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‘Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription’ says HP CEO gunning for 2024’s Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al…::It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company’s CEO,
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I will thank him for his honesty and straight forward communication. I now know never to buy an HP printer.
I have a Brother laserjet I got on Amazon for $70 10 years ago. I print on it occasionally, and it always works. That thing has never needed new toner. It never jams. It just keeps going. Highly recommend finding a basic laserjet model from that brand.
I, too, love my old Brother laser printer. Their website is absolute garbage though. I don’t know what they did to it, but it is just slow as hell.
Definitely spend the extra $10 for duplex printing or regret it for the rest of your life.
(Seriously, why even make non-diplex printers?)
My guess would be someone who doesn’t know React well made it. I don’t know React well and I’ve made some atrocities. You forget to wrap one statement in useEffect and it’s all over.
Companies can change. I have a HP LaserJet 6P that I use with a LPT-to-USB adapter. That thing still works fine. From that anecdote I could also highly recommend HP. But that printer is now 25 years old or so and the company changed a lot since then.
Brother could have changed in those 10 years. Or it could change in 10 more years.
I’ll go one step further and never buy another HP product of any kind!
Just happened today:
Employee asks for toner for an aging HP Laserjet printer since it’s out. I look it up and it’s $198 for black (it’s not a color laser). I immediately looked up a Brother laser with an ADF scanner/copier and it was $199. High Yield Toner is $15 without a chip from a reputable 3rd party. Office is getting a new Brother printer delivered tomorrow and it’ll work 100x better.
HP, this is how you kill your printer division. Short sighted idiots.
Was that HP Laserjet unable to use 3rd party toner?
Too many disagreements about whether it worked or not in the reviews to spend a minimum of $99 on it.
Ah, that makes sense. I’ve only used the really old ones but I imagine that they’ve made it harder to do this on more recent models.
HP has absolutely lost their minds and misread consumers, even business consumers. They’ve absolutely made things near impossible to use 3rd party supplies. I mean, they want to go full subscription model so you’re paying monthly to use a piece of sub-par hardware you bought. They still think they don’t have competition and haven’t realized Brother and others like Lexmark have surpassed them in the enterprise world.
Oh and we got the printer delivered and it was up and printing in about 5 min. That included me inputting the WiFi password using the up and down arrows and ok button. Brother’s still got it.
Legit question like I bought an Epson tank printer. I don’t use cartridges. I don’t use anything with HP on it right? So if they decide that they want to screw you over but they’re not a monopoly, wouldn’t we just go elsewhere? How is this a win for them? I just feel like they’re digging a hole for themselves
No?
Epson is only marginally better with the Ecotank, the components are dated to fail within 2 years after the warranty. That being said, they’re second best to Brother because they actually price ink fairly.
What do you mean by dated to fail?
I’m guessing he’s leaning on brand power and the exec thinks he can convince the shareholders because subscription is guaranteed income. He’s probably assuming the other big printer companies will follow suit and offer the same kind of service. In the end it won’t last and it will kill their printer business once everyone wises up to the fact that there is, at least, one better alternative. My office staff now won’t buy anything else they’ve been so impressed with the reliability and ease of use of the Brother I got a month ago to start replacing their old equipment. Word of mouth and shared experiences are still very much alive, and that’s his misstep.
Of course, he probably doesn’t care since he has a golden parachute and this will keep making him money in the short term.
High Yield Toner is $15 without a chip from a reputable 3rd party.
What are some reputable toner companies? I just ordered some E-Z Ink brand toner for my Brother printer, and I’d like to know if I should cancel it and go with a different brand instead.
EZ Ink is who we use at home and it works exactly like the OEM stuff.
My inkjet hp started to throw error codes at me last month.
I bought a refurbished brother laser printer and that thing is awesome
You can do even better buying plain old used instead of refurbished.
I got a pair of MFC-9340CDWs – with duplex and color – off Craigslist for like $50 each a couple of years ago (one to use, and one as a spare). Even if I have to buy a new fuser relatively soon because the ones in both of them are almost worn out, it’s still an incredible deal.
Damn for a color one at that… That’s amazing
Yeah, their refurbs are great if you can get one before they sell out. That’s how I scored my first Brother for $99. Thing is a champ at home.
Yeah I acted quick, instead of 249 new it was $179 refurbished
Why would anyone buy such a printer? You could just go to a print shop at that point. Though honestly that’s already what I do so maybe it’s for the hikikomori or something. I don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age.
If I’m expected to pay a subscription that means every single aspect of the experience has to be outsourced to HP. And I’m including set up, cleaning and maintenance, consumables, and sending a man out to clear my paper jams for me, too. That’s how it works at the print shop – I put in money, they hand me prints completed to my specifications. Whatever happens in between those two events is not my problem.
But of course that won’t be the case, so they can fuck off.
This is relatively common in the office world. Lease the copier/printer and it comes with free maintenance or replacement. Complete overkill for home printers though.
Why would that be overkill? I lease my car and it comes with a reactive and planned service contract included. If HP wants to make people rent their printers, they’ll have to make it attractive to do so or lose a huge percentage of their home printer business.
I use my printer roughly twice a year. What exactly would I be getting out of this situation that warrants a monthly fee? Especially on a laser printer I could replace for like $150. It would economically make more sense to just replace the printer than deal with a service visit or shipping it out for repair.
Or go-to your local library, ours charges an exorbitant fee of a penny/page and gives $2 for printing for free for new library card holders lmao
Shit I forgot libraries offer this service. Even better.
Libraries are fuckin rad. Everyone should go to their local library if they exist locally. Just going in and out the door helps their counts.
My local library has a maker space with a few 3d printers and a laser cutter you can book time on. It’s pretty sweet (if you can find a time slot).
I don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age.
Legal shit.
And financial shit, and tickets, and coupons, and recipes, and templates, and manuals, and …
For when I need to run off a new character sheet right now.
I have a few edge cases where a printer is nice to have and I don’t need the quality of a print shop, I find proofreading documents to be a lot easier on a physical paper easier than a screen and I can mark changes, and when I’m playing TTRPGs I like to have a printout of my map with enemy locations and notes so that I can place everything on my battle mat the way I intended to without messing with tablets, phones or laptops.
Even with the time it takes for me to drive to the nearest Staples and have them print it (all in all probably an hour long trip), having a cheap printer on hand saves the time and money spent getting a printout after like 2 printouts.
At the end lf the day it’s not about the usefulness or obsolescence of the printer. It’s about the bullshit subscription services have unnecessarily wormed their way into every aspect of our lives. If I buy something, it’s mine, I own it, nobody else should be able to tell me what to do with it, beyond things that are already illegal.
I work from home and print a lot of UPS labels. For personal use I print targets and lots of misc. stuff. Nice to have sort of thing.
Also, it’s a B&W laser, and that’s a world of difference from inkjet.
I still wouldn’t take it on a subscription basis. My last home Laser lasted me ~15 years till the drivers just weren’t there anymore and I was mostly using it as a stand to hold other crap on top of it.
Lol, sounds familiar.
My 1996 Lexmark laser just died this year.
I haven’t owned an inkjets in 20 years, and won’t ever own one again.
Oh no. Hell no not on a subscription.
Well, crafts is why I just bought my first 2 inkjets in probably 20 years. Epson Ecotanks - actually make inkjet reasonable. I use it to do prints for heat transfer and for dye sublimation.
Then there’s the patterns for people who crochet or knit.
And occasionally forms - like passport renewal forms you have to mail in still for some reason, and you live a 30 minute drive from a printshop so having a B&W laser helps.
That said, I haven’t recommended an HP since the 1990s. There’s nothing I’m aware of they do better than brother in laser or epson in inkjet for home use (or Xerox in the business market).
“don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age”
Really? You are having a tough time imagining why people may want to print things on paper in their homes? I guess you are not alone because the printzone has a page dedicated to education on this topic.
Please visit the printzone https://www.printzone.com.au/help-centre/7-reasons-why-we-still-need-printers/
It’s been close to 5 years since I needed to print something at work. At home, more like 20 years.
I haven’t ironed my clothes in 25 years but with the power of imagination I can manage to grasp why other people might want to have an iron in their home.
Oh absolutely. There definitely are valid use cases for printers just like there are valid ways to use an ice pick. If you need to use huge blocks of ice for something, you really want to own your very own ice pick. Other people might not need one as much as you do.
I don’t need one
Most of those reasons are why a print company is needed, there’s very little about why I need a printer at home.
It’s not all about you
Because I need to print at home, that’s why it exists.
What an ignorant take. There are people who’s life functions differently than yours.
I just replaced my 1996 Lexmark laser. I don’t recall ever replacing the toner, perhaps once. It just worked, for 27 years, and I can probably fix it.
I now have a newer wifi b/w laser. Why should I go somewhere to print something? It would take a minimum of 30 minutes to do so, and cost $2-$3. My time is worth more than wasting it on getting something printed.
And wtf is hikki-whatever?
My immediate thought. And no worries about ink drying up and whatever else might break suddenly. Just pay a shop if you want printing as a service.
How much I would love if EU pulled a USB-C on printer ink/toner.
“All printers must be compatible with one of these X possible formats of ink/toner. Lockdown is forbidden too”
Sure the printers would be more expensive but I am sure we would see an incredible improvement in quality and decrease in ink/toner cost
Sure the printers would be more expensive but I am sure we would see an incredible improvement in quality and decrease in ink/toner cost
Probably because everyone but Brother would step out of the market.
Win?
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Oh no step brother printer, don’t leave the market.
Long time Brother Laser Gang member here, and toner cost is not an issue. Averaged over the last decade it’s cost me like a couple bucks per year.
“This is the ink we use. Everyone use the same ink. Cheaper, easier, better for everyone.”
“But sir, that sounds a lot like something Communists would do!”
The famous Marxist customer protection
Customer protection sound super communist.
How much I would love for America to stop letting it’s corporations get away with these things so we won’t have to wait for the EU
fuck these goddamn late stage capitalist monsters, they’re fucking living caricatures.
Shame this won’t pass: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-and-colleagues-introduce-legislation-to-combat-corporate-greed-and-end-outrageous-ceo-pay-2/
I wouldn’t ever count a Bernie bill out, no matter how unlikely it seems. He has a reputation for getting things passed. His nickname in the Senate is “the amendment king”
The “late stage” part is unnecessary. This is just capitalism working as intended.
Right? This is just deregulated capitalism being really good at extracting wealth from us peons.
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Buy Brother, better printers without all this subscription garbage.
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How long before an ‘open source’ printer hots the market and terrifies this idiot CEO?
If he hasn’t been scared by Xerox, Brother, and Epson, he won’t be scared by a FLOSS printer. At this point, the only people who buy HP printers are those who don’t even google it and remember hearing the laserjets were good circa 1995.
Maybe so, but there are people who aren’t scared of bears and get mauled to death. If he really is that dumb he won’t hear the impending doom.
i am desperately praying for a pineprinter
Keep waiting on open source printers. They are not easy. Even 300dpi monochrome takes a lot of precision, and that’s not particularly impressive. Get even smaller and add color mixing? No.
Open source plotter, OTOH, could happen. I think there are some projects out there already.
OkiData makes good business class printers too. The upfront cost is high, but the cost per page is low, so if you’re printing high volume then it’s cheaper overall.
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And since the CEO said this I will literally never buy an HP product again period
Very happy with my Brother laser printer so far. It just works. Hasn’t held my prints hostage for any online ink subscription renewals… yet…
They also just have famously shoddy build quality, with everything they make.
Greedy rent-seeking garbage humans would make breathing a subscription if they could. And the sad and scary part is that for some reason there are people ready and willing to pay for the Premium Oxygen Subscription Plus with unlimited breaths per day and the Gold Blinking Packaage added for free for the first month ($99.95 after that)…
The irony is that even that satire didn’t envision something so cartoonishly evil as a subscription business model.
What’s that picture from? It seems familiar.
Spaceballs
Thanks
Just so long as they don’t have to think about it, subscriptions are just fine with such people. 🤦♂️
It’s simple actually. Don’t buy HP products. Even their laptops have huge quality issues and flawed motherboard designs. Their firmware updates are known to brick motherboards. Even if you are under warranty, they won’t give you a new board, instead they’ll give you a refurbished board. FUCK YOU HP.
My company is an HP partner. I use a Lenovo.
That is quite funny, my objective since 20 years ago is to not buy anything with the HP logo.
With each new HP news article I grow more pleased with last year’s decision to ditch HP once and for all and get a Brother.
The Brother just works. Even surprises me in some scenarios where I anticipate lack of support and it comes through anyway. Great printer!
This is why for the one or two times I need to print something a year I just go to the library and pay them $0.10 a page to print something out.
I bought a refurbished laser printer at a garage sale for $30 8 years ago. Still printing off the original toner
My printing has become so incredibly rare that even paying $0.50 per page st a ups/fed ex store is a better deal than having a printer. I’m not even sure the printer my wife insists on keeping is compatible with windows 11, which is basically all our PCs now.
Because of a single printer manufacturer?
Because of basically ALL printer manufacturers. I know people like Brother printers, generally, but why pay something like $60-100 for a printer when you only need to use one a few times a year?
For me the cost savings are pretty huge.
The big difference is convenience. I’ve got an inexpensive Brother laser printer. It is probably 12 years old now and is as good as the day I bought it. I’ve only replaced the toner cartridge once or twice. I set it up on my home server so it’s available on all of our family devices (well, not the phones). When the kids wake up in the morning and suddenly realize they have to print off their homework for school, it’s no problem at all.
At least in the Netherlands, there’s a bunch of places you can print including your own school for free.
As little as I print, it would be worth it to me to adapt my 3d printer to function as a plotter.
I go out of my way to eliminate paper wherever possible, so I would rather spend $100 to be able to do something digitally than $50 for a printer.
what a literal fucking psychopath. i mean literally imagine waking up and thinking these things. imagine trying to actively make the world worse like this.
oh yeah i’m trying to make bathrooms a subscription
i’m trying to make food a subscription
i’m trying to make tv a subscription
i’m trying to make clothes a subscription
i cannot wait to live in paradise
i’m trying to make food a subscription
Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and a few others have entered the chat.
Unfortunately clothes by subscription is also a thing. I’m not sure what the company is, but I heard they’ll send you a new outfit every month… It’s one of the most wasteful things I’ve heard of in a while. We have literal mountains of unused clothes and other textile waste sitting in landfills.
This is what every MBA lives and breathes. He’s just saying it out loud. Which up until now was a faux paw.
This really doesn’t seem like a very good long-term investment. Over time people are printing less, not more.
If you make it difficult to print they’ll make the active effort to move away from your product, which is especially bad given the people are moving away from printing in general anyway.
Which is why they have to extract a much as possible from their dimishing customer base that are essentially forced to still use them and this have no real choice.
Except other companies are still in the printer game.
Got a new brother color laser for under 200 a few weeks back.
Sure. One sets precedent the others follow as always.
I don’t own a printer because the cost to constantly refill cartrages feels like a subscription already. I just go to the UPS store for the 3 times a year I actually need to print something, on a for-realsies printer that someone else maintains. usually costs less than a dollar every time I go.
I print whole books from the printer at work.
I work at a Starbucks.
Why does Starbucks have a printer?
Because there are administrative tasks to be done in the back office.
Yeah they print us all the time in the back office.
Staples by my house has my printing business. Maybe 20 pages a year?
