What I find extremely annoying is that no one is charge saw this coming. How stupid do you need to be to release an online-only subscription laser printer?
Somewhere in the HP hierarchy reality is removed. I feel like at least one of the lower level people saw this coming. Somewhere in the management layers this became a good idea, an idea completely removed from reality.
The only logic that makes sense is that you have a segment of users that doesn't need to print much, so rather than doing a large upfront purchase, they basically rent a printer, but where is the break even for HP, where is the break even for the customer? When you cancel your subscription does the printer then go back to HP for refurbishment so that another customer can rent it? I doubt it, it becomes e-waste.
The article even says: "To provide our customers with an exceptional printing experience in all office environments, we will no longer offer LaserJet series products with HP+. " So the HP+ didn't provide exceptional printing experiences? I could understand the reasoning that "Some customers purchased an HP product that would not work in their environment, so we're now more clearly communicating the limitations of HP+", but no, they are cancelling it entirely, so it's not about those office environments where always online didn't work. This is an entirely predictably failure of a product, except HP management wasn't smart enough to realise it, because they f-ing priorities are not their customers.
> What I find extremely annoying is that no one is charge saw this coming.
I remember when US airlines started charging for checked baggage. Many more people started carrying on their bags, resulting in slower boarding and deplaning, and therefore problems for the airlines.
I read an interview with an executive at one of the airlines, saying that he didn't see this coming and was taken totally by surprise.
I am bewildered at how these people rise to positions of authority without even the most basic ability to predict obvious consumer behavior.
> I am bewildered at how these people rise to positions of authority without even the most basic ability to predict obvious consumer behavior.
Me too. It seems to be some kind of selective blindness as they'll happily pay advertising money in an effort to influence consumers and then not realise that consumers are influenced by product changes too.
I truly believe that to most people the "market" is just a magic force that operates in unknowable ways that magically resolve problems and make you happier (if you're rich).
What’s amazing is that these days they always offer to gate-check bags for free to avoid fights for overhead bin space. So which is it, is checking luggage free or not?
They actually did predict the most important and obvious consumer behavior, because the airlines are making more money depsite the delays for passengers boarding/deplaning.
There is no way that behavioral psychologists aren't on staff at all of the major US airlines. Everything in the airlines is a massive study in consumer and employee psychology - from cockpit resource management between captains and first officers to how people board an airplane, to how they queue up in the terminals.
You know damn well what happened - it was well known what was going to happen but the bean counters drowned it out and won out by enshittifying the process and "generating revenue"
Bean counter to me always meant accountants looking through data to squeeze out an extra one or two cents by slightly making their product worse. Like Papa John's over the past twenty years using a slightly worse cheese, pepperoni, etc and iterating over that until the product is unrecognizable.
Forcing a massive change all at once to shock the market, gain short term profit, and then change jobs to wreck a different company or industry deserves a different word.
I worked at HP when they introduced Instant Ink. This was a natural progression.
But even in 2013, there were managers in power positions that knew and were talking about how much the subscription models were going to hurt their base. But at the same time market dynamics being as they are, everyone also felt the only way to demand multiples for the stock price was to be seen as a software subscription company instead of a hardware company. Otherwise the revenue multiples on the stock were going to go down.
The stock market reaction leads the consumer market reaction, so executives at public companies are generally incentivized to "sell" a vision that sounds good even to investors even if they believe it will long-term hurt the business. That is, unless the executives plan to stay around a long time (another decade+). Modern companies don't reward that long term tenure so that's dissolved and now all these huge public companies have a slew of upper managers that expect to leave before the fires really take hold and make a pretty penny in the process
This "demand multiples for the stock price" will kill the United States economy - one company at a time: HP, Boeing, and others are going in this direction...
"We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back. "
And that Mr. Junker dares to say this in the open shows the root of the issue - politicians are no longer afraid of their constituents just as corporations are no longer afraid of their customers. They know that even if they do something almost universally disliked at worst they have to back off a bit and lay low for a while. Real consequences are practically unheard of.
There's a secondary result from this strategy: If you only listen when people scream bloody murder, you train everyone to freak out over every little thing because it's the only way they have any evidence that their views are being taken into account.
Exactly, they knew there would be some amount of backlash, they just didn't think it would impact their bottom line through bad PR. Plenty of companies pull off consumer-hostile decisions all the time with minimal fuss.
<< What I find extremely annoying is that no one is charge saw this coming. How stupid do you need to be to release an online-only subscription laser printer?
The assumption is the executives are not attuned to what is happening on the ground. While I would like to believe in a level of naivety, lack of knowledge, or even incompetence, years of living on this earth made me somewhat cynical and I no longer trust that. I personally see it as a way to break the customer resistance. Few companies want to be the first one to do it, but once its done successfully, they all jump on the bandwagon.
I would like to give you the example of games. Games used to be offline, they didn't have excessive telemetry, required internet connection, DLCs, day zero patches or pre-purchases. All those things were slowly, but consistently implemented ( and briefly scaled back if there was a pushback ).
I personally believe the same appears to be the case with printers. Execs are not unaware of reality. They are simply trying to create a new one.
> What I find extremely annoying is that no one is charge saw this coming. How stupid do you need to be to release an online-only subscription laser printer?
Believe it or not, a lot of large organisations opt into systems like this. A cloud-based print queue lets you tie printing to your single-sign-on system, bill each print to the right department, and simplify sending the print to the right printer.
If you can have a third party deal with all the routine maintenance and toner orders and whatnot, so you just get billed $0.10 per page with everything taken care of, that's one less thing to worry about.
With that said, I can well believe this specific HP product would be a deceptively marketed, overpriced, locked down piece of shit. Inkjet printers have been that way for decades, after all.
I think HP is unique among the shitty printer makers.
First off, their printing, copying, and scanning products used to be outstanding. They made some of the only devices that just worked, straight out of the box, with no hassle. They were so good that other companies adopted their proprietary tech as a quasi-standard. Remember hearing the phrase "HP ScanJet compatible?"
Second, they're just about the very worst among major brands today. These e-series printers were heinous enough to get discontinued, but their other products are hardly any better. My Envy was a doorstop until I installed an app on my phone, created an HP account, and paired to the damn thing over bluetooth. It won't print black-and-white unless there's a color cartridge installed. It constantly just stops printing, and I have to go unplug it and plug it back in, wait an hour, and try printing again. I can't be alone in these frustrations.
HP had to fall further than anyone else to reach where they are today.
> Believe it or not, a lot of large organisations opt into systems like this.
The way you describe it, I can see that being a viable product. To some extend this could be HP so focused on a very niche segment, like Microsoft with Recall, that HP+ actually seems like a sensible idea. They then forget about the fact that this is just a small segment of they customer base, but they don't really communicate with the rest, so they just roll out this product to everyone and it fails.
However, HP isn't keeping this around, they are discontinuing the product line all together, and from the article it seems like they also forgot about the needs of those large organisations (can't assume that the printers are allowed online, for good reason).
It does seems like it could be a reasonable, but probably less profitable business, if it had been better designed and targeted.
The odd thing is that this business model is super old in the industry, going back before computers were common in offices. That is how a ton of copiers were supplied, either sold with a service contract or just rented. That continued for a long time, even for small offices this was fairly common until in the 2010s when laser printers got ridiculously cheap.
However, I'm not aware of these services being offered directly from the manufacturer, it seemed to be via local office supply houses that were dealers for the manufacturers. That being said, this service was probably available direct from the manufacturers for large organizations.
ETA: One thing I didn't mention that I feel is the main reason the service contract model went away is that printers are cheap enough it doesn't make tons of sense to service vs replace. We still have a service contract with guaranteed fix/replacement times for our specialized zebra printers at work. Still makes sense on a 3k+ printer that you can't buy locally off the shelf.
I don't think it's that simple. I would never have expected micro transactions to take of. For the same reason that you mention. People really can't be that stupid right? Paying multiple times for a product and being willingly milked for their money? And yet this practice is totally normal now. Look at the horse armor memes from the elder scroll oblivion days.
What this says to me more then anything that it makes total sense for companies to squeeze their consumers to an extreme degree. They might just accept it.
> What I find extremely annoying is that no one is charge saw this coming. How stupid do you need to be to release an online-only subscription laser printer?
How is it possible that Putin wasn't aware of the state of Russian army on the eve of the invasion? Is it possible that all generals constantly lied to him because he killed everyone who disagreed with him and surrounded himself with yes-men, creating an alternative reality for himself? Still, being an ex-KGB agent, and maneuvering through all the quirks of Russian politics, he should be perfectly aware of how the system works. Yet, he sent to Ukraine tanks without fuel nor ammunition. How come?
The more I read about the shortcomings of totalitarian states the more I understand why corporations work the way they do.
We'll never get insight into Putin's mind and any explanation why he decided to launch an invasion. Depending on his motives and goals, you can say he got a slap on a wrist, or that he gambled all and lost all.
Customers have been getting used to subscription only for many other things that definitely shouldn't be services.
Why not try? If you're soulless and generating value for the shareholders is your only purpose in life, doing this makes sense.
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.
"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 !
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
HP is constantly confirming the stance I have of never buying HP devices in the future. This probably wasn't their aim, but in the past decade I could only hear negative sentiment about them, and reading stories like this - it doesn't seem without reason.
With no apparent way of unlocking these devices promised or foreshown in the article, I wonder how long those e-types already sold with the on-line requirement will keep working. Pretty soon the 'e' at the end of the model number will be short for 'e-waste'.
I have an HP Deskjet 2750e, tied to my HP+ account that I started to setup and canceled after getting the printer to a working state. It's now attached via USB to a RPI running CUPS. Now I have a printer that automatically pops up on my network (across OS's!) and works every time. I bought the refurbished Walmart branded ink for it too. Works great
I urge everyone to permanently boycott HP. In the past, I would only buy their products, from laptops to printers; everything develops a critical problem that cannot be fixed. They look to milk the customer. HP are a terrible company and their products are of poor quality.
Dealing with an HP printer easily was the worst tech experience I have had in my life. I don't understand how "non-tech" people even deal with this. The process was so unimaginably convoluted, requiring third party software, new accounts a very bad mobile app, a tiny display with terrible delays on the printer and so much more.
This has to be another peak though and something where I think the EU could reasonably step in. Selling devices so utterly broken and ridiculous to set up and maintain should not be acceptable.
> In any case, it's important to clarify that this discontinuation of HP printers will only impact HP LaserJet printers that have an "e" added to the end of their model name to denote the alternative business model.
Nice of them to make it easy to know which models to avoid (on the new-old-stock, used, and curb markets). Mnemonic: "'e' for 'ewww...'"
As much as I'm cautious of Fiorina-and-later HP, and as much as I wouldn't connect an HP printer to the Internet nor use HP supplied drivers (bricking risk, security unknowns, mixed trustworthiness)... I still like LaserJets as reliable workhorse printers.
Maybe HP will re-emphasize trustworthiness, so that future generations can love the LaserJet and future HP product lines in the same tradition.
Not that happy about Instant Ink being discountinued; was paying like £12 a year for ink, printed infrequently enough that I could print super high res photos fairly regularly too (think I get 10 pages a month that could roll over to a max of 30)
This. Also not having to worry about ink drying out or being lost due to automatic printhead cleaning during long periods of non-printing, or not having to worry about anything ink-related at all and automatically getting a new cartridge in the mail is extremely convenient.
That said, I heard multiple stories about people buying non-online-only printers, activating Instant Ink without properly understanding what are they signing up for, then canceling and complaining they can't use the cartridge they "paid" for.
So if Instant Ink is really dead it's probably a victim of shitty overly-aggressive HP marketing.
I reckon it's probably just been a bit of a financial flop; it seemed to hinge on some notion that people would print a lot more once they were viewing it as 10p per page rather than £25 per cartridge but no one wants to have a pile of printed crap.
I'm sure there's loads of people on those £1 plans who don't print for months and HP just have to keep sending out new cartridges after leaving the printer unplugged for months. In the past they were probably getting £30+ out of those people for the two cartridges once a year.
I'll be ditching the printer once I'm expected to pay more anyway.
I dream of the day we can come up with good OSS printer firmware as a society. I know it has been discussed to death (as to why it can't happen), but the heart wants what the heart wants.
FWIW, the need for printing has been limited now so the need to engage with some of those awful practices is also minimized.
Still, that was the first time I saw a mention of 'OSS printer can't happen and here is why'. Could you elaborate or give me a link to previous discussions on it? It sounds interesting.
I believe there is an internet-enabled toothbrush, so why not? I refuse to buy a new TV as they are all internet-connected and ad-ready. There are a few offline ones or simple displays, but not so easy to find any more.
While the ad situation with modern TVs is not something I want to defend, most of them can still be used as offline displays if you forego the smart features and simply feed them HDMI video and audio data without ever granting the TV an online connection. Unfortunately offline displays tend to either be prohibitively expensive (becuase they are sold as business displays) or lag behind in the technology used.
My old home HP printer is about 16 years old and still rock solid. If I didn't know any better I would be recommending the brand to everyone I know. Not everyone is as depressingly online as the HN community.
Ok but is it terrible because the service was bad (frequently offline, toner would not be delivered on time, too slow, etc...) or because they changed their minds about a subscription and didn't want to pay anymore, and didn't realize the printer would stop working all together without it (most likely having forgotten this fact a year after purchase)?
It's quite a thing to behold that the only technological advancement in printing technology in the last decade has been the erosion of ownership to the point of absurdity. In a fair world, this decades long clownshow should have caused the mother of all anti trust lawsuits, yet here we are.
I'm probably super biased because I work in a relatively modern office that produces relatively modern tech, but we barely ever use paper for anything anymore. The same goes for my home office use; I moved a few months ago and left my printer behind. With the advent of QR code tickets and parcel barcodes and iOS's Continuity scanning features I just don't see the point of having a space-, paper- and toner-eating monster on my desk anymore. I used to administer about 12 leased Toshiba reproduction units and that has planted a deep seated hatred for printers. Is the public at large wise to avoiding these fuckers like the plague, or am I an outlier?
I think it's quite likely that people use their printers far less, but for many people not having any access to a printer at all is unrealistic and/or undesirable.
There are still plenty of example use cases which aren't covered by the existence of QR codes and phone scanning. Documents which need ink signatures. Boarding pass backups so you don't hit disaster when you are running late for the flight and your battery dies. Government agencies which insist on doing things by post. Sending things to non-tech capable relatives or customers who don't know what to do with a PDF. Leaflets and handouts for community meetings. Notices which have to be physically displayed in a building or on a window. Homework assignments for young children.
Some of these you might be able to workaround with some added inconvenience (e.g. carry a spare phone battery). Others are simply impossible. I'm not going to fail to buy a house because I can't comply with the mortgage company's requirement to return a signed deed for example. Much as I rarely use my printer and wouldn't be bothered at all if it stopped being required, I accept that I need to be pragmatic about it.
YMMV but in my experience, instances where you need to provide a physical signare but are not provided a printout are pretty rare. Rare enough that you can use a printshop or similar service.
Bording passes are are almost always provided for you on check in for international flights (all you really need is your passport). And honestly I can't recall my phone battery ever reaching 0% - then again, battery lifetime is one of my primary criteria when choosing a new phone. There is still some risk that the phone blows up (literally or figuratively), but that's getting into theoretical territory.
I do have a printer for convenience but it's rare that I actually need it and I have lived for long stretches without one.
That's a reasonable proposition, but I think it comes down to your individual circumstances, frequency of need, and tolerance of inconvenience.
For people who have an office or home where a printer won't take up valuable space or look out of place, use it semi-frequently (let's say a few times per week or month), and might have to deal with the occasional urgent case, owning a $100 printer is a small price to pay to avoid having to spend an hour visiting the library (depending on distance of course) every time you need to perform 30 seconds worth of printing.
For a bit more money, you can get a multi-function printer with a built in duplex scanner and document feeder, which actually helps with running a paper-free environment. I have one of those sitting on my desk. Every piece of mail that arrives goes first into the scanner and then into the recycling bin, and avoiding trips to the library for printing is an added bonus.
I don't understand why is your post relevant to the topic at hand? I assume you're not quite a target market for printers then? Or is it a question because you can't imagine anyone still using paper in the world?
I like printing papers and some other material. I know there's e-ink, but they are just worse than pen and paper. I also like printing train tickets so I don't need to stress out about my phone battery. Occasionally I have to mail the government something too.
I never used paper for anything else, so from my point of view, it's not on the decline. But just steady and stable.
I prefer reading papers on paper, with fountain pen to make notes. It is easier for me to focus on compared to electronics devices (well, I am answering on HN instead of doing things I should be doing)...
Most people need to print so infrequently that they should just print to library or print service like fedex. My library's printing is a third the cost of local printing services. Both have simple ways to send print jobs to a location. Really convenient.
One person's convenient is another person's inconvenient. For me, a trip to the library means dealing with awkward opening hours and a 35 minute round trip on foot, or 10 minutes by car with a fight for a parking space plus a parking charge and petrol. Printing at home means pressing a button and waiting 30 seconds. I can even do it on a Sunday or at 8am or 7pm if I want to. There's no comparison.
I went for years without a printer at home. If I needed something printed, I'd mooch off a friend or the office. Then I found a small-business grade brother laser printer for dirt cheap at a thrift shop and I've really liked having it.
Short story you're trying to read but the endless scroll makes you lose your place? Print it. Sheet music you want on-the-go without buying an ipad pro? print it. Funny picture you want to tape to your wall? Print it.
Presumably, you can understand there are vast use cases for printed paper extending beyond trivial consumer activities of printing tickets and such yes?
I think nearly everyone on HN is aware of and may use QR code tickets sometimes but that's irrelevant to the broader need for printers in business and government.
Yeah I understand, no need for hostility. I prefaced my question with my own bias, I'm just interested in how others feel about it. It's fine if you think HN is aware, but that shouldn't invalidate an honest inquiry.
Yes, people do rely on them still. Some airlines still stipulate a printed pass (despite the phone pdf/app still being viable). There's also a bunch of forms that still need printing out to be signed (no docusign). I guess that will tail off over time but they're still needed now. Just maybe not for you, some do.
Does your office mail anything? That's what is 99% printing we have to do - shipping labels. And some obscure not available to file online government forms.
Hmm for most forms we use things like DocuSign, but I suppose there must be some that have to be mailed in. For mail we mostly do parcels and those get either a dedicated label printer, or if they're large products, a dedicated transport.
Things I hadn't immediately thought of as an engineer. Good point!
I could not justify labels printer for number of packages we ship (we do sell online, but most stuff is handled by Amazon's fba service). But also had to send federal paper tax forms, because in order to file online you have to confirm address which is done with pin code sent via snail mail to our address and that's wouldn't happen before due date... Also filling property appraisal protests evidence can be done on USB stick or CD disk, but the most reliable way is just to print 5 copies and bring it to the protest hearing... These just recent odd things I had to print. All in all printers are still useful sometimes. The only thing is that with my usage ink printers are no go. So cheapish laser printer, with cheap aftermarket cartridges available in eBay is the way to go for me
Somewhere in the HP hierarchy reality is removed. I feel like at least one of the lower level people saw this coming. Somewhere in the management layers this became a good idea, an idea completely removed from reality.
The only logic that makes sense is that you have a segment of users that doesn't need to print much, so rather than doing a large upfront purchase, they basically rent a printer, but where is the break even for HP, where is the break even for the customer? When you cancel your subscription does the printer then go back to HP for refurbishment so that another customer can rent it? I doubt it, it becomes e-waste.
The article even says: "To provide our customers with an exceptional printing experience in all office environments, we will no longer offer LaserJet series products with HP+. " So the HP+ didn't provide exceptional printing experiences? I could understand the reasoning that "Some customers purchased an HP product that would not work in their environment, so we're now more clearly communicating the limitations of HP+", but no, they are cancelling it entirely, so it's not about those office environments where always online didn't work. This is an entirely predictably failure of a product, except HP management wasn't smart enough to realise it, because they f-ing priorities are not their customers.