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Comment by ogou | Hacker News Reader

I found one these all-in-one units out on sidewalk and thought I had scored a cool freebie. It was nearly new. Now I know why they threw it away. Total garbage and bricked without that HP+ subscription. Can't use the scanner because the ink is too low. The worst part is that I couldn't even reset the printer to use a new subscription! It was tied to the previous owner at a hardware level and support said I had to contact them to release their account, even though it was no longer active. The HP support forums are full of angry people trying to get away from these units.

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.

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"bricked without that HP+ subscription. Can't use the scanner because the ink is too low. The worst part is that I couldn't even reset the printer to use a new subscription! It was tied to the previous owner at a hardware level and support said I had to contact them to release their account, even though it was no longer active."

Nice everything is wrong beyond redemption, basically toxic eWaste that somehow manage to also waste your time as an added bonus... job well done !

As if printing didn't suck enough already.

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

> What about a built-in cutting, binding or folding mechanism?

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.

Yes, you can scuttle and quash whatever. Almost every massively successful tech product can be given the same treatment from the IBM PC to Microsoft Windows to the iPhone.

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.

Are you arguing that if Brother would just add MQTT support (whatever that would look like) or IR scanning (once again, what's the consumer use for this?) they'd have the next iPhone on their hands?

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.

I'm arguing it's a game and one I don't play anymore.

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.

> They're all frustrating plastic things sitting in the corner.

> 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.

It's a product thing. You're a technical user that doesn't see the value in a non-technical well packaged, properly balanced, autodidactic product.

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.

> Let's take socks.

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 was tied to the previous owner at a hardware level and support said I had to contact them to release their account, even though it was no longer active.

It wouldn't surprise me if there was a resale cost.

> Germany requires all kinds of paper documentation to be mailed.

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.

In Germany, walk down the street to the print shop with a USB drive and give them about 10 cents per page.

There's significant overlap between the few things it's now necessary to print (mainly official forms), and things I wouldn't trust to some clerk at some random print shop, or whatever junk PC they're running the printer off.

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.

Then walk one kilometer and cross the border to France and it's... 50 cents/page. So totally not viable of you have any significant printing to do.

If that's not viable for you, then one of these HP+ printers probably isn't either, even without the subscription. You'd be buying a laser printer or some specialized photo printer.

More realistically, email it to your work email and print it there tomorrow.

It's significantly more than that.

No it's not. https://www.dm.de/services/services-im-markt/fotoservice/cop...

That's a supermarket though where they hope you buy other stuff. Though already colored pages cost 55 cents. In dedicated print shops it usually will be significantly more expensive.

Maybe. That drugstore chain mainly sells hygiene products. Their "main" side-business is printing photos, both digital and on film. (Yes, even in 2024 in Germany it's still possible to hand in your film in a small drugstore and have the photos developed and ready for pick-up a week later.) So I guess printing on normal paper is just a side-side business that developed naturally.

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.

> That's a supermarket though where they hope you buy other stuff.

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.

Looked at one local print shop. It's 5 cents per page plus 1€ per order. Of course this is in an area with multiple competing print shops but your assertion is at least not true everywhere.

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.

My evidence is that I never see prices of 10 cents (let alone 5 cents) per b/w page in actual copy shops.

Until the next covid lockdown.

Windows has a scan app ( ms-windows-store://pdp/?ProductId=9wzdncrfj3pv ) that can commandeer a scanner connected via USB even if the scanner's own software doesn't let you. Not sure it works with every model, and it's not very rich in features, but I've successfully thrown it at two scanners that I couldn't get any use of otherwise.

The generic Linux scan app wasn't able to scan until I replaced the ink in a Canon device.

Your opinions about these devices are valid, but I highly doubt that any other country is so stuck to physical mail as is Germany.

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.

> To the point I wonder how it is still functioning.

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.

Of course mail did and does work.

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.

I'd rather have to rely on physical mail than have to rely on a smartphone or other digital device for dealing with my government to be honest. Better to have the choice of course but if it would be only one then the former might be an inconvenience but the latter can turn into a real nightmare.

FWIW you can do your taxes online in Germany as well. That includes digital communications (even if they still send you a hardcopy).

I disagree, there are lots of other countries that have this. Japan recently got rid of floppies, for example[0]. Most of all, germany is full of doomsday thinking and complaints like this one, which i see often here when HN covers esp. german topics

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...

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40906148

I am in EU country that has similar system, but it has some problems:

- 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.

America requires tons of paper. The uS banking system is appallingly primitive and any reasonably non mundane or international transaction requires in person visits and paperwork.

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.

Laser printers are great for the opposite problem as well – super low volume. Since there are no nozzles to clog, you don’t have to waste ink every time you print doing a cleaning cycle.

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.

For people who print very rarely and don't use them for photos, I would instead recommend a laser printer (black and white is enough for any official documents) because inkjet printers dry up after a while, which ruins their quality. Brother is quite good in the laser department.

I'm a big fan of my b&w Brother laser printer even though I don't do big jobs. It always works, is fast, and cheap.

The issue with inkjets isn’t running out of ink, it’s long stretches between prints resulting in clogged heads and terrible print quality. Usually followed by dozens a of minutes of cleaning, or a clogged not-empty cartridge that needs replacing anyway.

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.

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