‘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,

    • something_random_tho@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      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.

      • shadow@lemmy.sdf.org
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        8 months ago

        I, too, love my old Brother laser printer. Their website is absolute garbage though. I don’t know what they did to it, but it is just slow as hell.

        Definitely spend the extra $10 for duplex printing or regret it for the rest of your life.

        (Seriously, why even make non-diplex printers?)

        • JDubbleu@programming.dev
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          8 months ago

          My guess would be someone who doesn’t know React well made it. I don’t know React well and I’ve made some atrocities. You forget to wrap one statement in useEffect and it’s all over.

      • aksdb@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Companies can change. I have a HP LaserJet 6P that I use with a LPT-to-USB adapter. That thing still works fine. From that anecdote I could also highly recommend HP. But that printer is now 25 years old or so and the company changed a lot since then.

        Brother could have changed in those 10 years. Or it could change in 10 more years.

    • ditty@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I’ll go one step further and never buy another HP product of any kind!

  • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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    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.

    • triclops6@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      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?

      • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        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.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’m guessing he’s leaning on brand power and the exec thinks he can convince the shareholders because subscription is guaranteed income. He’s probably assuming the other big printer companies will follow suit and offer the same kind of service. In the end it won’t last and it will kill their printer business once everyone wises up to the fact that there is, at least, one better alternative. My office staff now won’t buy anything else they’ve been so impressed with the reliability and ease of use of the Brother I got a month ago to start replacing their old equipment. Word of mouth and shared experiences are still very much alive, and that’s his misstep.

        Of course, he probably doesn’t care since he has a golden parachute and this will keep making him money in the short term.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      High Yield Toner is $15 without a chip from a reputable 3rd party.

      What are some reputable toner companies? I just ordered some E-Z Ink brand toner for my Brother printer, and I’d like to know if I should cancel it and go with a different brand instead.

    • _sideffect@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      My inkjet hp started to throw error codes at me last month.

      I bought a refurbished brother laser printer and that thing is awesome

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You can do even better buying plain old used instead of refurbished.

        I got a pair of MFC-9340CDWs – with duplex and color – off Craigslist for like $50 each a couple of years ago (one to use, and one as a spare). Even if I have to buy a new fuser relatively soon because the ones in both of them are almost worn out, it’s still an incredible deal.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Yeah, their refurbs are great if you can get one before they sell out. That’s how I scored my first Brother for $99. Thing is a champ at home.

  • diffusive@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    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

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      I wouldn’t ever count a Bernie bill out, no matter how unlikely it seems. He has a reputation for getting things passed. His nickname in the Senate is “the amendment king”

      • Chocrates@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Right? This is just deregulated capitalism being really good at extracting wealth from us peons.

  • silverbax@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago
    1. Buy Brother, better printers without all this subscription garbage.

    2. How long before an ‘open source’ printer hots the market and terrifies this idiot CEO?

    • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
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      8 months ago

      If he hasn’t been scared by Xerox, Brother, and Epson, he won’t be scared by a FLOSS printer. At this point, the only people who buy HP printers are those who don’t even google it and remember hearing the laserjets were good circa 1995.

      • silverbax@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Maybe so, but there are people who aren’t scared of bears and get mauled to death. If he really is that dumb he won’t hear the impending doom.

    • Delta_V@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      OkiData makes good business class printers too. The upfront cost is high, but the cost per page is low, so if you’re printing high volume then it’s cheaper overall.

    • lemmegogo@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Very happy with my Brother laser printer so far. It just works. Hasn’t held my prints hostage for any online ink subscription renewals… yet…

  • doctortofu@reddthat.com
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    8 months ago

    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)…

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      The irony is that even that satire didn’t envision something so cartoonishly evil as a subscription business model.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Just so long as they don’t have to think about it, subscriptions are just fine with such people. 🤦‍♂️

  • alphacyberranger@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    It’s simple actually. Don’t buy HP products. Even their laptops have huge quality issues and flawed motherboard designs. Their firmware updates are known to brick motherboards. Even if you are under warranty, they won’t give you a new board, instead they’ll give you a refurbished board. FUCK YOU HP.

  • badaboomxx@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    That is quite funny, my objective since 20 years ago is to not buy anything with the HP logo.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    8 months ago

    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.

    • Madison420@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Which is why they have to extract a much as possible from their dimishing customer base that are essentially forced to still use them and this have no real choice.

  • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    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!

  • _number8_@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    what a literal fucking psychopath. i mean literally imagine waking up and thinking these things. imagine trying to actively make the world worse like this.

    oh yeah i’m trying to make bathrooms a subscription

    i’m trying to make food a subscription

    i’m trying to make tv a subscription

    i’m trying to make clothes a subscription

    i cannot wait to live in paradise

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      i’m trying to make food a subscription

      Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and a few others have entered the chat.

    • Patches@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      This is what every MBA lives and breathes. He’s just saying it out loud. Which up until now was a faux paw.

  • garretble@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This is why for the one or two times I need to print something a year I just go to the library and pay them $0.10 a page to print something out.

    • AlphaOmega@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I bought a refurbished laser printer at a garage sale for $30 8 years ago. Still printing off the original toner

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      My printing has become so incredibly rare that even paying $0.50 per page st a ups/fed ex store is a better deal than having a printer. I’m not even sure the printer my wife insists on keeping is compatible with windows 11, which is basically all our PCs now.

      • garretble@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Because of basically ALL printer manufacturers. I know people like Brother printers, generally, but why pay something like $60-100 for a printer when you only need to use one a few times a year?

        For me the cost savings are pretty huge.

        • sailingbythelee@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          The big difference is convenience. I’ve got an inexpensive Brother laser printer. It is probably 12 years old now and is as good as the day I bought it. I’ve only replaced the toner cartridge once or twice. I set it up on my home server so it’s available on all of our family devices (well, not the phones). When the kids wake up in the morning and suddenly realize they have to print off their homework for school, it’s no problem at all.

          • kattenluik@feddit.nl
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            8 months ago

            At least in the Netherlands, there’s a bunch of places you can print including your own school for free.

  • BurnSquirrel@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I don’t own a printer because the cost to constantly refill cartrages feels like a subscription already. I just go to the UPS store for the 3 times a year I actually need to print something, on a for-realsies printer that someone else maintains. usually costs less than a dollar every time I go.

  • FontMasterFlex@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    The moral of the story is don’t buy HP anything. Already trying to replace our large format latex printer from HP over this. Fuck that guy.