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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 relie

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... :|
  - jaclaz 7y ago
    Yep, I surely agree :), the point is only on the use of reasonably , by allowing everyone to "grow" data (both when actually needed and when it is not) shifting everytime the range of "reasonable" we have today's monsters (web sites, OS's, you name it). And surely I am (more than a bit) old-fashioned, but when you can use the Doom as a unit of measure, JFYI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13211120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13211120 then it isn't reasonable anymore.

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... :|
- jaclaz 7y ago
  Yep, I surely agree :), the point is only on the use of reasonably , by allowing everyone to "grow" data (both when actually needed and when it is not) shifting everytime the range of "reasonable" we have today's monsters (web sites, OS's, you name it). And surely I am (more than a bit) old-fashioned, but when you can use the Doom as a unit of measure, JFYI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13211120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13211120 then it isn't reasonable anymore.