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Ask HN: Why is the printer industry so scammy?

• ggeorgovassilis 4y ago
  I think you touched all relevant points. Through my filter, there are either the "serious" customers (you mentioned them: offices and photographers) who are too smart to be scammed. And then there are private consumers who lack the knowledge to pick a printer and because they print only occasionally. I wonder if for the consumer market segment investing into a good printer is it even worth, considering that 2D printing at home is rivalled by many online services who print on far superior printers and deliver at home?
  • vt100 4y ago
    It would be better for the consumer printer segment to die off, and for the consumer to see the price of a proper printer that works correctly, and decide whether to buy that or use a print service.
  • rosnd 4y ago
    > considering that 2D printing at home is rivalled by many online services who print on far superior printers and deliver at home? Dunno, unless you're looking for larger formats most print shops will not have printers superior to decent home units like Epson SC-P900
  • TheOtherHobbes 4y ago
    Commercial large format inkjet for art/photography has all the same issues but with zeroes on the end. And added expense/complexity, including colorimetry. Some models have 12 colour cartridges, each costing more than a budget printer. I wouldn't say photographers can avoid being scammed, because the industry is basically an Epson/Canon duopoly with HP as a somewhat distant third choice. So competition is very limited, and unless you're bulk-buying printers and ink for a huge print shop there's no leverage to negotiate prices down.
• progre 4y ago
  > People that do print at home, are mostly photographers that want physical prints of their photos. And parents printing color-in pages of Elsa and Anna
  • dylan604 4y ago
    Serious photographers printing at home are using dye sub instead of ink jet
    • Finnucane 4y ago
      Which also means you're printing frequently enough to be worth the maintenance hassles. Less frequently, you're better off sending out to a service (says guy who still has a pile of wet darkroom stuff).
      • dylan604 4y ago
        That's the beauty of dye sub, the maintenance is pretty simple. You can buy a brand new roll, print only 2 images, and then leave the thing sitting there for a year and the next print will come out the same. This is from experience designing/operating photo booth kiosks based on dye sub printers.
  • zonethundery 4y ago
    wfh attorneys are very heavy users of black toner cartridges
  • prmoustache 4y ago
    > And parents printing color-in pages of Elsa and Anna I can relate. I probably printed more coloring pages than anything with my printer.
  • gwbas1c 4y ago
    A simple black and white laser printer can do that. I had one for about a decade until I bought my color laser. It worked great, and only needed toner every 2-3 years. I regret getting rid of my black and white laser.
• theandrewbailey 4y ago
  You should probably clarify if you're asking about inkjet printers. I bought a laser printer almost 2 years ago. No complaints so far, but we'll see how long that lasts.
  • baq 4y ago
    I have a Brother laser printer/scanner combo that I bought 8 years ago, I actually wish it broke down so I could replace it with something that supports AirPrint without feeling bad about throwing out perfectly good hardware
    • sgjohnson 4y ago
      Hook it up to a Raspberry Pi and expose the printer over network There you go, DIY AirPrint
      • mkopinsky 4y ago
        I tried this with a Brother HL-L23200 printer and an old raspberry pi, and couldn't get it to work. Seemed like something in the stack was OOM'ing - it worked fine for just a page or two, but when I tried to print a longer document it would crap out. I gave up and now on the rare occasion when I need to print something I carry my laptop over and physically plug in the USB cord like a neanderthal.
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I thought that too, but once I had access to AirPrint I realized I have never needed to print from my phone, or even barely ever from my laptop.
    • spikej 4y ago
      Same here. The android brother plug in sucks and I wish google cloud print was still around. I tried mobility print but it didn't quite work as expected and decided to just stick to printing from my laptop.
    • lloeki 4y ago
• beschizza 4y ago
  The razor-and-blades business model, in the middle of the Venn diagram of shareholder duty, consumable supplies and vendor lock-in.
• ekianjo 4y ago
  Laser printers are the way to go. They are typically for offices and follow a different business level: large volume printing and low-cost ink.
  • folkrav 4y ago
    Anything color that's reasonably priced?
    • zonethundery 4y ago
      I have been happy with the OKI 332 w/ a duplexer. Plugs into ethernet, if all else fails you can drop a file to the printer with your browser.
    • magicalhippo 4y ago
      Here in Norway the HP Color Laser 150nw seems to be the only one, at about twice the price of the cheapest non-color laser printers.
    • izacus 4y ago
      The LED "laser" printers are usually all very reasonably priced, carry a good set of features and last long. The downside is that they're rather bulky since they have 4 drums. I had good luck with Oki printers (most of them come with Duplex unit, Ethernet and all OS support), a lot of people are very happy with Brother printers.
    • radley 4y ago
      They're reasonably priced if you consider that toner doesn't dry up like ink does. If you only need to print a few times per year, it's far cheaper to buy a laser w/ toner. With inkjet, you'll have to buy (and wait for) new ink cartridges because they dry out in less than a year. If you need to print a lot of color materials frequently and don't mind the quality, then ink jet is a better deal.
  • virusduck 4y ago
    I've got a Laserjet from the 90's still kicking. It's wireless too with a RPi Zero W and a USB<->Parallel cable. Generic toner cartridges are cheap and available everywhere. Only issue is that the rubber on the runners need a refresh.
• jqpabc123 4y ago
  Avoid ink jet and use laser jet instead. This solved most of the frustration for me. The upfront cost is slightly higher, the print quality is slightly decreased but the long term satisfaction is greatly enhanced. Ink jet in any form is dead in my mind.
  • Alex3917 4y ago
    > The upfront cost is slightly higher, the print quality is slightly decreased but the long term satisfaction is greatly enhanced. OK but they still stop updating the drivers after 3 years, which is the main problem. Otherwise they would last forever.
    • oneplane 4y ago
      What do you expect such a driver to do? The printer is essentially just a random network device. Packets go in, paper comes out. No drivers needed.
    • raverbashing 4y ago
      "updating the drivers" no Good printers use PS/PCL, nobody cares about drivers, a generic one usually works
      • rufus_foreman 4y ago
        • nordsieck 4y ago
          "Postscript" and "printer control language". They're standardized printer input formats.
    • linsomniac 4y ago
      Largely true. I've always spent a few more dollars on Postscript printers, because that tended to solve some headaches with printing under Linux in the past, and I think that makes it less of an issue with driver longevity. But the problem is security updates, lots of attacks use printers to gain a foothold.
• kojeovo 4y ago
  I haven't had printer issues at home in a decade now. Brother laser printer. So far have only replaced the toner once for $50
• sshine 4y ago
  Home printers are like coffee pod machines: The money is made on the ink/coffee, and machines are pushed at a discount to dominate the ink/coffee distribution. The market is big and uncritical. Investing in high-quality machines is a long game that many can't justify and so avoid.
  • rascul 4y ago
    > The money is made on the ink/coffee, and machines are pushed at a discount to dominate the ink/coffee distribution. Some years ago Walmart had a HP printer on sale for so cheap that it was more expensive to replace the ink than to get a new printer.
    • cainxinth 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_model
      • PaulKeeble 4y ago
        I have been using a safety razor for over a decade after buying some awful 7 blade nonsense from Wilinson that really hurt my face. Ever since the Mach 3 they seem to have been getting worse and more expensive and enough was enough. At the time I bought some trial blades from different companies for £10, they lasted a few years and I was fine with either the Gilette or Wilkinson Sword blades. I bought a stack of blades from Wilkinson Sword direct which I will be using for another 30 years, they cost £20 total. It does take longer to shave with a safety razor since you need two or three passes but its a better shave with a lot less pain afterwards and its an insane amount cheaper.
    • baking 4y ago
      But the ink/toner that comes with new printers now is much less than the refill.
      • rascul 4y ago
• idk1 4y ago
  From what I understand, in the inkjet market the inkjet printer firms own the inkjet patents, which means it's not possible to disrupt the market.
  • rosnd 4y ago
    Inkjets are also super complicated to build, regardless of the patents there's a very high barrier to entry.
  • didgeoridoo 4y ago
    Patents have a lifetime of 20 years. I’d take an open source 2002 printer, but I doubt it’s economical for anyone to make and sell one.
• tootie 4y ago
  I think it's a natural part of industry decline. They've gradually migrated from an industry based on innovation and customer acquisition to one based on milking every last penny from their installed base. 20 years ago printers were critical business machines and very popular home electronics. The current generation is comfortable reading off their screens.
• h05sz487b 4y ago
  My laser printer is now over 10 years old. I bought toner 2/3 times I think. The only thing I needed to replace was one internal battery for a couple of dollars recently that was used to keep the time of the internal fax machine I never used, kept bugging me for the date.
• linsomniac 4y ago
  Why can't paper printers be more like 3D printers? Amazing repairability, many suppliers of standardized source material...
  • falcolas 4y ago
    The complexity of the ink jets themselves. Or rather their microscopic size.
  • PaulKeeble 4y ago
    Some of the companies are trying to move to much more streamlined initial setups and propriety parts to bring more reliable printing but at least for now the amount of open repairable printers is more than sufficient and popular.
• Ekaros 4y ago
  Printers are the most mechanically complex computer related product. Just think, fans are basically single bearing and motor. Pumps are pretty much same. Traditional spinning disk, nearly closed system with two motors. Printers have multiple times this complexity. And the products bought are bought for lowest price. Or at least reasonable price. You get what you pay for. And what is paid is often very little. Thus poor quality and need for other revenue streams.
  • snickerbockers 4y ago
    i understand that but 90% of the time that i try to print something it just sits in the queue all alone with no error code and no attempt at printing, i don't think that's a mechanical problem.
    • hugh-avherald 4y ago
      Could be a sensor problem, or a part of the startup mechanism has failed.
      • amelius 4y ago
        Still, showing no error message is inexcusable.
      • geoduck14 4y ago
        Printers are powered by spite and vengeance
        • aaaronic 4y ago
          Office Space has relevant scenes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9wsjroVlu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9wsjroVlu8
  • popotamonga 4y ago
    It's still magic for me how they can get just 1 sheet of paper at a time.
• lqet 4y ago
  I have a Brother b/w laser printer from 2012. It cost around 60 EUR. Never had any problems with it. It's build like a tank, has 4 status LEDs, and one button. I buy a new off-brand toner every 2 years or so, and that's it. Before this printer I went through multiple hp and Epson inkjet models. They were all horrible and usually broken after 2-3 years.
• leonidasv 4y ago
  Toner printers are "less scammy", at least in my experience. I had a HP one and always bought the genuine cartridges. Then I saw those videos about the printing industry scams (which does happen) and tried a third party toner that costs 1/5 of the price. Guess what? After like 10 perfect printed pages, it started leaking some powder, then stopped printing random chunks of the page and turned impossible to use. I went back to the genuine cartridges and never left ever since. Also, the printing issues it had were identical to some issues I've had with public printers in libraries etc in the past. I guess that's because they're using those low-quality toners.
  • coldpie 4y ago
    I need to refill the toner in my home laser printer. I looked at some of the clone cartridges on Amazon etc and >90% of the reviews are of the form, "The cartridges arrived broken, but the seller gave me a full refund! Five stars, excellent service." Like, every single review. So either they're really shoddy and these people are extraordinarily forgiving, or they're buying reviews trying to alleviate worries from people who read reports like yours.
    • giancarlostoro 4y ago
      I wonder if you should be reporting those types of reviews to Amazon as misleading. They're reviewing the seller, not the product.
      • coldpie 4y ago
        Maybe, but you're talking thousands of reviews. (Also I closed my Amazon account years ago and don't shop there.)
      • dsr_ 4y ago
        Amazon doesn't care.
  • a2tech 4y ago
    My large institution mandated a switch to OfficeMax/Staples remanufactured toners to save (truly huge sums) of money. It was an unmitigated disaster. The toners leaked. When they didn't leak, the toner failed to fuse appropriately to the paper which made for an atrocious print quality and since the toner started flaking off even while still in the machine it would build up on everything and lead to smearing and then damage to the printer. My department switched to buying toners directly from the manufacturer and reimbursing staff to get around the financial blocks that were put in to place. After two years they dropped the policy as a complete waste. We paid out so much money in repairs, new cartridges, new printers, and management that it made buying 'real' toner look cheap. Theoretically OfficeMax/Staples offered repair guarantees on their toners but of course managing those warranty claims is essentially impossible when you have thousands of printers scattered around.
• Mizza 4y ago
  Every time I have a frustrating experience with a printer, I spend the next two days imagining inventions to overthrow printer market, then I move on to over things because, really, who gives a shit about printers. I assume there are lots of people in this camp.
• jve 4y ago
  People not recommending inkjet - I won't recommend them too. But there are ink tank printers available. I bought a cheap one, it doesn't have nice colors, but it has colors. And that printer doesn't need a refill for months (well, mostly printing for kids) I have HP Smart Tank 510 series. Altgouh I would recommend researching HP ink tank / Epson EcoTank / (other vendors may have different names), I don't recommend particular budget model I have - sometimes it is frustrating that it doesn't want to print over wifi. And that is my complaint in general, that I haven't been lucky enought to own "it just works" printer. But no, I haven't been familiar with issues you mention (technician?)
• acjohnson55 4y ago
  I used to work for Lexmark, back when they were in the inkjet business. They are perhaps most notable for starting and fueling the race to the bottom in printer price. The theory was that if you could lock the users in, the customer lifetime value would be made on selling profitably prices supplies (i.e. the ink cartridge). There were a few big problems with this: - People often could buy a new printer, with supplies included, for cheaper than a new set of cartridges. - The primary focus of new printer development was on eliminating as much cost as possible. - Refillers and remanufacturers compete with the official supplies. The result was an almost completely customer-hostile industry. Printers became worse over the years. DRM and write-only memory were used to try to stop refilling and remanufacturing. Expiry of the ink was considered a good thing, as it would force customers to buy more ink even if they had low usage. While I was there, Lexmark sometimes made losses by selling too many printers. About a decade ago, they left the inkjet industry, which they had played a major role in wrecking. Laser has come down in price to the point that it has largely supplanted inkjet for light-duty use. The manufacturers in the home/small office laser market haven't been quite as hostile. Interestingly, we're seeing a similar dynamic play out in the venture-backed startup world of the past decade. What's old is new. Companies eventually started marketing higher quality machines, targeted towards power users with broader needs. But the era of the bargain inkjet printers seems to be pretty much over. Also, it took an entire generation, but we're finally much further along towards the paperless office/society.
  • mu_killnine 4y ago
    Just an anecdote: my grandfather passed away a few years ago and he was always into new technology. After he passed when we were cleaning up his home we found no fewer than 11 inkjet printers in his basement. Every time one stopped working (probably ran out of ink, or printed poorly because of long delays between printing) he would go to Best Buy, get talked up by a salesperson about a nice new printer, and buy it. It's just incredible to see this story in action.
    • treeman79 4y ago
      He may have been smart. Cost of printer with starter ink was occasionally cheaper then just getting new ink.
• fjfbsufhdvfy 4y ago
  Bit off topic, but what printer would people recommend for someone who needs one every now and then, that is capable of color prints and scanning, that won't stop working when unused for several months? I'm getting the impression ink jet is not the way to go due to the long pauses, but the color lasers are all seem very expensive for such occasional use.
  • codepoet80 4y ago
    Pick up a Brother color laser. They are one of the least hostile to their customers, and their prices are reasonable. Buy new if you have to, but if you can find one a few years old in good condition, I find their older models to be the most reliable and least scammy...
    • fjfbsufhdvfy 4y ago
      Thanks! I'll take a look.
  • nirimda 4y ago
    Consider looking for a used color laser. They tend to last long enough that it's worth buying and selling.
• ValentineC 4y ago
  One "scam" that I realise HP is pulling: my OfficeJet 8710 printer seems to be cleaning its print heads every time it's turned on. I've gotten "please replace ink cartridges" messages when I've never even printed a single page since I replaced the previous cartridge — since I use the printer mostly for its ADF scanning function. Well, that's ~$100 I'll never get back. It's sad that the industry has moved in this direction.
  • PaulKeeble 4y ago
    That is something they often do. I recall one of the times I bought a HP with document feeder and scanner that it was rated one of the most economic in terms of its cleaning. Some of them consume insane amounts of ink just cleaning themselves on a daily basis or on start whereas other models from HP are rated some of the best in the inkjet industry for this and use very little.
  • kalleboo 4y ago
    I think inkjets have to do that or the ink dries inside the heads and they clog up. This is why if you print rarely, you should really go for a toner-based printer.
    • fomine3 4y ago
      Yeah. But also if you print frequently, toner-based printer is cheaper for TCO. It's weird.
• linuxftw 4y ago
  For a short while, I worked on office Xerox printers and scanners. They weren't particularly scammy, though they were expensive and the consumables were pricey. Home printers, yeah the ink is expensive. You're mostly paying for convenience. I don't print photos at home, we order prints online and they're mailed to us, very cheap and easy. What I print at home is strictly things I need to sign and bring to someone (or sign and scan/email). For that purpose, they work fine. I don't mind paying the price for ink, it lasts for a couple years before I need a new cartridge. I like the fact that I can still go to an actual store and buy ink for my printer if I need it on short notice.
• ianai 4y ago
  As a trend, huge profit margins incentive drastic behavior on either side of the market.
• codepoet80 4y ago
  Its a dying industry, trying desperately to scrape and claw the last remnants of revenue out of a dwindling customer base. In the fight for survival, they've all gotten mean and nasty. As others have said, stick to laser -- and preferably older models. I have a B&W Brother laser from 2007 that still pounds out the pages and needs new toner roughly once a year -- and happily takes aftermarket cartridges without complaint.
  • speed_spread 4y ago
    I don't think printers are a dying industry. But they're a commodity where nothing new happens anymore and sale volumes are pretty stable. But companies try to figure out how to increase their margins anyway they can, which leads to all these scammy tactics. I _wish_ printers would die. I've hated them with a passion ever since I've had my first job as a computer "operator" where I had to feed and align perforated paper forms to monster IBM printers. The boundary between electromechanics and software is a very dirty place.
• ironlake 4y ago
  My Brother black-and-white laser is about ten years old. Pretty low volume of use from me, but it's held up well and is one of the most satisfying technology purchases I've ever made. If it stopped working, I would buy a Brother printer tomorrow without even looking at other brands. The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.
  • dont__panic 4y ago
    I also swear by my Brother black-and-white laser. Now that I work remotely and I can't grift off of printers at work, it's become invaluable for printing out online purchase returns, hiking maps, etc. I require surprisingly little color printing, as it turns out.
  • skellera 4y ago
    Only printer I’ll buy. Does everything I need. Upkeep costs are negligible. Firmware updates don’t regress features. Don’t have a lot of brand loyalty but nice to see them not shit on their customers.
    • timbit42 4y ago
      > Firmware updates don’t regress features. They do now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
  • kristopolous 4y ago
    HP used to be such a mark of quality. It's a shame how much modern market logic convinced them becoming a rotted husk of a company without any value add was a wonderful corporate strategy. Their early 90s laserjets are still going. My friend's school was throwing one out a few weeks ago. It was sitting dusty in a closet. I plugged it in and it worked right away. Probably 30 years old. They stopped making things like that a long time ago. They've got the resources and the public capital to turn the ship around if they wanted to
  • infinityplus1 4y ago
• stuff4ben 4y ago
  > In particular, there is some brand that was praised for consumer friendly practices here on HN that joined the dark side recently too; Brother iirc. What did Brother do to join the "dark side"? I and lots of other folks love our Brother laser printers. I haven't heard of them doing anything evil...
  • soco 4y ago
    I'm also a halfway happy Brother laser customer. Except sometimes the scanner missing the computer (which means restarting both printer and computer) no complaints here. Can't say the same about Epson or HP, myg what for a garbage called software they install on your comp...
  • CogitoCogito 4y ago
    The brother printer (HL-L2350DW) I have auto-detects when the toner is "low" and refuses to print. It does this even though I haven't noticed any degradation in printing quality and would prefer to continue printing with the old cartridge even if it results in a worse print. I find this kind of infuriating actually. Being able to continue using a cartridge as it gets low was always one the features I loved about laser printers. I wouldn't have bought this printer had I known and I don't recommend it (or Brother) to new buyers.
    • patrick451 4y ago
      I've had some middling success with taking the cartridge out, shaking it back and forth, and re-inserting it. But I agree that behavior is really frustrating
      • CogitoCogito 4y ago
        I did find some vague claims on the internet saying there were ways around this, but I just don't have the energy. Tinkering with things can be fun, but I specifically bought a laser printer and specifically from Brother because I thought they cared about their customers and wouldn't do stuff like this. It's a betrayal of trust.
• motohagiography 4y ago
  Possibly, when a market or a business isn't growing, it's dying, so they make shorter term decisions that ignore conseqeunces and externalities the managers don't believe they will be around for. Detecting scammy behaviour could be a leading indicator of an inflection point in a market or company where its growth phase is behind it. Printer companies are responding to paperlessness by hollowing out the goodwill of their customers, because there is no longer any long term value in it.
  • toss1 4y ago
    >>Detecting scammy behaviour could be a leading indicator of an inflection point in a market or company where its growth phase is behind it. Agree this would seem like a good indicator. The counterpoint is entire VC-backed industries that unnecessarily use scammy biz models from the start, e.g., requiring everything to be an internet-based "service", exfiltrating data and requiring subscription funding when it obviously is not required. Examples: robot vacuums, remotely-settable thermostats [0], security cameras [0], etc... [0] No I don't need the full "service", at most I need a way to keep track of the external IP address of the device. If you want to offer the extra "service", fine, but it needs to be an add-on, not an obligatory dependency and cost.
    • motohagiography 4y ago
      This could be co-opted as evidence for the theory as well, where all these products that are converting to services models are economic "inferior goods," where you switch away from them when you can afford something better. Month-to-month subscriptions are what you have when the product isn't good enough to buy an annual one, or just buy it outright. The companies position themselves that way because they want to take advantage of peoples indifference to small subscriptions - because they know their products are objectively lame.
      • toss1 4y ago
        >>because they want to take advantage of peoples indifference to small subscriptions Hmmm. I may be odd, but I and everyone I know have a very high resistance to subscriptions, even small ones, because they are maintenance and just a general budget leak. My impression of the reason that companies want subscriptions is that they tend to extract much more revenue from the customer; of course they don't get it all up front, but recurring revenue streams and especially that continue even when the product provides no value (e.g., the customer forgets about the ongoing charges), can be ridiculously profitable.
• jacknews 4y ago
  The ultimate problem is 'shareholder value' and the over-financialization of everything. Of course in a capitalist market economy you need to make profit. But it should not be the only thing; Society requires goods and services for people, and incentives should be aligned to society's goals, not finance's goals.
• Jemm 4y ago
  All industries are scummy if you dig in to them. Capitalism is unchecked and people have been trained not to say anything negative for fear of being ostracized. Time for the tech community to declare a code of ethics and refuse to participate in corporate sociopathy.
  • nirimda 4y ago
    Who has been trained not to say anything negative about capitalism? I've heard and made many complaints. The number of people who complain about inflation profiteering is quite significant. If anything, unchecked capitalism is peaking. We may only be in for a plateau, but we may even be about to see another generational change about now.
  • scarface74 4y ago
    So how do you support your addiction to food and shelter?
• ephbit 4y ago
  Haven't most companies that produce home electronics converged to device designs that guarantee steady revenue streams (as opposed to: sell once every 20 years devices)? By doing things like: opting for subscription models, short device lifetime, cross financing the device through asking high prices for commodities like the cartrigdges. I guess it's just more obvious with printers because you have this duality of the device itself _and_ the need for a steady supply of either toner or ink, which most companies abuse with nasty business models. I have an almost 20 years old HP b/w home laser printer (guess one of the first with USB, no ethernet). It doesn't copy/scan, it can only print. I don't use it much and it produces some minor artefacts but mostly works surprisingly well after so many years. The cheap toner costs like 10 USD or so and lasts several years with my usage. No printer company would design such a device nowadays anymore. Since it has no network access it cannot be updated to stop working. Many people want to print over network today and if I wanted to I could plug it into our router so I can print over WIFI.
• dwt204 4y ago
  A lot of useful insights that I will use the next time I need a printer. This comment is totally off topic- I have noticed the same thing about external cameras for my desktop computer. Never needed one until the pandemic forced Zoom et al on all of us. Any comments?
  • aendruk 4y ago
    Center Cam is pretty good with its narrower field of view and decent color handling, essentially what a typical webcam should be. I think primarily what sets it apart is it was designed post-2020 and has to compete with the high expectations we all hold from ubiquitous cutting edge phone cameras. The incumbent webcams (even that term sounds dated) are all from an era in which sending video over the internet at all was an impressive feat.
• JustSomeNobody 4y ago
  Nobody wants to invest in hardware alone. If you make hardware, you have to have some way of growing your income. Those quarterlies are expected to always rise. Now, it's hard to make devices more expensive because people will stop buying them (generally) or put off buying a new one for as long as they can. BUT, if you make the consumables more expensive, people will continue to buy those because they have too. Yay! Your quarterlies show growth. You're a hero! But wait, what if someone tries to undercut you by selling consumables cheaper!? THE HORROR! What do you do? Well, you start doing all sorts of fuckery. And here we are.
• cwoolfe 4y ago
  As others have said: The solution is to buy a laser printer; if you need color, order prints online or at your local drug store/print shop. I've had a laser printer for 10 years. It doesn't give me any problems. I buy toner once every few years. It'd be great if we had some regulation to pass along the cost of generated landfill waste to companies, so they'd think twice before making a something that's destined for the landfill after only 2 years.
• gumby 4y ago
  A printer is capex (lasts a long time), but as a consumer device has to be low priced. So it’s hard to stay alive as a printer manufacturer. This is in no way a defense of the printer industry’s odious tactics! I’m just pointing out the situation that made unscrupulous people consider those tactics.
• jmyeet 4y ago
  Not in the industry but the problems here are quite clear: it's a combination of short-term decision making and the way consumers make decisions. Cheap printers are sold at cost or at a loss. The companies make this up on ink cartridges. Obviously this creates an opportunity for third-party cartridges so your printer gets hundreds of firmware updates to try and defeat these cartridges and protect this business model. Ink is also wasted on things like cleaning the heads. This is by design. But why does this model exist? Because consumers make a purchasing decision based on the sticker price not the total cost of ownership. You see this behaviour all over the price. Why are their checked baggage fees, seat allocation fees, etc on airline seats? Because consumers make a decision based solely on the seat price. Companies like McDonald's sell the burger at about cost. They make all their money on the drinks and fries. You can view the burger as almost a loss leader. A bunch of other stuff happens here too, like the medium drink exists solely to get you to buy the large drink (ie it looks like better value). You should never, ever buy a cartridge printer. Ever. Instead, buy a tank printer. It's more expensive but you literally just pour ink into the wells. There's no firmware to stop you from doing this. It's much cheaper to run. All the software for this is terrible unfortunately. There's really no incentive to improve it. Sadly no company has yet disrupted this market and forced change through competition. There was hopes Apple might do this at one point. It obviously never happened.
  • nordsieck 4y ago
    > the medium drink exists solely to get you to buy the large drink Not true any more - McDonald's change their drink pricing so that S, M, and L all cost $1.
• ineedasername 4y ago
  Canon & a few other major brands have consumer grade MFP that use ink tanks instead of cartridges and you avoid this kind of hassle & get a much lower price on ink refills that you just dump into the corresponding color tank on the printer. This is what I use at home, a canon G-series printer. The "down side" of this is that the printers cost a fair bit more upfront. It's also not photo-grade quality. But with decent quality paper & high quality print settings it does just fine, and monochrome is no problem at all. I also don't consider the higher up front price to be an actual down side. I know I'm simply not getting the machine at a subsidy price, and in exchange I have to pay the true cost of the machine but have a much better user experience.
  • causi 4y ago
    There's also the fact if you don't print very often it will run through the whole tank "cleaning" and wreck itself after everything is jammed up with dried ink.
• est 4y ago
  There's a great supply of cheap printer/cartridges in Chinese market.
• nkotov 4y ago
  Laser is the way to go. We have a Brother color laser (AIO) printer from 2010 at my parents house that still gets a couple pages printed every couple of months. We replaced the toners perhaps 4-5 times in it's lifetime. The thing is built like a tank and weighs like one but works well. My only issue with it is that it doesn't AirPrint.
• rtorres1989 4y ago
  I wrote a piece about why office printers in particular break down so much. One thing that stuck with me when I spoke to an IT repair guy was that users often cause more damage to worn out printers by trying to fix it. https://www.ciodive.com/news/perplexing-it-questions-answered-why-does-the-office-printer-break-so-muc/565314/ https://www.ciodive.com/news/perplexing-it-questions-answere...
• Tepix 4y ago
  I have an old Samsung color laser printer. Where can i find information on maintenance? The printouts have developed some stripes etc. I'm sure it's something that can be fixed, hopefully trivially.
• Tepix 4y ago
  Noone here has recommended Kyocera. Their printers are a bit more pricy but from what I've seen they are not scammy. Get one with Postscript support so you don't need updated drivers.
• smiley1437 4y ago
  Not trolling - but what are y'all still printing these days? I've literally printed 2 things this year, and one was a boarding pass (I like having a paper backup, call me old-fashioned). If anything, I've used the scan-to-email function on the printer about 10x more, and I could probably have gotten away with just taking a photo of the documents in extremis.
  • Karellen 4y ago
    I only need to print one or two things per year, and a long time ago I realised it wasn't worth me owning my own printer for that. Now I just get stuff printed out at the local library. The per-page cost is relatively high, but still an order of magnitude lower than amortising the cost of a whole printer myself, not to mention offloading the hassle of maintenance and refills, and the money goes to supporting the library - which I'm totally fine with. Yeah, I have to go to the library to do the printing, but it's not that much out of my way, especially if I combine it with other errands nearby.
    • smiley1437 4y ago
      I spent about $400 on a color laser MFP and I'll probably never consume all the toner in my lifetime! My amortization schedule sucks compared to yours That said, the scanner has been super-handy through the pandemic
  • scarface74 4y ago
    Yes, you are in fact trolling and doing the tired equivalent of the 20 year old Slashdot meme: “Do people still watch TV? I haven’t watched TV in 20 years”.
  • makz 4y ago
    Kids homework
    • Karellen 4y ago
      Schools don't offer a print service for that? Or allow kids to submit their homework electronically?
• js2 4y ago
  Years ago I worked for a software startup that was acquired by HP. At some point after our acquisition, we had presentations from various directors. I'll never forget the presentation from someone in the printer division. He was gloating about printer ink sales, how the printer division was a cash machine, and then he made this arm-pumping motion as he verbalized the sound effect of a cash register drawer opening: "cha-ching." It was gross. Nothing from him about technology, or the HP way, or making the best printers, or solving customer problems. Just "how can we wring more cash out of people?" I didn't stay at HP very long. It was during the Mark Hurd era and it was a company being run by backstabbing sociopaths.
• immibis 4y ago
  All industries are like this.
• dn3500 4y ago
  Where I live in Mexico nobody owns a printer. Instead there is a print shop on almost every street corner. You walk in, print wirelessly from your phone or laptop, or hand them a USB drive, and they hand you your prints made on an expensive office printer. They also scan and copy. And it's cheap.
  • timbit42 4y ago
    This is what I've been recommending to inkjet printer owners for over 10 years. Buy a B&W laser for regular printing, or a color laser for medium quality color printouts, but if you want to print photo-quality images, it's cheaper to go to Walmart.
• scottLobster 4y ago
  Because mass-market customers by and large are cheap, stupid and easily parted from their money. If they weren't one of these companies would have figured out that producing quality printers/refillable ink cartridges makes more money, and consumers would avoid the scams. It clearly doesn't work that way. See also payday loans, sub-prime mortgages, most targeted credit cards (the cards are fine, but they target people they know have a higher chance to misuse them), food and alcohol in stadiums, the car rental company that tries to up-sell you from the Toyota Corolla to the more expensive convertible, etc. If you're in a mass-market business and not trying to scam people as much as possible you're leaving money on the table by definition. It's only when the scams are actually illegal that the risk becomes too great to tolerate, and even then some bet that they can get away with it. Also people are printing less than they used to. So much single-use paper is now a QR code on your phone or completely digitized. I bought 10 reams of printer paper about 5 years ago for home use, my family has worked our way through three over the years. When the kids get old enough I imagine the bulk of it will be used for school papers. On the business side we've seen a mass digitization of most documents, my company is steadily getting rid of the last of the old file cabinets as any relevant info in them is scanned/archived. So volume is less, and existing printer companies need squeeze more to maintain profits.
  • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    "If they weren't one of these companies would have figured out that producing quality printers/refillable ink cartridges makes more money" The same bullship is happening with tractors, home appliances, hospital equipoment, military radio equipment ! The truth of hte matter is that giving companies unremovable ownership and control over a product they've already sold, and allowing them to reach into my house over my WiFi was a step away from freedom and towards feudalism.
• BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Same reason the airline industry has universally garbage quality: customers comparison-shopping by sticker price and sticker price alone.
• KevinKallmes 4y ago
  This is one case where judge-made law has really impacted how business models are formed. Until 2017, the 'exhaustion doctrine' had Quanta Computers v. LG as its main precedent. Exhaustion is the point at which you have sold your patented stuff, and the consumer is using it as intended, so even though you maintain your patent on e.g. 'making/using ink cartridges', as soon as you sell them, the consumer can do what they want with them. Quanta left some unfortunate uncertainty: once a seller had created a product that "embodies the essential features of the patents", and sold it, exhaustion kicked in. However, the printer/ink industry still argued that part of the inventive process was the customer (who fully owned the cartridges and printer) putting ink in cartridges and cartridges in printers. This was not meant as much to sue consumers but to bully ink resellers. This all came to a head in the Supreme Court case Lexmark (linked below), on this exact question. In effect, the Supreme Court said "Once you sell the printer and ink, you're exhausted", under the argument that allowing Lexmark to sue ink resellers for patent infringement would clog commerce. They used probably the simplest argument in 'exhaustion' doctrine, the "first sale doctrine", which says that, once you sell your product, all IP around that product is exhausted with respect to that product. This can get very confusing, because exhaustion is NOT about the actual methods of making ink, but about when a specific product--the ink cartridge you found in your grandfather's basement--is totally outside of the manufacturers control. Thank god, the Supreme Court has made it a lot harder to claim IP infringement in 'downstream' commerce, and I bet that the printer industry is currently changing its "free printer but ink costs its weight in platinum" model. Not sure if there are other aspects of the business that make printer sellers inherently skeevy (the stories here tell me that it is part sleazy salesmanship, part lawyer-bullying), but this is definitely an industry that shaped its business model around using IP to threaten resellers so they could keep the margins on ink sky high. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_Prods.,_Inc._v._Lexmark_Int%27l,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_Prods.,_Inc._v._Lex....
• FerdSlav 4y ago
  A few years back I got frustrated with the unreliability and cost of my home printer and a friend suggested I pick up an HP LaserJet 4000N - a printer that came out in the late 90’s. After a bit of convincing I found one that was being thrown out and lugged the 50lb+ piece of yellowed 90’s plastic home. My friend provided a large jug of official HP toner, showed me how to fill the reservoir, and since that day I have not had to refill the toner or do any other maintenance - it has honestly been one of the most reliable and carefree pieces of my home network for 5+ years at this point. The 4000N is also a modular design with the ability to add attachments for things such as extra paper trays, auto-staplers, auto-folders, or networking cards; if that is your thing. I’ve have mine connected to my home network and have never needed an explicit driver or had issues using the printer from any of the major operating systems. If you are someone that only needs to print in black and white, and has the space, it may be worth checking out - I assume they can still be found for cheap/free as well
• controversial97 4y ago
  I mostly either go use the big nice printer at my hackerspace or use a website that usually gets documents to me in the mail two days later, printed perfectly at up to A0 size. Print by mail works out cheaper than printing at home for my very occasional use.
• beej71 4y ago
  From The Great Train Robbery (movie): Judge: "Now, on the matter of motive, we ask you: Why did you conceive, plan and execute this dastardly and scandalous crime?" Edward Pierce: "I wanted the money."
• GekkePrutser 4y ago
  I think they're finally lightening up because of the environment. Every big brand now has a range of models with ink tanks you can simply refill. Even the official ink is not overly expensive. Of course the printers are more expensive but not crazily so. If it always had been like this we'd have had nothing to complain about IMO.
• leemck 4y ago
  The genius of the printer business is printers can be programmed to fail and become unrepairable without breaking the law. Once the warranty period of the printer expires, it is not illegal withhold the service manual for a printer. It is not illegal to withhold the electrical schematic or operating temperature specification of the fuser. It is not illegal to withhold the details of the toner chemistry. It is not illegal to withhold the printer programming language specification. It appears to me that what is going on in the printer business (and the automobile industry too) is a deliberate push to make cars and printers consumer items. The other side of the printer business is a inkjet or laser printer ought to be able to work for 40 years. A little distilled water soak ought to fix any clogged inkjet. A couple rollers ought to fix any paper feed problem. One answer to Why is the printer industry so scammy is Consumerism in America is now in decline. Many commentors here, just like me have thrown a pile of printers in the trash. The last 30 years of printers that turn in to garbage is an irretrievable waste of potentially beautiful machinery.
• johnea 4y ago
  Because they can be. Who's going to stop them? This question further reinforces my belief that most people really haven't internalized the motives and means of modern capitalism. You can answer many questions like this by referring to a crude old southern homily: "Why does a dog lick his balls?" The very widely applicable metaphorical answer: "Because he can."
• 97-109-107 4y ago
  I'm surprised to not see anyone here saying how they are still sticking to dot-matrix printers.