I wouldn't doubt it for a second. Printer makers use the razor/razorblade model for consumables, where the printer's dirt cheap, but the ink costs an arm and a leg. This is just the latest tactic for getting people to go OEM only.
At this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon's cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.
I never understood the razor/razorblade analogy. A razor handle without a blade is just a shaped bit of plastic or metal, without any working or moving parts. The precision engineering is all in the blade. It'd be weird if the handle wasn't cheap and the blades more expensive.
But a printer really is a non-trivial set of electronics and working parts, so it is more surprising that they're so cheap.
Safety razors are very cheap. I believe the OP is referring to the profit model of companies like Gillette, extracting larger margins on a more consistent basis in trade for a marginal amount of ease of use for the consumer.
Razor/razor blade is a marketing strategy. Sell/give the base at a low or free cost, and make the money on selling the consumables at a significant markup. The razor itself also has to be engineered for durability, with springs, latches, etc. While it's a comparatively simple part, it needs to be rugged to last a few years in a moisture filled environment where it's liable to be dropped and otherwise abused.
Similarly, the print heads are the precision part in a printer. Drive components in the printer itself -- motor, the belts, rollers, etc, are all pretty cheap and easy at this point; the same print engine will be used over several series of printers. The print heads on the other hand, have piezoelectric parts and/or heat elements that have to be very quick and accurate to do a good job. Both cases, while there is definitely some engineering in them, it doesn't rise to the cost levels we see them being sold at.
As another poster points out, modern blades are different than older style blades where the blade was just a thin piece of sharp metal. I have one from my great grandfather... the blades are the definitely the cheap, disposable part. That's the model which the idea refers to.
That's because you've probably grown up under this regime. Older style razors are the opposite.
My dad has probably spent $100 in shaving supplies over the last 30 years. I got suckered into Gillette and could probably buy a Honda Accord for the money I've dumped into this crap.
Change that today! /r/wicked_edge You don't have to use the fancy soaps / brushes to wet shave, but they do help. Buy a handle (~$25) and blades are dirt cheap QTY 100 for ~$12 - 20.
I haven't really thought about it recently, but (parts of) Asia seems to have this whole printer ink thing figured out. Just about every printer I see in Thailand has the tubes coming out which go to bottles similar to this [1]. There are little refill stations in malls, and that seems to be the standard. No overpriced OEM cartridges, just a straight ink reservoir.
I'm pretty sure there are more open 3D printer projects, than open paper printer projects. Which just reinforces the differences between 2D and 3D printing.
HP and others have a lot of patents in that space with an army of lawyers to defend them unfortunately. It would have to avoid using anything coming close to these patents...
Unfortunately, the inapplicability of intellectual property doesn't seem to matter much. They probably wouldn't use an expired patent in a suit, but many of these places just make minor tweaks and file for a new patent on the "new invention". There's enough grey area that you have to go to court to hash out whether or not the technology is infringing.
Opposing IP lawyers working for one of the largest media companies in the world have openly told an associate that while the thing they C&D'd her on may have had a good chance to be ruled non-infringing, she should comply with the C&D anyway since she would be financially ruined by a lawsuit, win or lose (realistically, she wouldn't be able to win because she'd run out of money WAY before the case even approached a conclusion -- one of big companies' favorite strategies is to "starve out" their legal opponents by making the case as expensive and convoluted as possible).
I would be very happy to have a libre SW/HW BW printer that uses the technology of 1996 and must, then be based only on expired patents. Both '96 laser and inkjet would be OK for my limited use.
I think that laser technology of the 90s was simple enough that it could be reimplemented these days without too many problems. And I will be happy to pay €300 for a provably open laser printer that does do tricks like simulating empty toners or printing tracing dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
Patent attorney here. I used to do a lot of patents for the printer cartridges. The printer companies use the "give away the razor, make money on the razor blades" business model. The make very little on the printer, and make a killing on the cartridges. Thus, they spend a lot of effort trying to keep generic cartridges out of the market.
I haven't owned and HP printer in a while, but this article will stop me from making an HP printer my next purchase if and when I need one. What a dirty, cheap tactic by HP! They'll fire some low-wage earner worker and a mid-level manager over this, while the real culprit stays at his job I'm sure. Definitely class-action, and even criminal, no? Consumer fraud, deception?
Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.
Eh, those were terrible anyway. I have an ML2525w which should be wireless, but in reality almost never joins the wifi network on boot reliably like all of the ESP8266s I have. I have to re-run setup on it all the time, and half the time it doesn't get detected by the tool. I gave up long ago and just hard-wired it. If I follow the exact turn-on procedure it likes and wait for it to be fully settled before attempting to print, it generally will start printing within a minute or so.
Honestly, I'm so done with printers. If I really need something, I can run to the 24hr kinkos or the office center in my complex. Owning a printer in 2016 seems kind of silly.
I've had no connectivity issues with my Samsung color laser printer. I need it here in SE Asia, since bureaucracy still reigns and paper vs. electronics is not quite there yet. It reminds me of Brooklyn in the 70s for that matter - the DMV comes to mind!
Love my ESP8266; did you year about the ESP32 yet? I am trying to port Wasp Lisp/Wasp VM to it for networking (not pentesting) not for IOT, but creating a mesh network of sorts here in the village I have been staying in East Java - no Kinkos or Starbucks here!
There's the Epson Eco-Tank series. Ink is in four bottles at the side of the machine, good for about 4000-6000 pages. Refill with Epson ink bottles or (a bit more messily) from bulk ink. The printer costs about $279.
You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That's the price of long life print heads.
"Good" Linux support means being able to just download a PPD and shove it into CUPS. AFAIK HP is the only one that requires their own crappy GUI on top.
Personally, I never ever had to use hplip's GUI tool, except for configuring wireless printing. After doing so, I could uninstall it and use bog-standard CUPS.
The only time I had to use (admittedly annoying) HP GUI installer is for scanner part of HP CM1015 MFP. Printer part of the same MFP worked fine with just normal CUPS.
How is the support good?
I've bought a pro laserjet and the wireless wont work (bug is years old), manual duplex won't work, the print jobs like to go disappear into some limbo every now and then...
Generally, I have less problems with printers like the XP-320 than HP printers because they are just download the PPD -> good to go. No fucking with HPLIP or an entire software stack around it.
You can also buy mods for printers (I have a http://www.rihac.com.au/ ) to give them proper ink reservoirs.
When I got mine done (a canon) they requested my old empty cartridges, as they just grab the chip out of them and trick it into thinking its always full.
The only problem of epson is it sounds like (from the reviews) that they have bad Wireless support which is kind of a must for some people like me who use their phone to print.
Already got an epson printer thats working well? you can buy an Inklink that fits to it much like the ecotank - much cheaper and saves you $1000's www.rihac.com.au
Already got an epson printer thats working well? you can buy an Inklink that fits to it much like the ecotank - much cheaper and saves you $1000's www.rihac.com.au
If this is affecting printers in Australia, then HP are going to learn a very costly lesson in ethics. The ACCC will have to do an investigation, but the instant they confirm this has occurred they will face stiff fines for third line forcing and anti-competitive behaviour distorting the market.
i'm in australia and bought some cheap fuji-xerox laser printer a year or so ago.
non-oem ink refills are far cheaper than oem ones. a large component of the cost of non-oem ink refills is getting a replacement chip that counts how many times you can print before it claims it needs refilling. you can buy more of these chips along with bulk ink refills. it's like DRM for ink or something.
Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there's toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won't recognize it. And it's useless torefill it if you don't change some chip in each toner.
And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.
I also have the C301dn and am very satisfied with it compared to previous printers (inkjets). Works when you need it even after months of non-usage and toner replacements are cheap off ebay. The only thing that worries me is the drum unit / fuser / belt life as I have no idea what happens when they reach 0%. There is a hardware hack though to reset those as well.
I couldn't find hard resets to my drum unit/fuser. No soft ones too. Here the replacement costs more than I would pay for a new printer.
And, what makes me sick, the quality was as good as brand new, so the "we limit the amount of printings because we care about the quality loss" yada-yada is pure #@$#*!$@
Life based on printed pages would be OK. If you actually print the number pages you promise, I can compare the total costs of cartridges and printers.
But I think some models also have timer. After 6 months or year, the printer starts to complain that the ink has "dried up". To prohibit you from saving up that unicorn blood by printing less.
By banned list is HP, Canon and I'm very cautious about Samsung.
Sucks for poor and/or disabled and/or elderly people, sucks for people with infants, and of course, for everyone who doesn't like to have games played on them so they save one cent which others get to pay with five cents. Oh well, amirite?
If you're disabled or kid, just pour that stuff to glass.
Sip is not in any way definite measurement. Sheet of paper is somewhat decent.
Better one would be this: buy a car. It will automatically stop ignition after 100 000km. Do you really have problem with that, if you know it beforehand?
Remembers me about the marketing that a specific soda brand should cost more in hot days so selling machines would increase the price automatically. That was rejected by consumer pressure...
Someday, your printer will kill more "printing credits" on those days that you are on a hurry.
Which is the future now that there's talk of the car's computer checking crypto signatures on each part and refusing to start the engine if they don't match. Heard of this concept at least once here on HN.
In the case of automated multi-ton death machines moving at high-speed near other people, that seems totally reasonable. You shouldn't be allowed to tinker with your automated car and risk everyone else's lives.
As long as it's advertised that way upfront, then I don't see why not. Tesla is not going to be the only automated car manufacturer. Today, you can buy cars that only take specialty parts. You can also buy cars that take standard parts. I'm sure it will be that way with automated cars too. Same way that you should be able to buy an iPhone with all of its non-standard quirks.
As for safety, it depends on the specific parts. An automated car is a complete integrated system. Once people start swapping parts, the test-matrix to ensure safety explodes. People modifying the driving software in their own cars, for example, is definitely a no-go. (And modifying any software at all should be prohibited unless the driving and entertainment computers are completely air-gapped.)
What about the brake pads in my multi-ton death machine? Should I be prohibited from replacing them with third-party parts for the fear of risking everyone else's lives?
The big three made the same dumb arguments a hundred years ago... third party parts have never been a problem. People fought hard for the right to get replacement parts, and it's a shame we need to re-fight this battle because of the lemmings among us.
Can confirm, this happened to our HP 6830 printer on September 13. Extremely annoyed because we only bought this printer in June, and was working fine with a replacement ink. I was actually researching legal precedents to this, and learned that Lexmark has been fighting something like this in court for over a decade[1].
Inkjet printers have been simply the most loathsome category of electronics I've encountered. Concluded some years ago to never own one again. Garbage! Zero tolerance!
It's very sad - I am old enough to remember when HP was synonymous with quality and doing the right thing for both customers and employees. Hewlett and Packard (the founders) would never have pulled a stunt like this. Fiorina destroyed that legacy almost overnight.
And I'd buy their products from their reputation. I can't imagine they'll redeem themselves from such a long period of reprehensible policies and shoddy products.
I'm in Silicon Valley and I know someone working in their outsourcing group. HP has a "secret" office where they try to get all their development offshore. They will arrange travel visas to rotate people from other countries into hotels to work on projects. It is coordinated across the entire company in order to cut costs. I wish that we wouldn't allow such companies to sell in the United States (ie. companies that hide their income and employ offshore in order to avoid employing US employees. Such companies shouldn't be able to sell in the US.)
Haha, no, they're always laughing at us. First and foremost they take the money. Then they force/trick you into loading 200MB of crap to get a kB driver loaded. Then they ignore you, except for the multiple, obfuscated spywares the driver bundle installed.
What do you think is the best way to enforce the rules on HP and make this action illegal? Contact the Member State authorities? Feel this should be enforced by the EU instead of national... gah, directives.
Does this also happens with laser toner cartridges ? I really have no idea why people even buy those inkjet printers anymore, price per page is lower with laser printers and prices even for a color laser are in sub 200€$ range.
Is there a reason that Shutterfly or other similar services don't satisfy those needs? I try not to own things anymore unless I use them frequently (lessons learned after moving twice in Manhattan), and printing color photos definitely isn't a frequent need for me, or I suspect, for most people.
Yes. I was deploying our system in a physician's clinic when their HP printer suddenly refused to print with a cryptic error, even after all the toner was replaced it refused. Only when I stepped in & suggested they buy the brand name ink did things get resolved. Lucky for the busy clinic, they only had 1 HP printer.
Nope. My 55€ Canon inkjet is larger then laser printer from Samsung for 70€.
> Cheap inkjets are cheaper than cheap lasers.
Nope. Cheap lasers are in the same ballpark as cheap inkjets (50€$). The major difference is in toner/cartridge consumption and exchange interval. A laser toner can last significantly longer then inkjet cartridge and isn't prone to damages of no regular usage.
> Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
Absolutely correct and this also brings an answer why people choose those inkjets : "ah, I rarely print anything, so I'll have a device to print everything".
But it differs if you calculate the cost of inkjet cartridge drying out/printing problems with non regular usage. Technology on laser toners doesn't have such limitations.
Not trolling, but why do you use printers? I haven't used paper for 5 odd years now. The gov here (Spain) gives me tons of paper; I photograph it and then leave it and have them print it out when needed. Outside that I have not needed paper since the ipad. Why do other people?
Lots of places (authorities etc) require you to leave a physical paper that is signed and that they can put in a folder and store in an archive.
Last time I needed this was yesterday, the local football association (yes soccer) requires the player list to be signed and given to referee before match. I make the list and usually print three copies: one for the referee, one for the opponent team and one for our own coach to check against players.
Some people prefer to read certain types of documents on paper. At work I've occasionally printed out slabs of reference material so I can go review it with a pen at the cafe across the road.
I need to print out things every so often. Things like official notices to my tenants, concert tickets, forms to be mailed to various government agencies.
I don't own a printer though, I just use the own at work. I'm there five days a week anyway. I also do all my mailing from work, which is more convenient than trying to do it from home on the weekend.
Kids. School projects (science fair posters) and reports. And they also do some creative games/puzzles with them. Or print reminder/todo lists for them.
I'll also print interesting graphs or graphics, to share/discuss with them. It's much harder to discuss in front of a screen.
Well, on my mom Windows 10 pc hp software asked her if the cartridge was pirate (unofficial?). Well, actually it was original, the only thing is that I'm keeping an empty color cartridge instead of replacing it since I only use black... I'm wondering wtf happened there
Slightly offtopic, but, I've been using a HP printer for the past years (Photosmart D7360) and am also VERY annoyed, one example: whenever one of my color cartridges is past it's expiry date i can't print in black and white. Even though the black cartridge is brand new. I first have to go buy a new color cartridge (which i don't use) and then i can print in black again.
The warning message says something like "if you print with an outdated cartridge it may damage the printer".
That anti-counterfeiting measure (secret yellow dots encoding a serial number) was originally on color copiers. Then it got extended to color laser printers.
Do we really know that it hasn't been extended to ink jets as well?
I think the grandparent has a legitimate observation. It would explain why you need to have working color cartridges to be able to print in black and white. (It's obvious that paper money is not going to be counterfeited in black and white, but maybe they decided to hide serial numbers on all printouts, not just color printouts.)
307 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] threadAt this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon's cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.
But a printer really is a non-trivial set of electronics and working parts, so it is more surprising that they're so cheap.
Similarly, the print heads are the precision part in a printer. Drive components in the printer itself -- motor, the belts, rollers, etc, are all pretty cheap and easy at this point; the same print engine will be used over several series of printers. The print heads on the other hand, have piezoelectric parts and/or heat elements that have to be very quick and accurate to do a good job. Both cases, while there is definitely some engineering in them, it doesn't rise to the cost levels we see them being sold at.
My dad has probably spent $100 in shaving supplies over the last 30 years. I got suckered into Gillette and could probably buy a Honda Accord for the money I've dumped into this crap.
[1] http://lh3.ggpht.com/_bJKz4lWVpfo/S9p02XqXZqI/AAAAAAAADEI/Q_...
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Factory-offered-edible-ink-P...
I am assuming it is Epson parts, based on the 1440 dpi dimension
I seem to recall some open hardware cell phone projects. No reason a similar effort couldn't be directed towards making an open printer, is there?
Also, it might not even require making a full open hardware printer, but just some key circuitry and maybe some drivers, right?
Opposing IP lawyers working for one of the largest media companies in the world have openly told an associate that while the thing they C&D'd her on may have had a good chance to be ruled non-infringing, she should comply with the C&D anyway since she would be financially ruined by a lawsuit, win or lose (realistically, she wouldn't be able to win because she'd run out of money WAY before the case even approached a conclusion -- one of big companies' favorite strategies is to "starve out" their legal opponents by making the case as expensive and convoluted as possible).
For example, the OKIPAGE 4w costed $300 at the time and was a compact, fast 600 dpi BW printer. http://my.okidata.com/MarkInfo.nsf/DocID/C9A90C0CF5943EBB852...
I think that laser technology of the 90s was simple enough that it could be reimplemented these days without too many problems. And I will be happy to pay €300 for a provably open laser printer that does do tricks like simulating empty toners or printing tracing dots https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-not-d...
But there are not Open source inkject printers because it takes millions to manufacture the inkjet itself.
Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/12/hp-is-buying-samsungs-prin...
Honestly, I'm so done with printers. If I really need something, I can run to the 24hr kinkos or the office center in my complex. Owning a printer in 2016 seems kind of silly.
Love my ESP8266; did you year about the ESP32 yet? I am trying to port Wasp Lisp/Wasp VM to it for networking (not pentesting) not for IOT, but creating a mesh network of sorts here in the village I have been staying in East Java - no Kinkos or Starbucks here!
You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That's the price of long life print heads.
Generally, I have less problems with printers like the XP-320 than HP printers because they are just download the PPD -> good to go. No fucking with HPLIP or an entire software stack around it.
When I got mine done (a canon) they requested my old empty cartridges, as they just grab the chip out of them and trick it into thinking its always full.
One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace with new cartridges
I was using non-hp ink cartridges.
I've been HP customer for 20 years, and I'm done with HP for their dishonesty.
non-oem ink refills are far cheaper than oem ones. a large component of the cost of non-oem ink refills is getting a replacement chip that counts how many times you can print before it claims it needs refilling. you can buy more of these chips along with bulk ink refills. it's like DRM for ink or something.
HP could learn from Apple...
Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there's toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won't recognize it. And it's useless torefill it if you don't change some chip in each toner.
And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.
So OKI was in my banned list, now HP joins it.
Since I'm running my C301dn on 3rd party toners for awhile now.
And, what makes me sick, the quality was as good as brand new, so the "we limit the amount of printings because we care about the quality loss" yada-yada is pure #@$#*!$@
But I think some models also have timer. After 6 months or year, the printer starts to complain that the ink has "dried up". To prohibit you from saving up that unicorn blood by printing less.
By banned list is HP, Canon and I'm very cautious about Samsung.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-12/hp-inc-buy...
Sip is not in any way definite measurement. Sheet of paper is somewhat decent.
Better one would be this: buy a car. It will automatically stop ignition after 100 000km. Do you really have problem with that, if you know it beforehand?
Someday, your printer will kill more "printing credits" on those days that you are on a hurry.
As a side note, HP sells a (vintage) 256 MB DDR2 RAM module for $600 (USD) for it's new printers.
All your legislative bases are belong to us, or some such rot.
Wht should Tesla be able to prevent me from replacing a bad Tesla part with a better/safer third-party part?
As for safety, it depends on the specific parts. An automated car is a complete integrated system. Once people start swapping parts, the test-matrix to ensure safety explodes. People modifying the driving software in their own cars, for example, is definitely a no-go. (And modifying any software at all should be prohibited unless the driving and entertainment computers are completely air-gapped.)
The big three made the same dumb arguments a hundred years ago... third party parts have never been a problem. People fought hard for the right to get replacement parts, and it's a shame we need to re-fight this battle because of the lemmings among us.
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160214/16294133605/after...
We used to own the stuff we paid for! Now it's like you pay to be the product. I think this problem is worse in software.
Checkout fsf.org
What do you think is the best way to enforce the rules on HP and make this action illegal? Contact the Member State authorities? Feel this should be enforced by the EU instead of national... gah, directives.
I did have to swap out the black after two years maybe 2 1/2 but I ran it for six months with errors and warnings and pleading.
If you need something quick, most CVS and RiteAid stores let you Sunil photos online and pickup in 1-3 hours.
I hope HP faces some major lawsuits over this.
Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
Nope. My 55€ Canon inkjet is larger then laser printer from Samsung for 70€.
> Cheap inkjets are cheaper than cheap lasers.
Nope. Cheap lasers are in the same ballpark as cheap inkjets (50€$). The major difference is in toner/cartridge consumption and exchange interval. A laser toner can last significantly longer then inkjet cartridge and isn't prone to damages of no regular usage.
> Price per page doesn't really matter when pages per year is less than 100.
Absolutely correct and this also brings an answer why people choose those inkjets : "ah, I rarely print anything, so I'll have a device to print everything".
But it differs if you calculate the cost of inkjet cartridge drying out/printing problems with non regular usage. Technology on laser toners doesn't have such limitations.
Last time I needed this was yesterday, the local football association (yes soccer) requires the player list to be signed and given to referee before match. I make the list and usually print three copies: one for the referee, one for the opponent team and one for our own coach to check against players.
I don't own a printer though, I just use the own at work. I'm there five days a week anyway. I also do all my mailing from work, which is more convenient than trying to do it from home on the weekend.
I'll also print interesting graphs or graphics, to share/discuss with them. It's much harder to discuss in front of a screen.
seriously, will never buy a HP printer again.
Do we really know that it hasn't been extended to ink jets as well?
I think the grandparent has a legitimate observation. It would explain why you need to have working color cartridges to be able to print in black and white. (It's obvious that paper money is not going to be counterfeited in black and white, but maybe they decided to hide serial numbers on all printouts, not just color printouts.)