'Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription' says HP CEO gunning for 2024's Worst Person of the Year award | Not satisfied with merely bricking printers, HP now wants to own them al...

I will thank him for his honesty and straight forward communication. I now know never to buy an HP printer.

Just happened today:

Employee asks for toner for an aging HP Laserjet printer since it’s out. I look it up and it’s $198 for black (it’s not a color laser). I immediately looked up a Brother laser with an ADF scanner/copier and it was $199. High Yield Toner is $15 without a chip from a reputable 3rd party. Office is getting a new Brother printer delivered tomorrow and it’ll work 100x better.

HP, this is how you kill your printer division. Short sighted idiots.

Why would anyone buy such a printer? You could just go to a print shop at that point. Though honestly that’s already what I do so maybe it’s for the hikikomori or something. I don’t know why the home printer still exists in this day and age.

How much I would love if EU pulled a USB-C on printer ink/toner.

“All printers must be compatible with one of these X possible formats of ink/toner. Lockdown is forbidden too”

Sure the printers would be more expensive but I am sure we would see an incredible improvement in quality and decrease in ink/toner cost

1. Buy Brother, better printers without all this subscription garbage.

2. How long before an 'open source' printer hots the market and terrifies this idiot CEO?

fuck these goddamn late stage capitalist monsters, they're fucking living caricatures.

Shame this won't pass: https://www.sanders.senate.gov/press-releases/news-sanders-and-colleagues-introduce-legislation-to-combat-corporate-greed-and-end-outrageous-ceo-pay-2/

And since the CEO said this I will literally never buy an HP product again period

Greedy rent-seeking garbage humans would make breathing a subscription if they could. And the sad and scary part is that for some reason there are people ready and willing to pay for the Premium Oxygen Subscription Plus with unlimited breaths per day and the Gold Blinking Packaage added for free for the first month ($99.95 after that)...

It's simple actually. Don't buy HP products. Even their laptops have huge quality issues and flawed motherboard designs. Their firmware updates are known to brick motherboards. Even if you are under warranty, they won't give you a new board, instead they'll give you a refurbished board. FUCK YOU HP.

That is quite funny, my objective since 20 years ago is to not buy anything with the HP logo.

With each new HP news article I grow more pleased with last year’s decision to ditch HP once and for all and get a Brother.

The Brother just works. Even surprises me in some scenarios where I anticipate lack of support and it comes through anyway. Great printer!

what a literal fucking psychopath. i mean literally imagine waking up and thinking these things. imagine trying to actively make the world worse like this.

oh yeah i'm trying to make bathrooms a subscription

i'm trying to make food a subscription

i'm trying to make tv a subscription

i'm trying to make clothes a subscription

i cannot wait to live in paradise

This is why for the one or two times I need to print something a year I just go to the library and pay them $0.10 a page to print something out.

This really doesn't seem like a very good long-term investment. Over time people are printing less, not more.

If you make it difficult to print they'll make the active effort to move away from your product, which is especially bad given the people are moving away from printing in general anyway.

I don't own a printer because the cost to constantly refill cartrages feels like a subscription already. I just go to the UPS store for the 3 times a year I actually need to print something, on a for-realsies printer that someone else maintains. usually costs less than a dollar every time I go.

The moral of the story is don't buy HP anything. Already trying to replace our large format latex printer from HP over this. Fuck that guy.

Canon understands that selling a printer with a maintenance contract is a viable way to do business...to business.

That's a place where the option is very much appreciated.

This guy is unbelievable. Who the hell would pay a subscription to print? I print maybe once every two months and I have my own company.

Most people shouldn't buy a home printer at all anymore. Unless you're a crafter or work in a field that still uses lots of paper (i.e. law) they're not worth it.

It's a rapidly shrinking market and HP knows there's no saving it so I guess they're following the cable company playbook.

Squeeze your remaining customers as hard as possible before the music stops

Hey another article about the shit-on-fire that is HP printers.

Welcome new wtf-is-this-HP consumers! Be assured that HP has trafficked in bullshit around their printers for many, many years! Today is no fucking different and tomorrow won’t be either.

Feel free to launch your HP printer into the sun, as that's the most enjoyment you’ll ever get out of it. And be sure to watch for the next “Woah, HP printers are fascist garbage” article, due out soon!

Whyyyyy would you actually say this out loud? We all know it’s a dick move but I’m curious what would possess them to actually broadcast it? Like you’re not supposed say the quiet parts out loud. Right?

Does an "open-source printer" exist?

Eat shit HP. I will eat bag of dicks before I even think of touching their shitty printers

Got it. Not to buy hp printer.

Obligatory Brother Laser Printer comment.

As an IT worker who is regularly subjected to dealing with printers, HP is by far the worst I have to deal with. They are shit from the build quality to the bloated borderline spyware software they push to the awful web interface. If you are considering an HP printer just don’t. It’s a better investment to go buy anything else.

No where in there was anything about what the consumer wants or needs. Just theirs

I have printer in my house, that has about 3 years of dust on it. It is not hooked up to my home wifi and I don't even know if it can work. Last Year I only need to print some thing twice. So I just drove down to the fedex kinkos and printed there.

I won't be buying another HP printer, ever.

It's well known that printers are routinely sold at a loss, with the real revenues made from selling replacement ink cartridges.

I don't think that's a sustainable business anymore.

We've been using laser for 16 years now, because ink is expensive, and it doesn't even help much to use it only sparingly, because then the cartridges dry out.
We bought a color laser 10 years ago, and it's still going strong on only the 2nd set of cartridges (original + 1 set purchased). We have very little use for prints now, as all mail is electronic here now, and yes I mean all, even papers that needs to be signed are done electronically now.
So we print maybe 2 sheets average per month, last prints was my wife printing music scores to practice. The ones before that I can't even remember.

People in school basically all levels are turning papers in electronically too. I don't see where a lot of printing is still needed?

I haven't purchased a new HP product since my Pavilion in 1998. I own an HP mini PC, but that was second hand. I'll never ever ever buy any of their products ever again.

I will never by a modern printer

Paperless offices and WFH eating their lunch

It is unfortunate that they keep trying to make a subscription out of something that does not have an ongoing infrastructure need at the company’s side.

On the other hand, I wonder how this could affect open source firmware to avoid e-waste. I read a thread about open source firmware for robot vacuums and there will surely be open source (if there is not already) for printers.

If HP’s competitors are listening to his utterances, they should be all over this with ads saying “no subscriptions or other nonsense in our printers, and never will be”. They could grab much more of the market.

Why isn't there any competition in the printer space except for Brother? Are printers really that hard to make?

My long term objective is to never print a document in my life.

Which is why all HP brand printers get filtered out of my search results when looking for a new printer. Won't even consider buying one at any price.

Laser Printers for the win. The toner can feel expensive but so much better value than inkjet.

This is why I prefer Epson Ecotank printers.

So are there instructions out there to build your own printer with, say, a Raspberry Pi or a suitable equivalent?

Well it's the long term objective of everyone else to put HP out of business.

If possible we should take the signs off their buildings and turn them into works of modern art. We'll let IT departments the world over do the project.

I mean I get that they are established but what exactly is keeping their customers coming back to them? They make printers, there is no magic sauce, I’m sure they’re nice printers, but there are other companies, or someone could start a new printer company. I just can’t fathom why they think they can get away with treating their customers this way and not expect to lose them. Unless there is something I’m missing?

Nowadays, the only thing I find myself printing occasionally are return labels for Amazon RMA on my trusty old Samsung CLP laser printer (which sometime has a mind of its own and starts adding a single grayish streak on the second page onward at random location).

I have a second monochrome laser printer from Brother I purchased 2-3 years ago for a bargain lightning price of $70 thinking of replacing my old "dying" printer, however I exclusively use it to do occasional photocopies and I already have a bunch of TN660 toner for it.

Just waiting for the Samsung to run its course and finally die but it lives on challenging any thoughts I may have to send it to the eco-centre (recycling center in Québec). It is at least maybe 20 years old and the darn thing is stubbornly holding on 😆. At this point I feel like it may last another 20 years. It has indeed been well worth the $300 at the time.

Early on, I experienced so many issues with Lexmark, Epson and HP that I crossed off the companies forever.

Fortunately, I think I lucked out on my current 2 printers that will, hopefully, last me a few more decades.

I used to only recommend that any Brother printer would be better to friends and family, but I came accross information that newer brother printers started to have a chip in their ink/toner cartridges. I am unaware if it is for some nefarious purpose. Hopefully, they understand alienating customers will quickly dissolve all the good will they have accumulated.

So, they basically want to be a copy shop? Didn't most of the dedicated ones go out of business?

I actually wish harm to this parasite.

Please proceed, governor.

I haven't bought an HP printer in at least 25 years. They used to repeatedly just print jibberish on a few lines and move on to the next page and wouldn't stop until I killed the print job. Canon laser printers are great and you dont need to worry about magenta drying up and preventing you from printing in black and white.

At least they are honest, kinda.

Imagine how reliable printers will finally be. And how long the ink will last before a refill now! /s.

Well at least HP is being honest about it, so I know to never do business with them.

I bet Epson will be next. AUGH

That CEO doesn't even make top 1000 for worst person, that's just naïve to think he ranks up there with Warlords, Dictators, Winnie the Pooh, and the Sackler Family.