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HP executive boasts that its controversial ink subscription model is "locking" in customers
(www.techspot.com)
this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Ignoring the disgusting mentality of leadership for the moment:
These are actually probably what the vast majority of home printer users (and a lot of small office printers) would want. The main drawback of ink based printers is that they dry out (and the rollers get dirty). But if you are printing even a few sheets a month, you get around that. And buying small amounts of ink makes sense for anything short of a medium/large office that is printing large numbers of documents per day. Get a new 100 pages worth of ink every other month and recycle the cartridges. Carbon footprint largely becomes noise since the postal trucks are going anyway.
Which is where toner comes into play. Laser/toner printers are awesome. They "never" dry out, tend to be enclosed enough that the rollers are protected, and are fairly cheap to restock if you buy large enough cartridges (and have a printer from the past decade or so). But laser printers are actually HORRIBLE for home use (and the environment) since they are basically aerosolized microplastics. And the cost argument starts getting messy for home users, but that is a huge rabbit hole.
The reality is that people need to realize that their local library have printers and they just need to bring a thumb drive and a buck. But... I am also the kind of person who has a laser printer next to his 3d printer (that room is fucked anyway).
We have a printer that appears to be setting a new trend? They are like inkjet in that they use liquid ink but they are tank based. The ink tanks are built into the printer and you buy ink in a glorified squirt bottle that you can dump into the tank via a fancy mechanism. We bought one 3 years ago and it still works today. It's still using the ink it came with (it comes with a lot of ink). If I don't print anything for a long time (maybe 4 months+) I do need to run a maintenance job but it starts working again after that. Seems pretty good to me so far.
The ink refills also appear to be reasonable cheap even if you buy first party.
i switched from a subscription HP inkjet to a nice brother color laser. the photos are i guess a bit worse quality, as they say, but it's so worth the tradeoff. it's built like a tank, is less bad at randomly not connecting to the computer, and i can just print what i want and it does it. i'm not sitting in the print menu thinking 'hmm if i print this as color, that's only 4 color pages left on the month, then they'll charge me $1 for the next allotment'
and it's just so fucking tiresome, and you just get bogged down in this pure banality and it's so insane. like, the printer and ink are sitting right there in my house! why am i thinking like this??
If your photos are worse on a laser printer than an ink jet, you've got something set up incorrectly. Hope I don't sound off putting, but laser is far superior to ink jet. Hell, pretty anything is superior to ink jet.
For printing photos? Is a laser really a viable option to a pigment printer?
That's a bit of different question. For photos, yes, but most people look to pigment for labels or other because of the UV durability. I suggest going to the gold standard of this: Wilhelm Research
Definitely a misguided view. Inkjet technology is insanely important for modern manufacturing, and has applications that are far greater than their use in printers. And even with regard to printers, inkjet delivers better photos
I haven't owned an inkjet in 20 years. I will never own one again.
It's worth the extra money for laser. I just replaced my 1996 laser printer. I don't remember ever replacing the toner.
Oh, and it was smaller than most printers you can buy today.
Took an old HP laser from my last job. It's tiny and can't seem to break. Using it now for WFH where I have to print plenty of shipping labels.
Spent $60 of company money on 4x toner cartridges. Seems like cheating. I'm shocked when one actually runs out, can never remember where I stashed the spares. 1,500+ pages from one cartridge? Like I care.
(The wifi is a pain, interferes with (more noise) other shit and seemingly can't be killed. "Hey Google, turn on/off the printer." Small annoyance.)
I have an 8 year old wide format photo inkjet and it has yet to dry out or have issues with the rollers.
Pixma something something 1000 by Canon?
Is that a good printer? Sounds vaguely like what I bought from a thrift store a while back.
It's got something stuck somewhere that I haven't been able to find by dismantling and cleaning. Didn't know if it was worth fixing?
It's a pro 9000 mk ii. Quite a bit older than the 1000