimaginable.
There's plenty of innovation left. What about a built-in cutting, binding or folding mechanism?
What about a built-in QR like binary converter for paper backing up of crucial files and some way to feed them back in through ADF scanning?
What about a built-in filter to printer feature of email so things like orders get auto printed? Something that has heat transfer built-in for optional inkless printing? A flatbed that can do UV and IR scanning? Some kind of release mechanism that makes fixing a paper jam trivial?
How about an API with MQTT so you can integrate it in a automated production pipeline much easier.
What about moving beyond the box? Could there be a way to stack the feed vertically and print, also vertically, to conserve space?
Printing as an industry could be blown open to innovation but I guess we can't have nice things
You can get that on some really high end office copiers. It's mechanically complex though and takes up space.
> What about a built-in QR like binary converter for paper backing up of crucial files and some way to feed them back in through ADF scanning?
You can get massively more information density and reliability from optical media.
> What about a built-in filter to printer feature of email so things like orders get auto printed?
Already a feature of some printers
> A flatbed that can do UV and IR scanning
I can't imagine a consumer use for this, care to expand how this would be useful?
> How about an API with MQTT so you can integrate it in a automated production pipeline much easier.
There are already highly standardized printing APIs out there for network printers. If all you're really wanting is to put out text you can often just telnet to the raw port and start sending data.
And there were plenty of people who clicked their heels saying "there's nothing new here!" when the iPod, YouTube or Instagram came out. I used to be among them.
You can also "but wait, there's more" those products and go back and forth and say how different and unique they are. Nest, Ring, Roku, Kindle, Uber, Airbnb...
It's a game. You either take a risk and make a splash with a consumer-friendly, consumer-form factor, consumer-priced version of something or you don't.
There's no modern printer people love and nothing in one they can get at say, Best Buy, they couldn't get 20 years ago. They're all frustrating plastic things sitting in the corner.
Making innovative, actually great printers people are excited about is a product opportunity. Brother is close, but they're the Zune. Nobody's iPhoned it.
HP has had the "print to email" function you ask for since at least the late 00's (that's when I first saw it). They discontinued it on their newer models because nobody cared. Brother and Epson have this functionality as well. I imagine most consumer printer platforms support such a feature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_ePrint
https://help.brother-usa.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/158082/...
https://www.epsonconnect.com/guide/en/html/uses_1.htm
And you can add binding support to your printer if you want to. Here's a link to a binder add-on. Think its this big because they just felt like making it big, or because its mechanically a somewhat complex process to fold and bind stacks of paper?
https://www.xerox.com/en-us/digital-printing/feeders-print-f...
If you do reply to this comment, I'd genuinely like to know what you'd do with a flatbed or ADF scanner that can scan IR and UV.
About the only feature I'd imagine a decent chunk of consumers would like that doesn't already exist would be for it to also automatically trim/cut things for you, à la Cricut. But while a Cricut looks a lot like a printer, it functions radically differently. It is made to move the cutting board back and forth and requires the material to be cut to be affixed to the board. There's a lot more setup involved than just pulling a page from the tray and pushing it through with rollers. Adding a cutting edge to a normal printer path would probably end up with lots of paper jams and debris stuck in the printer. A Cricut is way more like a 3D printer than a laser/inkjet printer.
Consumers aren't infinitely rational homo-economicus logicians and discussing products as if they are is irrelevant.
People might buy into the UV and IR just because they could. It doesn't have to be practical and they don't have to ever use it.
The modern iPhone: No removable battery, too big for pockets, cash cow of a multi trillion dollar company, lacks a headphone port, needs a proprietary charger... Doesn't matter. Products have features. Features aren't a product.
Successful products feel like their own thing that also services the need they're intended for. Xerox used to occupy that space for printing. It's mostly vacant now.
> There's plenty of innovation left.
> Lists a bunch of features that either already exist or have no practical application
You're telling me there's lots of meat on the bone for innovation but then I'm not actually seeing anything that hasn't already existed that would make them not the same frustrating plastic things in the corner they are today.
Maybe it's just a marketing thing? I imagine most people wouldn't know a lot of the printers at Best Buy support print by email, clearly you didn't already know that was a thing. Stuff like IPP and AirPrint makes printing to a random network printer stupid simple without needing additional apps or whatever, but it seems every time I print from my phone it blows peoples' minds that I didn't have to plug in a cable. Other than HP consumer printers, generally printers I've used in at least Windows and Linux just work. Plug them into the network or add them to the WiFi, and then every computer in the home can see it and it works without needing to install 500MB of drivers and additional software.
Maybe not every product market has obvious innovations that are useful to consumers. Maybe sometimes things get mature. I'm not seeing a lot of innovation in forks or whatever. Generally, printers these days are pretty reliable. You can get them pretty dang tiny if you want. They can have pretty insane resolution for most consumer needs. They can talk wirelessly with highly standardized APIs that pretty much any computer or phone or tablet can talk.
There's countless successful things you've probably looked at and scratched your head thinking "that's been around a long time".
I don't know if I can explain this distinction anymore. Think about something you don't really care about. Let's take socks. There's these technical features, weave pattern, stitch strength, balance of the polymers of the materials, etc I've never thought about. Instead, I find some I think I'll like and I wear them. There's zero intellectualization that goes into the process. I was probably swayed by more colorful packaging.
You gotta meet people at that level for mass appeal because most people don't care about what you care about. They're not stupid, they just don't share your passions.
Anyways I've got other things to do.
Lets do talk socks then. What's up with socks? There's plenty of innovation left. Why am I limited to the same kind of things people have been wearing for hundreds of years? We could have socks that never need to be washed. We could have socks that change colors dynamically. Why not have socks that put themselves on my feet? Socks without toes, socks without heels. Socks as an industry could be blown open to innovation but I guess we can't have nice things. Why isn't there an iPhone of socks instead of all this generic nonsense?
Making innovative, actually great socks people are excited about is a product opportunity. Hanes is close, but they're the Zune. Nobody's iPhoned it.
This is what I'm hearing with your printer comments.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a resale cost.
Less and less. And there are always print shops for the rare occasion you do need one. In any case, inkjet printers are crap if you only need to print something occasionally as you will end up using more ink to clean the clogged heads than to actually print stuff. I still have a printer (a Brother BW laser) but it has been months since I last used in and half a year since I last really needed something in print.
Imagine all the effort they've made since then to make their products terrible.
Brickhouses, these.-
PS. That entire series ...
CUPS - no longer an acronym, but used to be Common Unix Printing System. (https://www.cups.org/)
This has to be another peak though and something where I think the EU could reasonably step in. Selling devices so utterly broken and ridiculous to set up and maintain should not be acceptable.
Nice of them to make it easy to know which models to avoid (on the new-old-stock, used, and curb markets). Mnemonic: "'e' for 'ewww...'"
As much as I'm cautious of Fiorina-and-later HP, and as much as I wouldn't connect an HP printer to the Internet nor use HP supplied drivers (bricking risk, security unknowns, mixed trustworthiness)... I still like LaserJets as reliable workhorse printers.
Maybe HP will re-emphasize trustworthiness, so that future generations can love the LaserJet and future HP product lines in the same tradition.
That said, I heard multiple stories about people buying non-online-only printers, activating Instant Ink without properly understanding what are they signing up for, then canceling and complaining they can't use the cartridge they "paid" for.
So if Instant Ink is really dead it's probably a victim of shitty overly-aggressive HP marketing.
I'll be ditching the printer once I'm expected to pay more anyway.
Still, that was the first time I saw a mention of 'OSS printer can't happen and here is why'. Could you elaborate or give me a link to previous discussions on it? It sounds interesting.
Declining printer use also contributes to these practices though as existing companies desperately try to keep quarterly numbers up.
My old home HP printer is about 16 years old and still rock solid. If I didn't know any better I would be recommending the brand to everyone I know. Not everyone is as depressingly online as the HN community.
It's like clear-cutting and strip mining a brand
How could normal people expect that they would be sold such utter garbage?
Especially since older printers have worked just fine.
The only way to expect this is you've experienced it yourself or if you've followed news sites like HN where techies complain about shit like this.
I never used paper for anything else, so from my point of view, it's not on the decline. But just steady and stable.
Until you need an app that also monitors your neighbors heartbeat just to be able to enter the venue. No thanks I'll keep printing.
I think nearly everyone on HN is aware of and may use QR code tickets sometimes but that's irrelevant to the broader need for printers in business and government.
Things I hadn't immediately thought of as an engineer. Good point!
There are still plenty of example use cases which aren't covered by the existence of QR codes and phone scanning. Documents which need ink signatures. Boarding pass backups so you don't hit disaster when you are running late for the flight and your battery dies. Government agencies which insist on doing things by post. Sending things to non-tech capable relatives or customers who don't know what to do with a PDF. Leaflets and handouts for community meetings. Notices which have to be physically displayed in a building or on a window. Homework assignments for young children.
Some of these you might be able to workaround with some added inconvenience (e.g. carry a spare phone battery). Others are simply impossible. I'm not going to fail to buy a house because I can't comply with the mortgage company's requirement to return a signed deed for example. Much as I rarely use my printer and wouldn't be bothered at all if it stopped being required, I accept that I need to be pragmatic about it.
For people who have an office or home where a printer won't take up valuable space or look out of place, use it semi-frequently (let's say a few times per week or month), and might have to deal with the occasional urgent case, owning a $100 printer is a small price to pay to avoid having to spend an hour visiting the library (depending on distance of course) every time you need to perform 30 seconds worth of printing.
For a bit more money, you can get a multi-function printer with a built in duplex scanner and document feeder, which actually helps with running a paper-free environment. I have one of those sitting on my desk. Every piece of mail that arrives goes first into the scanner and then into the recycling bin, and avoiding trips to the library for printing is an added bonus.
Bording passes are are almost always provided for you on check in for international flights (all you really need is your passport). And honestly I can't recall my phone battery ever reaching 0% - then again, battery lifetime is one of my primary criteria when choosing a new phone. There is still some risk that the phone blows up (literally or figuratively), but that's getting into theoretical territory.
I do have a printer for convenience but it's rare that I actually need it and I have lived for long stretches without one.
Short story you're trying to read but the endless scroll makes you lose your place? Print it. Sheet music you want on-the-go without buying an ipad pro? print it. Funny picture you want to tape to your wall? Print it.