HP wants you to pay up to $36/month to rent a printer that it monitors::“Never own a printer again.”
Thanks! I’ll never own an HP printer! Good advice!
But HP enforces an Internet connection by having its TOS also state that HP may disrupt the service—and continue to charge you for it—if your printer’s not online.
HP says it enforces a constant connection so that the company can monitor things that make sense for the subscription, like ink cartridge statuses, page count, and “to prevent unauthorized use of Your account.” However, HP will also remotely monitor the type of documents (for example, a PDF or JPEG) printed, the devices and software used to initiate the print job, “peripheral devices,” and any other “metrics” that HP thinks are related to the subscription and decides to add to its remote monitoring.
The All-In-Plan privacy policy also says that HP may “transfer information about you to advertising partners” so that they can “recognize your devices,” perform targeted advertising, and, potentially, “combine information about you with information from other companies in data sharing cooperatives” that HP participates in. The policy says that users can opt out of sharing personal data.
The All-In-Plan TOS reads:
Subject to the terms of this Agreement, You hereby grant to HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display Your non-personal data for its business purposes.
My god, it’s so bad
Calling it now.
HP Partners will be able to print ads to your printer using your paper, and ink at random hours of the day, all day, everyday.
“We’ve been trying to reach you regarding your car’s extended warranty”
Holy shit, that’s like a step away from adding in refusal to print things that are potentially copyrighted or otherwise unacceptable
Or spend $15 more and get a Brother Laser printer.
At this point, with ALL this negative press about Hp inkjet printers, who’s buying them? I certainly would never even consider one at this point. Well I’d never buy an inkjet but I digress.
Honestly. How do they still have customers?? Are the majority of consumers just accepting this?
Own an old HP.
Daaaamn this printer good!
Need new one. Get HP cuz gud, reliable and known.
Get betrayed
HP hasn’t been good in over 20 years though. Seriously, they’ve been bottom tier for a long time now.
For people who know their stuff, sure. But for people who use printers cadually? Decade old still good.
With this sort of mentality I wonder. I’m in IT and I would never suggeet any HP equipment (desktops, laptops, servers, monitors, etc).
As per usual they are targeting companies. Just how Windows despite its flaws, high price and security issues remains a dominant force, through retailers and OEMs. HP will sign a contract with a company, they will replace toners and provide all kinds of services for X$ a month. Then you don’t care it’s garbage that keeps messing things up. Also people higher up who sign these deals have things printed for them, they don’t mess with drivers.
People buy them because they are cheap. Ecotanks and Laser printers with good features cost a lot more upfront. Not everyone thinks things through long term.
Fuck HP, I will definitely never own one of their printers ever again because I have a Brother laser printer that is fucking great, never breaks, and definitely never tries to rip me off.
The toner in my laser printer has lasted longer than my need for hard copy.
HP can pay me monthly to suck my balls. First month is free
First month is free
where do I sign up?
Excuse me Sir, there’s a line.
Sir this is a Wend-- oh it’s the same price all day?
I paid $100 for my Brother printer and I’ve spent…maybe $100 on toner cartridges since 2010.
So, yeah, HP can fuck off.
I’ll just point out that I have a 20 year old Dell business class color laser printer. Got it off Craigslist a few years ago for 40 bucks. It has Ethernet, with a webui. You can disable the toner chips if you want and only lose toner amount estimates and then use any toner you want. We even got the duplex attachment for it a few years ago.
It is literally at least 3 feet tall and weighs at least 50 lbs.
It literally makes all the lights in my house flick when we turn it on. We once blew a circuit when it turned on.
We lovingly call it the Old Ding Dong Printer.
As long as it works, why would I ever replace it? Products have gone downhill.
In part that’s why they keep adding these anti-consumer features. They don’t want you to buy something lasting 40 years. That said I will buy original toner when the time comes from Brother, because they deserve the income for not being assholes. I only wish they had recycling services in my country so I could keep the e-trash to a minimum.
I bet you it sends them the printer data so they can use it to train AI. It’s all in the ToC
I bought a Brother laser printer some years back for like $120 and am still working on the starter toner cartridge. HP can fuck right off with this.
My laser printer is so old that it’s USB 1.0.
It’s on its second toner cartridge and I have no plans to get rid of it.
Same here. BW Brother printer and I can get 3 toner cartridges for about $25. At about a dozen pages a day, those cartridges last me a whole year.
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.
I’ve heard good things about the tank printers
I picked up an Epson eco tank printer for my wife a couple years ago, and it’s been fantastic! My wife, being a kindergarten teacher has a knack for absolutely killing printers… And this little Epson has been a work horse!!! I have nothing but good things to say about it!
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.)
I wouldn’t pay half that if it was the only source to feed HP employees. Fuck HP in the ass with a gasoline soaked pickle.
But then again Brother was founded by known racist Hulk Hogan, so…
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.
This is what we did, sometimes we print, sometimes we don’t, toner doesn’t dry. Multi function 200 dollars. So far 5 years later, off brand toner and all is well.
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!
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.
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.
