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As I understand it, or at least as the narrative goes, printer manufacturers subsidise the cost of the printer by expecting people will buy genuine cartridges.

• quijoteuniv 5y ago
  As far as i understand Canon is selling non genuine cartridges :)
• cute_boi 5y ago
  Same with smart tv, phones etc. They all try to subsidize costs by using ads and only gadfly like us grouse over it. Many people simply accept it and moves on. Also, many people aren't complaining and the competition is fierce. Many user aren't technical enough to find the skullduggery of such companies and at the end we all have to pay. Regarding outlaw I don't see it happening soon tbh. Politicians simply doesn't care about such issue.
  • MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    I just install an ad blocker. Nobody is getting paid on my watch.
  • OmegaPG 5y ago
    We are subsidizing the product is also a lie by companies. They just want the recurring revenue by selling ads/cartridges etc.
    • boringg 5y ago
      Not a lie - its how the work the economics out. Lower the upfront cost of getting you on their product. The net present value of all the ink payments / subscription services is the value of the product. They probably have little to no margin on the actual printer purchase.
      • effingwewt 5y ago
        It is very much a lie. Items drop in price as more manufacturers pop up- only now they lie to us and tell us the price has stayed the same for over 15 years now, but magically they need to shove ads at us to offset the price? GTFO. Most tvs are dirt cheap to make. In fact it's probably the OS they all design for every tv now that makes the price go up. Companies screw us all from every possible angle and people defend this shit. Companies used to care about customer satisfaction because they needed us, but thanks to regulatory capture they obviously couldn't care less about any of us, they just want as much money as they can squeeze out of us.
  • tyingq 5y ago
    The Nvidea Shield Android TV box was an interesting case in this space. It is much more expensive than a Roku or FireTV box, but has some premium features. Originally, there weren't ads. But because Google controls Android TV, intrusive ads started appearing. So you paid for a premium product, but ended up with a shitty experience. I hadn't followed it much, so no idea if NVidea ever addressed it. Was a pretty hot topic ~7 months ago though. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/457996/new-ad-bar-please-remove/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/shield-tv/9/4579...
    • katbyte 5y ago
      This also affected Sony tvs, I was super annoyed by it - I dns blocked their ad servers with pihole and now I get ads for YouTube, play store, and google music. Clearly the baked in placeholder ones. It’s not ideal but I can tolerate it more then actual ads.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • beerandt 5y ago
        You can disable play services and uninstall the launcher updates to fix this, then running Netflix will prompt you to enable play services. Clicking the first "enable" prompt in Netflix will start play services without enabling it and bring you to the app settings page to enable it. Don't enable it. (The force stop button is selectable, which tells you it's now running.) Hitting back without enabling play services brings you back to Netflix, then you can use most drm streaming services, without play services updating your home screen with ads. Only catch is play store won't work, but you can enable play services occasionally to download updates or new apps, then just repeat these steps.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    > gadfly > grouse > skulduggery Can I ask where you're from? I'm not sure if your lexicon is different than mine, or much greater than mine.
    • sk5t 5y ago
      These are not unfamiliar words to my northeastern US ear, although one might choose to moderate their use to limit distraction.
    • y4mi 5y ago
      Fwiw, gadfly was the only term i hadn't come across and didn't know what it meant as a non native speaker that occasionally reads english novels.
  • mpweiher 5y ago
    > Same with smart tv, phones etc. They all try to subsidize costs by [..] All? Apple?
    • Larrikin 5y ago
      Apple TV+ show notification ads litter my iPad ever since I did the free trial of the service.
      • mpweiher 5y ago
        Never had any of those, and preferences lets you control notifications.
• anshumankmr 5y ago
  Exactly. I have printer from HP I bought in the early 2010s and I can’t find the ink cartridge for it, except at a bootlegged version (which aren’t as good). The only way I can the original is to get one from Singapore which will cost a small fortune.
• alanfranz 5y ago
  If you buy a consumer printer. Business printers exist, and for those you pay a steeper initial price, but then the cost per page goes dramatically down. My Epson workforce original cartridges seem to last forever.
  • bserge 5y ago
    I've got a PIXMA 925 SOHO MFP. It literally eats ink just cleaning printheads on power up, power down and just regularly if left on. I printed about 50 graphs+text pages on new cartridges, now one's low the rest are about half. WTF.
  • wheels 5y ago
    "Prosumer" laser printers (often labeled "home office" or "small office") are pretty great. I had an OKI black and white printer for about a decade before it died. I printed many, many thousands of pages on it. (It was in a period where I was doing a lot of research, and I prefer to read research papers printed out.) In those 10 years, I never finished the original toner cartridge. I paid around €200 for it. I'm on a Brother black and white laser printer now. I checked my Amazon orders, and I ordered my current toner cartridge in 2015. The printer was €98. Toner is around €20. It has network capability and is full duplex. They're black and white only, but in the rare case that I need something printed in color, I'd usually rather have it done at a copy shop for a few cents since the quality is far higher. (If I'm printing in color, I usually care about such things, but for day-to-day printing, black and white is sufficient.)
    • hestefisk 5y ago
      Same here. I use a Brother wireless B/W laser, which is awesome. It cost me approx USD 300 up front but run cost is comparably lower. And you don’t have to deal with the dubious practices of HP. I actually bought the printer after 5 years of pain with an HP inkjet printer. I had ordered two new cartridges for it, supposedly original HP. After plugging them in, the printer tells me they are not “genuine”. Speaking to support of the cartridge distributer, I’m told I need to rub the chip at the back with a soft cloth (!), which didn’t seem to work. I called HP support who told me it is a firmware error and then I need to do a factory reset. Problem is the printer is now stuck in a doom loop where it will complain about ingenuity of the cartridges and ask me to inset a new cartridge before I can access the system menu, but I didn’t have any replacements (as the empty cartridge wouldn’t work either). I ended up throwing out the printer. For the sake of your own well-being and wallet, don’t buy HP printers!
• iqanq 5y ago
  Which is great for us who only buy pirate cartridges. I don't want it outlawed, because that would mean printers would get more expensive.
  • k_sze 5y ago
    I’d rather this DRM bullshit just stops. It’s a complete, utter waste of silicon.
    • freemint 5y ago
      It doesn't have to be, there could be a deposit on cartridges and they just get refilled by Canon.
  • speed_spread 5y ago
    In the long term, if all printers get more expensive, it might also mean they get of better quality because people would expect more from their investment rather than seeing them as throwaway devices. Printing technology being mature, I suspect the price difference would not be _that_ much anyway - I'd have no problem paying 250$ for a printer that sells today for 100$ if it meant I no longer had to chase down pirate cartridges and knew I could still get parts for the machine in ten years time.
• CraigJPerry 5y ago
  What if the commonly understood story - ink subsidises printers - wasn’t true? What if printers are actually built and sold at a sustainable price today before considering ink? If you pulled that off in any other context - hey the only reason we can produce a $6 sandwich toaster on the shelf in any big store is by committing customers to use our premium toasting bread - you’d be a genius of marketing. I guess I’m just struggling with the idea that large (and therefore historically quite risk averse) companies would choose to enter such competition with peers (sell printers at less than cost) given the very obvious risk that someone else will make premium toaster bread / ink. It’s a hell of a gamble in an established firm.
  • shigawire 5y ago
    The average person can barely setup a printer let alone worrying about pirating cartridges or doing some other workaround.
  • YPPH 5y ago
    That's why I qualified it with at least as the narrative goes. It's an assumption in favour of the manufacturer. It's even worse if it's not true. If it's not true, they are selling their DRM-protected product at cost price + margin and double dipping by selling exorbitantly priced cartridges.
• netcan 5y ago
  I agree. It's ugly, and foul play. It's also just the way a lot of the economy works. Banks... banks absolutely rely on consumer fear or ignorance of bureaucracy & financials to generate their revenue via fees, charges and other such trifling, consumer hostile methods. There is a definite "get them in, then fleece" mentality to it. Gyms, especially cheap ones, have a business model built on the assumption that many/most members will eventually stop working out, but continue to pay fees.
  • PicassoCTs 5y ago
    Couldn't many such models be murdered, by having automated transactions standards and apps, that kill contracts that return no value and reinstate them on reuse. Basically auto-kill the gymn contract, if i do not visit and auto-sign in on reentry? Basically disrupt the abuse of the un-buisness-savy, by providing them a with automated buisness-savyness?
    • shigawire 5y ago
      For the gym it is people who aspire to go to the gym, not simply forget. Canceling the membership is admitting failure in this mindset
      • PebblesRox 5y ago
        True but even cancelling is a difficult process. My husband had to go in to his old gym with utility bills from our new house and a highlighted version of the paperwork he signed, showing that he could cancel because we had moved.
        • inglor_cz 5y ago
          It is interesting to see how different gym cultures across the world are. Here people will usually pre-pay a certain # of entries or a certain time period, often with cash, and no one asks for any details except name. Hard-to-cancel recurring membership isn't a thing. We do not have many gym chains, though.
• loceng 5y ago
  "Either sell the unit at the real price you want to get from it, or accept the risk that your get rich scheme might not work." This is something I've starter to wonder about governments developing new or improved road systems: is the cost being recouped via taxes specifically from developments along those roads, or is some of the cost externalized, so then land owners and developers are making additional profit when selling that they otherwise wouldn't if real costs of their accessibility/roads was accurately applied? E.g. are some development costs in specific regions offloaded as a burden for the rest of society, so cost and gains or value created is distributed unevenly?
• m1sta_ 5y ago
  The subsidisation model is great when you only print rarely. This is increasingly true.
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    Even then, it's really not. If you only print rarely - print with toner on a cheap laser printer. It will never dry up, print thousands of pages, work just fine 10 years later, and is easy and cheap to replace. Mine is 12 years in, and still prints the 5 pages a year I need just fine.
    • moonchrome 5y ago
      Problem with laser printer is that scanner combos take up a huge ammount of space. Inkjet combo is usually 1/2 the size which is also a big deal that I'm willing to eat the inconvenience of having to replace ink every year or so.
      • Dylan16807 5y ago
        Huh. I mean, do what's best for you, but I've never cared whether a printer is 7 inches tall or 12 inches tall, and the footprints are about the same in my experience.
      • m1sta_ 5y ago
        I can buy an inject for $20 at the local post office. I can't buy a laser for the same ballpark price.
• jfengel 5y ago
  There is a real world advantage to having the quality product get out there at lower cost. In a perfect world people would know both the total cost of ownership and the value of quality to them, and have the means of financing their purchase over time. But in practice, any of those points can fail, leading to people making worse choices due to lack of information or cash on hand. In the worst case a better product may simply not come to market for fear of people buying low quality but low price. That's not to say it's what's going on here. But I wouldn't say it's always necessarily immoral to offer low up front costs and make it up on the recurring ones, at least as long as they are open about it.
• dv_dt 5y ago
  It also aligns with a perverse incentive to make the printers cheaper and more disposable, creating more waste.
• Jansen312 5y ago
  I go with Epson or Brothers these days. Canon and HP pretty much getting the ban whenever I have the influence or power to affect the procurement: personal, friends or companies. It has been 2 decades. If they are able to do it drm-free they would have done so. People keep on voting them with their wallet to get these kind of anti-competitive behavior. Complain won't work. Laws or congress is a joke for decades now, considering ours have been so dysfunctional. Just ban at the procurements via word of mouth will be way more effective.
• bfdm 5y ago
  The solution here is to repeal DMCA 1201 or add a condition that actual infringement of copyright is necessary for it to apply. All these bullshit schemes depend on it and absolutely are anticompetitive monopoly behaviour we should not allow.
• wdr1 5y ago
  > Loading up your printer with DRM is having your cake and eating it. It is anti-competitive and ought be outlawed. Why? Just don't buy the damn printer.
  • hiptobecubic 5y ago
    Because it's not obvious to consumers that they are locking themselves into the ecosystem. If printers were required to have a visible tag on them that said "I will only print using genuine $BRAND ink," it would be different. As it is, it's like finding out your car won't start if it doesn't detect Shell brand gasoline in it after you've already bought it.
• stubish 5y ago
  From the consumer perspective, subsidizing the cost of the printer in order to sell more expensive supplies feels like a swindle. Consumers welcome 'loss leaders' where they can take the bargain and choose to walk away at a profit. But when it turns out the bargain is going to end up costing more (ie. you would have been better off buying a more expensive printer), it is a swindle. It is common, and no way to gain customer loyalty. Many customers actually become hostile. Yet these businesses can survive and thrive, which I find sad.