Excuse me - if I bought your product and paid for it, in what universe am I not investing into you, and instead you are investing into me??
HP is a steaming pile of shit.
Because they sell the printers at loss, expecting you to buy their overpriced ink, continually earning them money for years.
Sounds like a subscription to be honest.
I know we assume they’re following the “razor blade” model but I actually find it hard to believe the printers are sold at a loss given how cheap it is to produce at this point.
Unless by “loss” we’re saying “less than HP thought it could extract.”
They’re absolutely not producing them at a loss. The loss is only in their projections and expectations to price gouge their customers.
I just looked. You can get an HP Deskjet on Amazon for $40. They are producing those at a loss and expecting people to pay for their bullshit ink subscriptions.
Right. There isn’t a printer under $150 that anyone should even consider. If you can’t afford the upfront cost, then you won’t be able to afford the ink of the “cheap” end of the market.
More people should consider not owning a printer at all and using a FedEx print shop or some such. I get the convenience argument for having one, but consider it.
I invested $150-200 on a Brother laser printer a very long time ago. Like we’re talking USB 1.0 era long time ago. It still works just fine. I’ve had to replace the toner cartridge once. Those things are workhorses. They will last until the sun goes out. Get one of those if you need a printer. It will still be compatible with your OS, the quality will be all you’ll likely ever need, and you don’t even have to worry about getting a new one because you can get an ancient one on eBay for a very low price and it will still be fine. All you’re missing is color and even if you print a lot, like you said, go to FedEx if you need color because it will probably be cheaper than ink anyway.
They want to make it a subscription that starts automatically when you buy the printer. No payment or the linked credit card expires, no more printing. Keep on paying for that subscription each month even if you don’t print a single page.
HP literally has that already. They call their dystopian product “Instant ink.”
And they’re fuming because they can’t force this down the throat of every “bad investments”. Not yet anyway.
But they’re really trying with HP+ printers that come with a 3 month trial of Instant Ink. And it’s not like you lose the ability to use 3rd party cartridges, because those HP+ printers already come locked down from factory. Those HP+ printers also have extra REQUIREMENTS: HP Account and internet connection.
Imagine if you needed internet connection and some account to control your lights. Oh, Philips Hue changed their ToS, so now you do.
Why internet of things is a bad idea for 500, Alex.
Here was I, thinking printers couldn’t get worse
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HP is intentionally getting this twisted in the hopes that we won’t notice. But too bad; we noticed.
The only possible way for a “virus” to be embedded in an ink cartridge is because there is software (or firmware, I guess) in that cartridge. The only reason there is software in an ink cartridge in the first place is because HP needs it to be there for their own nefarious purposes, to wit attempting to prevent you from using third party cartridges, and also to lock you out of using cartridges that may still be full of ink under their stupid “instant ink” scam.
Without that, the cartridge would just be a box of ink which is all it actually needs to be. HP could have avoided this entire fiasco by… not putting dumbshit DRM firmware in their cartridges in the first place.
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People say that, but…
I had a Canon Pixma ip5000 back in the day that had ink cartridges with no electronics in them. For ink level sensing there was an LED and photodiode built into the carriage that the cartridges went into, in the printer itself. Not in the cartridges. They were transparent plastic, so the machine could just shine through and determine when ink was running low. For its usage gauge, it just calculated it based on print output vs. the volume of a new cartridge, assuming you put a full cartridge into it when you told it so. Yes, this meant you could also fool it by telling it you’d installed a new cartridge when you hadn’t, but it would still figure it out right away if you put a truly empty one in.
And this worked just fine. No problems at all with that system. I used and abused that printer for years, doing volume printing for work with it (it could do 8.5x11 borderless!) until it just plain wore out. Probably after hundreds of thousands of pages.
So no, I really don’t think having chips running arbitrary code in a goddamn ink cartridge is actually necessary in any way.
Crazy idea here: How about not monitoring the ink at all?
Why does the printer need to know? It’s not like it’s going to explode from not having fresh ink anyway. Just put the ink in a visible container where the user can look and see if it being empty is the cause of a shitty print.
I’d buy any printer that doesn’t attempt to monitor the ink.
Maybe so people know to buy a cartridge so it’s on hand before the one runs out, so you’re not having to run to the office supply store in the middle of an important print job? But that’s more of a convenience thing, not necessary.
Yeah, just make it work like a car’s fuel tank. It has a gauge to say how much is in it. It has a hole so you can add more. Some cars will guess how far you can drive, give or take, based on how much fuel is in the tank. If the fuel gets very low, a more obvious warning will pop up in case you weren’t watching your gauge. But otherwise it just keeps driving in the meantime and if your car needs high octane and you give it low, it will try to run it anyways and if it fucks up the engine, then that’s on the user.
Actually with some print heads they will be damaged if there is no ink
If it is visible to the user, that means light is hitting it and helping degrade it. Given how rarely people prove these days, you are more likely to end up with a gunked up cartridge.
They could avoid the possibility of a virus by not having chips in them. Pretty simple fix.
I aspire to be a bad investment for every company
I do not want to be measured as an investment but as a customer.
I dont want to be measured as a customer either. I want to fall under the ‘T’ part of their SWOT analysis.
That’s interesting! TIL, thanks!
I’m not really on Reddit much anymore but every time an article would get posted about how Redditors were the least valuable social media users for advertising purposes I was always like “Fuck yeah.”
Ah. The only good kind of investment!
Buying HP products is bad investment.
I only had the chance to two of their inkjet printers and one of their office laser printers, plus an elitebook laptop. In short, all of them suck.
Much better (to me, the best) alternatives, that I can safely say are good investments: Canon for inkjet printers, ThinkPad T and P series for laptops. Those are quality products. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience with other office laser printers, so I cannot recommend one.
Edit: specified which series of ThankPads are still good.
Inkjet printers as a whole are a bad investment.
Well, I guess it depends on the use case. For me, mine was a damn good investment for sure.
Well if you print lots of photos then maybe but that’s about it.
If you print lots of photos in the USA, printing to the nearest drugstore (Walgreens, rite aid) is certainly cheaper.
If you print a lot of documents in the USA, printing at the library is often free, sometimes a small fee.
Not sure on other countries, but here in the USA, I’ve found a printer completely unnecessary.
I kinda agree about the photos, but when printing documents, it’s almost always something I need immediately. Going to the library is quite inconvenient.
I bought a used brother laser printer for 15€ and got two 1000 page toner Cartridges for it for 20€. That’s quite a lot of printing for 35€ total and that will be enough for years with my needs. Definitely worth the convenience imo.
I agree. I have a brother laser printer. However, I’m currently traveling and have it packed away in a trailer. I’ve found the library more convenient than unpacking it. For now. Haha
Can’t you use the drug store for photos and the library for documents?
For those who don’t want a Canon, a Brother is also great.
ThinkPad is now Lenovo just FYI. They were acquired some years ago and now Lenovo makes and sells the ThinkPad line of hardware
They were acquired some years ago
Almost 20.
Yeah, Lenovo has owned ThinkPad for ≈ 6 more years than IBM ever did.
I know. Still, that’s the best hardware out there for laptops. I have to add though, only the T and P series are worth buying, the rest are trash.
Not anymore. Even those are garbage in the last 5ish years.
Shit build quality and barely repairable
Stay away from modern thinkpads
Check again.
At least the T580 I worked on was the best quality laptop I’ve laid my hands on. My current M1 MacBook Pro is close, to some extent. It’s a great machine too, and obviously better in performance as it’s newer, but in laptop keyboards, ThinkPad’s is still no.1, not to talk about the track point that, to this day, no other manufacturer could properly reproduce. I worked with a Dell Latitude (a couple of years ago they were great), but the track point is shit on it.
Regarding maintenance, Lenovo provides detailed disassembly and repair guides, plus you can get replacement parts anytime.
Of course there are shit decisions on the ThinkPad line as well, but I still only can recommend them.
nope. had a T580 which reproducably crashed when you picked it up by the right side. Likely from mainboard flex. And checking online, it’s not a unique case.
And two months after the waranty, the ssd control chip or something broke which basically shredded any data on the ssd. Repair would have been almost as expensive as getting a new one.
Now I’ve switched to framework for work and personal use and don’t regret it
Hmm that’s unfortunate. Wherever I worked so far, ThinkPads didn’t break, even after the warranty expired.
Well, I wish you better luck with your Framework laptop(s) then.
“We have seen that you can embed viruses into cartridges, through the cartridge go to the printer, from the printer go to the network, so it can create many more problems for customers.”
If the cartidges didn’t have drm chips you wouldn’t have anything to load with malware to begin with.
Why do these dumb ass CEO’s keep admitting this type of stuff in interviews? Don’t tell us your evil plans. No one is going to hear this and be more eager to buy your products. They’re so proud of coming up with ways to screw customers that they just can’t help themselves. They have to let everyone know. I don’t get it.
And this is why I only buy Brother laser printers
Can you give us more detail about how that solves the problem?
For home usage, a later printer toner cartridge will last you years and won’t go bad. Ink jet printer cartridges are way more expensive and dry out which is why they constantly need replacing. Brother is a much better brand than HP.
Not OP but I only use a brother MFC black&white laser printer for printing documents at home. It addresses the HP issue in 2 ways. 1 - The genuine brother toner costs much less per page to the point that it’s not terrible to have to buy it if necessary. And 2 - brother does not put DRM on their printer and there are tons of 3rd party toners available at about 1/3rd the price. Generally brother printers cost more up front, but basically last a lifetime, and the toner is pretty cheap. I’ve had the same printer for around 12 years now, and it still prints fine. I don’t print a lot at home so I’ve only had to buy 4 3rd-party replacement toners, which have cost around $80 altogether. I think the printer was $200 when I originally bought it.
Also I want to add that if you need color inkjet printing, the Canon Megatank and Epson Ecotank printers are an awesome option for most home printing. I use a Canon g6020 at home for photo printing and I love the photos that come out of it.
Brother printers aren’t even that much more expensive than HP. I think you break even by the time you have to buy like 2 HP ink cartridges. Even the toner cartridges that the brother printers come with last what feels like forever and they’re not even filled up all the way.
Yeah it’s definitely cost effective over time, and the printers generally seem to be higher quality. I’ve heard about inkjet printers breaking a lot during moves, but I’ve moved with my brother printer like 5-6 times and it’s been fine through everything.
Brother makes their money on printers and printer support (like really big offices that print thousands of documents a day, those printers have special techs). They don’t make as much on ink sales so they don’t really care about third party ink cartridges.
You can buy 3rd party toner for Brother and they don’t lock you out of your own printer for doing it.
On brother printers, if the printer says toner is out and you can’t print, you can press a key combo on the printer to reset the toner page counter and then continue printing until there is literally no toner left at all.
It’s funny how much worse Lemmy is at downvoting simple questions than Reddit. People on here treat every question as if it was asked with bad intentions.
I’m not sure, but I think part of the problem is that the votes are “real”. Since every instance has to have the same number of up/down votes they can’t get away with fudging the numbers. I have no hard evidence that reddit does, but I suspect they do to increase engagement.
Buying HP products are a very bad investment, period.
I would never own a printer other than a Canon or an Ink Tank printer and I’m very reluctant to use the Canon Printer.
If you laser brother printers are great
I’ve heard good things about Brother, they also make some affordable Ink Tank models.
Thats fair I prefer laser personally
Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.
Brother, for the love of anything holy, please do not follow HP’s path.
In other words: “Our business model is bad and I feel smug about it.”
I wonder if I can 3D print parts for and make a reliable 2D printer
21st century business innovation seems to be make everything a perpetual subscription model, rather than providing better value with new products. It doesn’t make you brilliant as a CEO, may as well just replace you with AI, right? That’s what all the cool investors care about now, right?
Later in the interview, he added: “Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.”
This makes me want to buy 10 million printers and then just sent them on fire…
Don’t worry, they’ll destroy their printers for you, so you have to buy new ones.
And next time buy a brother printer.
This just screams that it’s a bad investment to buy HP stock at the moment. No company will insult their potential customers if they aren’t desperate.
investors should be taken to a remote island and left to fend for themselves
investors should be taken to a remote planet and left to fend for themselves.
Yikes, I hope you don’t have a pension.
Most people don’t
Seems like slightly more than half of American workers (56%) participate in a “workplace retirement plan” which I don’t know the definition of. Pension or 401k if I had to guess.
Why research, post a statistical number, and completely abandon reading anything else in the article for context? Stating a number that you have no idea what it’s defining? You’re spreading misinformation for some weird “I was right” gotcha comment. The literal next line where you got 56% from,
Percentage of workers participating in a pension plan: 19
This includes all types of employment, for just private it’s a measly 11%. State and local government employees bump up all of the stats. Nice little tidbit at the end: "A pension plan is a traditional or hybrid defined benefit plan. In 2022 forty one percent of workers in private-sector pension plans were in plans that were closed to new entrants.
How does this vary from previous years? What are the different types of definitions and actual “benefits” that the employee may see. What are the differences in private and public sector “retirement plans” (or contribution vs defined benefits). I’ve been reading through the BLS.gov website in regards to all of this and it’s one sad fact after another. But sure, put a healthy untrue spin on it to win some internet points while completely missing the context, skewed facts have never caused any harm.
Yeah, I stopped researching it. Perhaps we should go back to the more measured approach from earlier in the thread.
investors should be taken to a remote planet and left to fend for themselves.
Well instead of forming emotional opinions we can try an educated opinion next? You really do yourself a disservice by saying you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Not gonna lie, thought that said “inventors” and I was like, “I’d watch that.”
Holy fuck, customers are not an investment!
Not crazy at all. Not sure why there’s a surprise. Advertising is everywhere. Design goes into making buying goods user friendly. The whole point of brands is to build loyalty to it. All of that has cost to acquire customers. So obviously customers are an investment because acquiring them has cost and labor involved.
It’s like selling an iPhone knowing you will eventually make money on app store sales percentage margins.
Proud to be a bad investment here 😊
