Most people are the parents of students going to school, teachers, trades people opening a store… they walk into BestBuy and they recognize the brand HP.
HP has massive marketing budgets and gets to package and discount their printers.
Most people think they’re getting an amazing printer at a great deal.
During this time, I noticed that the ink costs were ridiculous, so I brought a Samsung laser printer and stopped printing with the HP printer, only using it for scanning. 19 years later, it is still around. The ink cartridges no longer work, but it is used as an occasional scanner.
Since having to use xsane to make copies for my father was annoying, I brought an AIO canon color laser printer a year or two ago. Now I have three printers, and they all work, except for the HP, which is not given the new ink cartridges that it needs.
That said, I now realize that the secret to HP printer longevity is to not use it as a printer. That is how my relative’s printer lasted so long, as he likely printed infrequently. His was a print only model, so he did not even use it as a scanner like I do with mine.
The main problem is that I have to buy a new ink cartridge basically every time I want to print, because I print so rarely.
I plan to use them when my printers run out of toner, although I use them so infrequently these days that I suspect I might never need to replace the toner cartridges.
No wonder they need to get the money back from ink.