‘Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription’ says HP CEO gunning for 2024’s Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al…::It was only the other day we reported how HP has been slapped with a lawsuit in response to measures that disable its printers when fitted with a third-party ink cartridge. Now the company’s CEO,
This really doesn’t seem like a very good long-term investment. Over time people are printing less, not more.
If you make it difficult to print they’ll make the active effort to move away from your product, which is especially bad given the people are moving away from printing in general anyway.
As an IT worker who is regularly subjected to dealing with printers, HP is by far the worst I have to deal with. They are shit from the build quality to the bloated borderline spyware software they push to the awful web interface. If you are considering an HP printer just don’t. It’s a better investment to go buy anything else.
HP, yet another example of how to go from the best to the worst in a decade
This is why I prefer Epson Ecotank printers.
I like the concept, but every time I needed to print, I got to do clean print heads like three times before I could print normally.
Why isn’t there any competition in the printer space except for Brother? Are printers really that hard to make?
The problem is profit.
They’re selling you the printers at a pretty substantial loss and are making their money back on the consumables.
In a market where people aren’t printing very much this turns out to be a lousy business plan.
School’s going full digital and businesses going work from home has pushed everyone to stop using paper for everything.
To compete with the current printer manufacturers you’d need to be able to make a printer for about the same price, which means they too would have to make their money back on consumables but the money just isn’t there.
I honestly think this is probably the beginning of the end for HP’s line of consumer printers. It could also possibly be the end of their line of commercial multifunction printers. They’re going to have to give up and walk away from those sectors. If it turns out you don’t need to print for school and you don’t need to put for work and you don’t need to print passes for events, what are we printing for at this point to sign a document and send it back? The market’s drying up and honestly no one new wants in
Canon, Epson, Xerox?
Lexmark
Apparently it took so much time and effort to make high DPI print nozzles that it’s much more attractive for a company to go and make a 3d printer rather than battle it out in a dying market that’s remained a stable distribution of HP, Brother and Epson (and partially Canon).
Epson?
This. Ecotank printers are great and even let you print non-standard inks like photo-resist.
Wow, I’ve never heard of them.
Canon? I have one and it was supposedly the cheapest per page in the long run.
cannon and brother are both decent printer companies
At least they are honest, kinda.
I will thank him for his honesty and straight forward communication. I now know never to buy an HP printer.
I have a Brother laserjet I got on Amazon for $70 10 years ago. I print on it occasionally, and it always works. That thing has never needed new toner. It never jams. It just keeps going. Highly recommend finding a basic laserjet model from that brand.
I’ll go one step further and never buy another HP product of any kind!
With each new HP news article I grow more pleased with last year’s decision to ditch HP once and for all and get a Brother.
The Brother just works. Even surprises me in some scenarios where I anticipate lack of support and it comes through anyway. Great printer!
fuck these goddamn late stage capitalist monsters, they’re fucking living caricatures.
Shame this won’t pass: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-and-colleagues-introduce-legislation-to-combat-corporate-greed-and-end-outrageous-ceo-pay-2/
Just happened today:
Employee asks for toner for an aging HP Laserjet printer since it’s out. I look it up and it’s $198 for black (it’s not a color laser). I immediately looked up a Brother laser with an ADF scanner/copier and it was $199. High Yield Toner is $15 without a chip from a reputable 3rd party. Office is getting a new Brother printer delivered tomorrow and it’ll work 100x better.
HP, this is how you kill your printer division. Short sighted idiots.
Was that HP Laserjet unable to use 3rd party toner?
Too many disagreements about whether it worked or not in the reviews to spend a minimum of $99 on it.
Ah, that makes sense. I’ve only used the really old ones but I imagine that they’ve made it harder to do this on more recent models.
HP has absolutely lost their minds and misread consumers, even business consumers. They’ve absolutely made things near impossible to use 3rd party supplies. I mean, they want to go full subscription model so you’re paying monthly to use a piece of sub-par hardware you bought. They still think they don’t have competition and haven’t realized Brother and others like Lexmark have surpassed them in the enterprise world.
Oh and we got the printer delivered and it was up and printing in about 5 min. That included me inputting the WiFi password using the up and down arrows and ok button. Brother’s still got it.
Legit question like I bought an Epson tank printer. I don’t use cartridges. I don’t use anything with HP on it right? So if they decide that they want to screw you over but they’re not a monopoly, wouldn’t we just go elsewhere? How is this a win for them? I just feel like they’re digging a hole for themselves
No?
Epson is only marginally better with the Ecotank, the components are dated to fail within 2 years after the warranty. That being said, they’re second best to Brother because they actually price ink fairly.
What do you mean by dated to fail?
Obligatory Brother Laser Printer comment.
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With how popular they’ve been for years, I’d be honestly surprised if they hadn’t enshittified. Reddit got a hard on for them like ten years ago.
In fairness, mine is probably even older than that. I think they still sell the basic models. HL-L2305W?
And Canon laser brinter!
And Epson Ecotank
Greedy rent-seeking garbage humans would make breathing a subscription if they could. And the sad and scary part is that for some reason there are people ready and willing to pay for the Premium Oxygen Subscription Plus with unlimited breaths per day and the Gold Blinking Packaage added for free for the first month ($99.95 after that)…
How much I would love if EU pulled a USB-C on printer ink/toner.
“All printers must be compatible with one of these X possible formats of ink/toner. Lockdown is forbidden too”
Sure the printers would be more expensive but I am sure we would see an incredible improvement in quality and decrease in ink/toner cost
How much I would love for America to stop letting it’s corporations get away with these things so we won’t have to wait for the EU
Sure the printers would be more expensive but I am sure we would see an incredible improvement in quality and decrease in ink/toner cost
Probably because everyone but Brother would step out of the market.
Win?
“This is the ink we use. Everyone use the same ink. Cheaper, easier, better for everyone.”
“But sir, that sounds a lot like something Communists would do!”
Nowadays, the only thing I find myself printing occasionally are return labels for Amazon RMA on my trusty old Samsung CLP laser printer (which sometime has a mind of its own and starts adding a single grayish streak on the second page onward at random location).
I have a second monochrome laser printer from Brother I purchased 2-3 years ago for a bargain lightning price of $70 thinking of replacing my old “dying” printer, however I exclusively use it to do occasional photocopies and I already have a bunch of TN660 toner for it.
Just waiting for the Samsung to run its course and finally die but it lives on challenging any thoughts I may have to send it to the eco-centre (recycling center in Québec). It is at least maybe 20 years old and the darn thing is stubbornly holding on 😆. At this point I feel like it may last another 20 years. It has indeed been well worth the $300 at the time.
Early on, I experienced so many issues with Lexmark, Epson and HP that I crossed off the companies forever.
Fortunately, I think I lucked out on my current 2 printers that will, hopefully, last me a few more decades.
I used to only recommend that any Brother printer would be better to friends and family, but I came accross information that newer brother printers started to have a chip in their ink/toner cartridges. I am unaware if it is for some nefarious purpose. Hopefully, they understand alienating customers will quickly dissolve all the good will they have accumulated.
Why would anyone buy such a printer? You could just go to a print shop at that point. Though honestly that’s already what I do so maybe it’s for the hikikomori or something. I don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age.
If I’m expected to pay a subscription that means every single aspect of the experience has to be outsourced to HP. And I’m including set up, cleaning and maintenance, consumables, and sending a man out to clear my paper jams for me, too. That’s how it works at the print shop – I put in money, they hand me prints completed to my specifications. Whatever happens in between those two events is not my problem.
But of course that won’t be the case, so they can fuck off.
“don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age”
Really? You are having a tough time imagining why people may want to print things on paper in their homes? I guess you are not alone because the printzone has a page dedicated to education on this topic.
Please visit the printzone https://www.printzone.com.au/help-centre/7-reasons-why-we-still-need-printers/
It’s been close to 5 years since I needed to print something at work. At home, more like 20 years.
I haven’t ironed my clothes in 25 years but with the power of imagination I can manage to grasp why other people might want to have an iron in their home.
Oh absolutely. There definitely are valid use cases for printers just like there are valid ways to use an ice pick. If you need to use huge blocks of ice for something, you really want to own your very own ice pick. Other people might not need one as much as you do.
I don’t need one
I don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age.
Legal shit.
And financial shit, and tickets, and coupons, and recipes, and templates, and manuals, and …
For when I need to run off a new character sheet right now.
Most people shouldn’t buy a home printer at all anymore. Unless you’re a crafter or work in a field that still uses lots of paper (i.e. law) they’re not worth it.
It’s a rapidly shrinking market and HP knows there’s no saving it so I guess they’re following the cable company playbook.
Squeeze your remaining customers as hard as possible before the music stops
Reminder:
Your local library can print documents for you for an insignificant sum. So can every Office Supply store - though they’re worse in every way. Also so can your local shipping supply store (UPS, etc…)
I’d rather just own a printer lol. You guys are making such a big deal over this
There’s no reason not to buy a brother or canon if you need a good laser printer to make hard copies of stuff. Not everybody wants to back everything up to the cloud and like hard copies or need it for their business.
