8 ms·

We've been using HP's Instant Ink subscription service for about two years now. Basically, you pay $3 a month and can print up to 50 pages. HP remotely monito

by jawns 7y ago

We've been using HP's Instant Ink subscription service for about two years now. Basically, you pay $3 a month and can print up to 50 pages. HP remotely monitors your ink levels and sends you replacement cartridges automatically when the cartridges need to be replaced. We tend to print close to 50 pages a month but have never gone over, so it's not a terrible deal. Obviously, I would prefer to go with lower-cost third-party ink cartridges. But the printer companies tend to be doing more and more to make that a pain. With my last printer, you could use a third-party cartridge, but only after you dissected the original, peeled off its chip, and glued the chip to the new cartridge. And even then, you'd deal with the perpetual warnings about low ink even though you know the new cartridge has plenty of ink. So Instant Ink is something we've done begrudgingly, sort of like buying overpriced movie popcorn. And in order to work correctly, it needs to be able to track how many pages you've printed, and we get occasional alerts when it gets knocked off wifi and can't communicate with home base.

anewguy9000 7y ago
i can't tell if this is real
- dgdas9 7y ago
  https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/ https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/
kgwxd 7y ago
Please stop supporting that. That business model really needs to die.
- dngray 7y ago
  > Basically, you pay $3 a month and can print up to 50 pages. HP remotely monitors your ink levels and sends you replacement cartridges automatically when the cartridges need to be replaced. Ugh dollar shave club for printers or something? I refuse to engage in thing-as-a-service. The only reason companies do this is because they know if they bleed a little bit out of you each month you're more likely to say "it's only a couple of dollars". It all adds up costing huge amounts in your monthly expenses. They then also know there's a huge portion of customers paying for this who aren't using their '50 sheets', so wow, they've just built a model where customers pay for a thing they don't use and they don't have to provision for. > Please stop supporting that. That business model really needs to die. I would up vote you more than once if I could.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    My friends love dollar shave club, and I'm like "buy a safety razor for $20-30 bucks and a bulk pack of razor blades and you will set FOR YEARS.
    - ryacko 7y ago
      My grandfather would sharpen his razor blades on his jeans, one would only need one razor blade if maintenance included sharpening the razor.
      - tomatocracy 7y ago
        I use straight razors. With the right care they will indeed last a lifetime but I’d caution that it’s more than ‘sharpen it on your jeans’. For a start most are made of mild steel rather than stainless so you need to store them completely dry otherwise they’ll rust (so keeping them in the bathroom is hard given it tends to be a moist environment).
        jstanley 7y ago
        Nitpick: mild steel is awful for blades as is it is too soft and cannot be hardened. Most likely they are some sort of high-carbon steel.
        tomatocracy 7y ago
        Sorry, yes you’re right! Carbon steel. I should add that you can buy stainless steel straight razors but they’re much harder to sharpen properly so I think not very popular.
    - justinclift 7y ago
      Or buy an electric shaver. Mine probably cost about AU$80, and has lasted at least 6 years. No sign of it going wrong, and I've never needed to replace/sharpen the blades, though apparently replacement blades are a thing.
- staktrace 7y ago
  There are legitimate advantages to this business model, and even though I'm not a fan of it myself I can appreciate the value proposition. One way to look at it is a form of insurance - it distributes an irregular large payment into a regular smaller monthly payment that makes it easier for budgeting. That can provide significant benefit in some contexts.
- sammorrowdrums 7y ago
  I mean - I can see why you would say that but Instant Ink has a free tier, and I actually am OK with selling my infrequent printing data for 15 pages a month + free ink so that I have a home printer for the few occasion when I need it. There is no minimum usage level, and the fact they might know that some airlines require I print a boarding pass every few months, or some government for needs to be printed, filled out and posted - that's really not so bad for free (+ data). I'm OK with them receiving that data.
NullPrefix 7y ago
>print up to 50 pages Is this some economy ultra light printer or something? I get several hundreds of pages from each syringe refill.
- spraak 7y ago
  What does the syringe refill cost? I also have the instant ink service and I want out
  - zaroth 7y ago
    Ink seems to be virtually free at Monoprice. Like, "It costs more to ship this than the ink, so I guess I'll just buy 10 of each color, but now I have a drawer full of ink cartridges and need to find more things to print."
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    I refill it from the bottle. The bottle costed me under a fiver some years ago.
- banana_giraffe 7y ago
  It’s 50 pages per month. The cartridges they get are probably the 150 or 200 per page ones. In other word they’re paying a monthly fee to get a max of 3 or 4 cartridges a year. Probably less. I’ve grown to hate the modern ink jet printers with a passion. I moved on to the consumer laser printers. I’m sure I’ll hate them too soon enough.
ljoshua 7y ago
In my family we use Instant Ink and actually love it. We're on the largest plan (300 pages/mo). We spend less on ink now than we used to, and it is a huge relief to not have to make a late-night run to the big box store because the school project is due the next day and the stupid magenta has run out. The ink is always there, waiting to be swapped out, then you recycle the used cartridges when they're done. It's incredibly convenient for us, is a cost-savings, and I am reasonably okay with the fact that they know how many pages I print and the types of documents. HOWEVER, I was recently looking at the bandwidth stats from my network switch, and was pretty shocked to see the printer has sent out several hundred megabytes of data back to HP over the past month. I knew it had to communicate with the mothership so they could charge me for my usage, but that should be a packet that says something like "User XYZ just printed 7 pages," which would reasonably be 5kb per job. I have no idea why hundreds of megs of data need to go out, and so I'm planning of on doing some DPI investigation the to set what on the world it feels like it needs to be sending.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago
  3 cent per page is surprisingly competitive, especially for an inkjet. I'm using a Color Laserjet 3600, a toner cartridge for which is about 40 dollars on Ebay. A colour cartridge lasts ~ 4000 pages, black ~ 6000 pages, that's 4 cents per page. Even though that is with second-hand supplies off Ebay it's still more than the official automatic ink in the mail.
- jaclaz 7y ago
  >"User XYZ just printed 7 pages," which would reasonably be 5kb per job Actually (of course IMHO) that should reasonably be (including the percentage of ink covered/black and a validation hash) below 150 bytes.
  - ljoshua 7y ago
    Sure, but let's face it, I don't think HP's top priority here is actually trying hard to make it small... :|
    - 7y ago
whoopdedo 7y ago
Thats $360 over 10 years. Spend that right now to get an excellent color laser printer that will last that long. Whereas your inkjet is very likely to fail sometime in the next two years (4~5 year typical lifespan). And with the amount of printing you're doing you probably won't even run out the toner that comes included with the printer.
userbinator 7y ago
$3 (I'm assuming USD) will buy you more than 100mL of black ink: http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-Continuous-Ink-System-Black-Ink-Bottle-100ml.html http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-Continuous-Ink-System-... I have a CIS printer and dilute even further, usually a 5:1 ratio (it becomes slightly bluish beyond that point), but even as-is 100mL will print far more than 50 pages -- probably closer to 5000 if not more. At that point the cost of paper becomes more significant. Edit: it looks like the other colours are the same price (when I last bought ink, which was a long time ago, CMY was slightly more expensive): http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-HP-Canon-Brother-Continuous-Ink-System-CISS-100ml.html http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-HP-Canon-Brother-Conti...
kalleboo 7y ago
> But the printer companies tend to be doing more and more to make that a pain It's actually the opposite, recently all the brands have been introducing "ink tank" style printers (e.g. Epson EcoTank, Canon MegaTank) where you just squirt ink into the printer from a bottle, no DRM involved.
nraynaud 7y ago
I bought my printer for immigration purpose, I would be way over on some months.

by jawns 7y ago

anewguy9000 7y ago

i can't tell if this is real

dgdas9 7y ago
https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/ https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/

kgwxd 7y ago

Please stop supporting that. That business model really needs to die.

dngray 7y ago
> Basically, you pay $3 a month and can print up to 50 pages. HP remotely monitors your ink levels and sends you replacement cartridges automatically when the cartridges need to be replaced. Ugh dollar shave club for printers or something? I refuse to engage in thing-as-a-service. The only reason companies do this is because they know if they bleed a little bit out of you each month you're more likely to say "it's only a couple of dollars". It all adds up costing huge amounts in your monthly expenses. They then also know there's a huge portion of customers paying for this who aren't using their '50 sheets', so wow, they've just built a model where customers pay for a thing they don't use and they don't have to provision for. > Please stop supporting that. That business model really needs to die. I would up vote you more than once if I could.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  My friends love dollar shave club, and I'm like "buy a safety razor for $20-30 bucks and a bulk pack of razor blades and you will set FOR YEARS.
  - ryacko 7y ago
    My grandfather would sharpen his razor blades on his jeans, one would only need one razor blade if maintenance included sharpening the razor.
    - tomatocracy 7y ago
      I use straight razors. With the right care they will indeed last a lifetime but I’d caution that it’s more than ‘sharpen it on your jeans’. For a start most are made of mild steel rather than stainless so you need to store them completely dry otherwise they’ll rust (so keeping them in the bathroom is hard given it tends to be a moist environment).
      - jstanley 7y ago
        Nitpick: mild steel is awful for blades as is it is too soft and cannot be hardened. Most likely they are some sort of high-carbon steel.
        tomatocracy 7y ago
        Sorry, yes you’re right! Carbon steel. I should add that you can buy stainless steel straight razors but they’re much harder to sharpen properly so I think not very popular.
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Or buy an electric shaver. Mine probably cost about AU$80, and has lasted at least 6 years. No sign of it going wrong, and I've never needed to replace/sharpen the blades, though apparently replacement blades are a thing.
staktrace 7y ago
There are legitimate advantages to this business model, and even though I'm not a fan of it myself I can appreciate the value proposition. One way to look at it is a form of insurance - it distributes an irregular large payment into a regular smaller monthly payment that makes it easier for budgeting. That can provide significant benefit in some contexts.
sammorrowdrums 7y ago
I mean - I can see why you would say that but Instant Ink has a free tier, and I actually am OK with selling my infrequent printing data for 15 pages a month + free ink so that I have a home printer for the few occasion when I need it. There is no minimum usage level, and the fact they might know that some airlines require I print a boarding pass every few months, or some government for needs to be printed, filled out and posted - that's really not so bad for free (+ data). I'm OK with them receiving that data.

NullPrefix 7y ago

>print up to 50 pages Is this some economy ultra light printer or something? I get several hundreds of pages from each syringe refill.

spraak 7y ago
What does the syringe refill cost? I also have the instant ink service and I want out
- zaroth 7y ago
  Ink seems to be virtually free at Monoprice. Like, "It costs more to ship this than the ink, so I guess I'll just buy 10 of each color, but now I have a drawer full of ink cartridges and need to find more things to print."
- NullPrefix 7y ago
  I refill it from the bottle. The bottle costed me under a fiver some years ago.
banana_giraffe 7y ago
It’s 50 pages per month. The cartridges they get are probably the 150 or 200 per page ones. In other word they’re paying a monthly fee to get a max of 3 or 4 cartridges a year. Probably less. I’ve grown to hate the modern ink jet printers with a passion. I moved on to the consumer laser printers. I’m sure I’ll hate them too soon enough.

ljoshua 7y ago

In my family we use Instant Ink and actually love it. We're on the largest plan (300 pages/mo). We spend less on ink now than we used to, and it is a huge relief to not have to make a late-night run to the big box store because the school project is due the next day and the stupid magenta has run out. The ink is always there, waiting to be swapped out, then you recycle the used cartridges when they're done. It's incredibly convenient for us, is a cost-savings, and I am reasonably okay with the fact that they know how many pages I print and the types of documents. HOWEVER, I was recently looking at the bandwidth stats from my network switch, and was pretty shocked to see the printer has sent out several hundred megabytes of data back to HP over the past month. I knew it had to communicate with the mothership so they could charge me for my usage, but that should be a packet that says something like "User XYZ just printed 7 pages," which would reasonably be 5kb per job. I have no idea why hundreds of megs of data need to go out, and so I'm planning of on doing some DPI investigation the to set what on the world it feels like it needs to be sending.

HarryHirsch 7y ago
3 cent per page is surprisingly competitive, especially for an inkjet. I'm using a Color Laserjet 3600, a toner cartridge for which is about 40 dollars on Ebay. A colour cartridge lasts ~ 4000 pages, black ~ 6000 pages, that's 4 cents per page. Even though that is with second-hand supplies off Ebay it's still more than the official automatic ink in the mail.
jaclaz 7y ago
>"User XYZ just printed 7 pages," which would reasonably be 5kb per job Actually (of course IMHO) that should reasonably be (including the percentage of ink covered/black and a validation hash) below 150 bytes.
- ljoshua 7y ago
  Sure, but let's face it, I don't think HP's top priority here is actually trying hard to make it small... :|
  - 7y ago

whoopdedo 7y ago

Thats $360 over 10 years. Spend that right now to get an excellent color laser printer that will last that long. Whereas your inkjet is very likely to fail sometime in the next two years (4~5 year typical lifespan). And with the amount of printing you're doing you probably won't even run out the toner that comes included with the printer.

userbinator 7y ago

$3 (I'm assuming USD) will buy you more than 100mL of black ink: http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-Continuous-Ink-System-Black-Ink-Bottle-100ml.html http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-Continuous-Ink-System-... I have a CIS printer and dilute even further, usually a 5:1 ratio (it becomes slightly bluish beyond that point), but even as-is 100mL will print far more than 50 pages -- probably closer to 5000 if not more. At that point the cost of paper becomes more significant. Edit: it looks like the other colours are the same price (when I last bought ink, which was a long time ago, CMY was slightly more expensive): http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-HP-Canon-Brother-Continuous-Ink-System-CISS-100ml.html http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Epson-HP-Canon-Brother-Conti...

kalleboo 7y ago

> But the printer companies tend to be doing more and more to make that a pain It's actually the opposite, recently all the brands have been introducing "ink tank" style printers (e.g. Epson EcoTank, Canon MegaTank) where you just squirt ink into the printer from a bottle, no DRM involved.

nraynaud 7y ago

I bought my printer for immigration purpose, I would be way over on some months.