Even the low end is insane. $8 a month for 20 pages? You can go to a place like Staples or FedEx Office with a USB drive and get that printed out for less than a dollar.
It’s actually 20c per page for about 4 bucks. Then there is tax for another 40c then 35c of gas and possibly 15 minutes of your time over and over and over again.
The right answer is a black and white laser. spend $199 once in the next 10-15 years
In a lot of densely populated Asian cities, you can print to the shared printer of a local convenience store through the network without bringing a USB drive. You submit the job, it gets stored in the queue of the device, you go to the store (usually just downstairs from your apartment), scan a QR code, and the job prints. You can even pay online - it’s great!
One of my fondest memories was beating our old HP printer to death with the baseball bat we keep for potential intruders. I now print at the local library and regret the beating incident less and less every year.
I don’t know of any open source printers, but Brother laser printers are good. Brother is a 116-year-old Japanese industrial manufacturer. Their printers are simple, reliable, they support their printers for a very long time, and they make linux drivers. AND as far as I know they haven’t tried any HP-style fuckery.
I also own a Brother printer since I ragequit HP last year. While playing with the settings last week i manually checked the firmware and noticed a possible update. When searching online for the release notes, i found thread after thread of people wanting to revert the update because it blocked third party toners? I hope Brother doesn’t go the HP way…
i had one of the cheapest versions of this plan; it seems nice, but the cheap ones have such low limits that you’re always a bit paranoid
to print too freely or joyfully. plus the bullshit how they software lock the ink if you don’t pay and would rather pay shipping / recycling
back just so you can’t have it for ‘free’
i had one of the cheapest versions of this plan; it seems nice, but…
LOL, no, it really doesn’t. Even just at first glance, the entire concept of a home user renting a printer is blatantly exploitative and obviously terrible.
I’ll just print off the odd thing I need a paper copy of from work and continue as I’ve done for a dexade by puposefully denying myself from the sincere privilege of paying HP another god damned red cent for as long as draw breath, kthxbai. 🖕
Too bad my old employer stopped allowing employees to access the printers. You have to email your document to a printer admin and they will print it for you.
Oh, they also did the same thing with a nextcloud server. There was some plugin for word or something that they needed for their workflow. But they weren’t going pay the $10 for the plugin for every every user. So they licensed it for a few clerical admins (might even be the same as the printer people) and if you needed to share a file with a customer, you emailed it to them and they stuck it on the nextcloud server and emailed the customer.
And another one is Zoom. Again, we had meeting admins with a paid zoom license. So if you wanted a meeting that wouldn’t get cut off after 40 minutes, you email the meeting admins and they would schedule it.
I bought an HP m281 mfp printer 3-4 years ago and disabled automatic firmware updates when I was setting it up. Not too long after that I read that a new firmware release prevented 3rd party cartridges from working.
Anyway I bought new ink cartridges a couple of years ago after getting pop-ups saying the ink was getting low. Thing is, I haven’t had to install them yet because despite the warnings the printer has been printing just fine with the original cartridges.
So in addition to blocking 3rd party cartridges HP is also lying about how much ink their cartridges contain.
Right, my thought has always been I’d rather change the ink when the print quality bothers me, not because the company that sold me the printer is forcing me to.
All printers do this to some extent, I think. A combination of never wanting to report a false negative plus manufacturers making most of their money on consumables.
One of the cheapie monochrome Brother printers we have at work has been bitching about replacing the imaging drum for about four years now. We just dismiss the message and it’s been printing just fine this whole time. It still is.
just get a small laser printer. i got a Pantum Laser Printer, on sale, for like $40. Its on its 3rd refill after years and years of heavy printing for my wife while in school.
The public library here (and it’s far from alone) offers free B&W and color laser printing, free large format printing and free 3D printing. Libraries are awesome.
(I am married to one of the library’s administrators, so I may be slightly biased, but really, go check out your local library.)
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Even the low end is insane. $8 a month for 20 pages? You can go to a place like Staples or FedEx Office with a USB drive and get that printed out for less than a dollar.
It’s actually 20c per page for about 4 bucks. Then there is tax for another 40c then 35c of gas and possibly 15 minutes of your time over and over and over again.
The right answer is a black and white laser. spend $199 once in the next 10-15 years
You could also go to the library.
In a lot of densely populated Asian cities, you can print to the shared printer of a local convenience store through the network without bringing a USB drive. You submit the job, it gets stored in the queue of the device, you go to the store (usually just downstairs from your apartment), scan a QR code, and the job prints. You can even pay online - it’s great!
HP can go fuck themselves
CEO Enrique is delusional
My last HP printer had a serial port. It was all down hill from there.
Printing is dead removed. Die with it and scrabble for your final pennies
One of my fondest memories was beating our old HP printer to death with the baseball bat we keep for potential intruders. I now print at the local library and regret the beating incident less and less every year.
Are there any open source paper printers around? Like there are with 3D printers such as the Voron?
I don’t know of any open source printers, but Brother laser printers are good. Brother is a 116-year-old Japanese industrial manufacturer. Their printers are simple, reliable, they support their printers for a very long time, and they make linux drivers. AND as far as I know they haven’t tried any HP-style fuckery.
I also own a Brother printer since I ragequit HP last year. While playing with the settings last week i manually checked the firmware and noticed a possible update. When searching online for the release notes, i found thread after thread of people wanting to revert the update because it blocked third party toners? I hope Brother doesn’t go the HP way…
Build a Voron, swap the toolhead for a ballpoint pen, ???, profit!
deleted by creator
HP becoming Facebook soon
i had one of the cheapest versions of this plan; it seems nice, but the cheap ones have such low limits that you’re always a bit paranoid to print too freely or joyfully. plus the bullshit how they software lock the ink if you don’t pay and would rather pay shipping / recycling back just so you can’t have it for ‘free’
LOL, no, it really doesn’t. Even just at first glance, the entire concept of a home user renting a printer is blatantly exploitative and obviously terrible.
I’ll just print off the odd thing I need a paper copy of from work and continue as I’ve done for a dexade by puposefully denying myself from the sincere privilege of paying HP another god damned red cent for as long as draw breath, kthxbai. 🖕
Too bad my old employer stopped allowing employees to access the printers. You have to email your document to a printer admin and they will print it for you.
They literally hired a person to gatekeep the printers? That is such a waste time time. One of the many reasons why corporate sucks.
Oh, they also did the same thing with a nextcloud server. There was some plugin for word or something that they needed for their workflow. But they weren’t going pay the $10 for the plugin for every every user. So they licensed it for a few clerical admins (might even be the same as the printer people) and if you needed to share a file with a customer, you emailed it to them and they stuck it on the nextcloud server and emailed the customer.
And another one is Zoom. Again, we had meeting admins with a paid zoom license. So if you wanted a meeting that wouldn’t get cut off after 40 minutes, you email the meeting admins and they would schedule it.
removed by mod
I’m running a black & white wired Brother printer through a CUPS relay & I couldn’t be happier without HP’s bullshit
deleted by creator
I bought an HP m281 mfp printer 3-4 years ago and disabled automatic firmware updates when I was setting it up. Not too long after that I read that a new firmware release prevented 3rd party cartridges from working.
Anyway I bought new ink cartridges a couple of years ago after getting pop-ups saying the ink was getting low. Thing is, I haven’t had to install them yet because despite the warnings the printer has been printing just fine with the original cartridges.
So in addition to blocking 3rd party cartridges HP is also lying about how much ink their cartridges contain.
F.U. HP.
Right, my thought has always been I’d rather change the ink when the print quality bothers me, not because the company that sold me the printer is forcing me to.
All printers do this to some extent, I think. A combination of never wanting to report a false negative plus manufacturers making most of their money on consumables.
One of the cheapie monochrome Brother printers we have at work has been bitching about replacing the imaging drum for about four years now. We just dismiss the message and it’s been printing just fine this whole time. It still is.
At this point I know I will never buy a printer, period.
just get a small laser printer. i got a Pantum Laser Printer, on sale, for like $40. Its on its 3rd refill after years and years of heavy printing for my wife while in school.
Costs $.10 to print at the library.
I’m fortunate to have a library just down the street so I go over there.
I also don’t have to print anything very often so I’ve only had to do that a couple of times in as many years.
My library offers $7 worth of printing free each week with your Library. I am curious how many households actually still have printers these days.
The public library here (and it’s far from alone) offers free B&W and color laser printing, free large format printing and free 3D printing. Libraries are awesome.
(I am married to one of the library’s administrators, so I may be slightly biased, but really, go check out your local library.)