HP wants you to pay up to $36/month to rent a printer that it monitors::“Never own a printer again.”

  • @protist@mander.xyz
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    1361 year ago

    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

      • methodicalaspect
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        21 year ago

        Dev One laptop isn’t bad, got one on eBay for less than half of its original price and it’s a solid machine. Other than that, HP can chew glass.

        • @grue@lemmy.world
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          61 year ago

          I will refuse to buy anything HP, even used stuff, purely out of spite for them pulling this shit.

          • methodicalaspect
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            11 year ago

            Im at peace knowing that i bought it off the previous owner and not from the company, but that is completely fair.

            • @grue@lemmy.world
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              21 year ago

              Okay, I might make an exception for antique tech from the '90s or earlier, back when HP was actually good (e.g. a LaserJet 4, an HP-28C calculator, the function generator somebody posted in another thread yesterday, etc.). That’s very unlikely, though.

          • @Spiralvortexisalie@lemmy.world
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            11 year ago

            Their OfficeJet Pro is $13 a month and offers next business day replacement. If I were to purchase out of spite, it would be with a debit/temporary card with exactly $13 on it, and claim a replacement for defective printer (since it cant print offline). I wonder if HP would still try these things if each “customer” costed them substantially more in shipping back and forth, or having to write off two “office” printers for $13.

      • kratoz29
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        11 year ago

        Was HP any good ever?

        I remember disliking all of their Laps when I was a teen, but maybe it was a bad purchase by my parents too…

  • @azenyr@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    1 - buy one of those refillable ink tank printers that are now actually common and not expensive;

    2 - buy ink bottles at aliexpress for $10 4x200ml ink or around that;

    3 - years of ink for a few bucks.

    If you have a cartridge printer, search on aliexpress for refillable cartridges for your printer and do step 2 anyway (you can usually refill those easily with a seringe).

    Don’t feed their greed.

  • @phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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    111 year ago

    How out of touch is HP? Every year I print less than the previous year. The use case for printers is dwindling. I lived quite happily without a printer for a decade. They need to find another business.

    • @Kuvwert@lemm.ee
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      21 year ago

      Let’s not let them find another business to ruin… Stick with printers and fade into obscurity please HP :)

  • @bstix@feddit.dk
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    161 year ago

    They’ve been trying to make people sign up this for a while. Their drivers are pretty much malware that attempts to trick the user to sign up.

    I doubt that it is a successful model for HP. They don’t offer anything other than a stupid way to pay. Who the hell wants that.

    • Nightwatch Admin
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      51 year ago

      No, a ruthless evil genius. I think loads of people are going to subscribe, and they can therefore be categorised as delusional.

      • Zagorath
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        81 year ago

        No home customer is going to find this worthwhile. Businesses might, but B2B already operates under different business model assumptions than B2C. This would cost more in 6 months than an average home user is likely to spend on printing over 5 years.

        If you want to get customers to sign up for your subscription service, it has to at least appear like a win for them. This one is so blatantly a loss that it’ll never take. At $10 it might work, and at $6 I can see a lot of people ending up doing it. The only thing I can think of is that this is designed to attract the negative attention before getting positive attention when they inevitably decide to drop the price to something that is actually viable.

  • TherouxSonfeir
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    371 year ago

    I bet you it sends them the printer data so they can use it to train AI. It’s all in the ToC

    • @Dagrothus@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      The article literally says they sell your data to advertising partners. You’re paying a monthly subscription to give away your personal data for something as basic as a fucking printer. If HP doesn’t die my hope in humanity will be gone.

      Imagine your thermostat sold your data so companies could solicit you with coats to buy, or your fridge sold the data of what food you have so shitty brands can beg you to buy their low quality trash because they spent half their budget on advertising.

      I’m preaching to the choir but god I hate the ever growing data broker/aggressive targeted advertising trend.

      • PLAVAT🧿S
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        71 year ago

        Unfortunately HP isn’t going anywhere. They have a lot of government contracts and likely a ton more with commercial businesses to supply hardware.

        I imagine us peons at the home use level don’t really show up on their radar when it comes to making these decisions.

        • @hushable@lemmy.world
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          61 year ago

          can confirm, when I used to work for a government contractor, everything was HP. From laptops to servers, from mice to printers.

  • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    451 year ago

    $36/mo is 144 pages printed at my local library. If I needed to print that many pages, I’d get an enterprise MFP.

    • @7u5k3n@lemmy.world
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      211 year ago

      I had to print something yesterday… I submitted it to staples and went and picked it up.

      Cost me $2

      I expect that 10 pages will be all I’ll have to print in 2024.

      In the last 5 years I’ve spent less than $10 on printing.

      If I had to actually print items… I’d get a inexpensive brother laser printer

  • @_number8_@lemmy.world
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    101 year ago

    i had one of the cheapest versions of this plan; it seems nice, but the cheap ones have such low limits that you’re always a bit paranoid to print too freely or joyfully. plus the bullshit how they software lock the ink if you don’t pay and would rather pay shipping / recycling back just so you can’t have it for ‘free’

    • @grue@lemmy.world
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      121 year ago

      i had one of the cheapest versions of this plan; it seems nice, but…

      LOL, no, it really doesn’t. Even just at first glance, the entire concept of a home user renting a printer is blatantly exploitative and obviously terrible.

    • Captain Aggravated
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      71 year ago

      Weird thought, printing “freely or joyfully.”

      I hate printing documents and do everything I can to avoid it, even with my little Epson inkjet that is free of most of that garbage (it does bitch at you if you use off-brand cartridges but will allow it).

      Other than the occasional form or whatever that HAS to be on paper, about the only thing I print is CAD drawings so I can carry them to the wood shop with me. And I’d like to eliminate even that if I could find the right electronic device to run it on, which I’m not sure exists. (I’d like to have an ARM tablet or maybe convertible laptop running desktop Linux and FreeCAD, but there’s some mutual exclusivity in there).

      • @nyan@lemmy.cafe
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        11 year ago

        (I’d like to have an ARM tablet or maybe convertible laptop running desktop Linux and FreeCAD, but there’s some mutual exclusivity in there).

        Run the FreeCAD on your main machine. Put a remote desktop server on it as well, and run Remmina or some other client on the tablet. Drops the requirements considerably, and should be good enough for the application you have in mind.