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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Even the low end is insane. $8 a month for 20 pages? You can go to a place like Staples or FedEx Office with a USB drive and get that printed out for less than a dollar.
One of my fondest memories was beating our old HP printer to death with the baseball bat we keep for potential intruders. I now print at the local library and regret the beating incident less and less every year.
People don't seem to realize this kind of thing will be really popular. If you have a small office or you don't do your own tech support, these deals sound awesome. Small fee and thing is always working when you need it. They don't think about how better laser is and how longer toner can last without being used, etc. They don't care, what they see is 36$ a month not to deal with any printer related issues. Kind of a brilliant move on HPs side. Make printers evil, then offer solution to evil via subscription. And you can bet your ass this one will magically have significantly better drivers and lower maintenance than others because those would bite into all that sweet income.
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).
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.
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'
I still own a HP laser printer (older model from 5-10 years ago) which does not have the online connectivity requirement and the third party cartridges could last for ages.
As long as the printer dies I will forget HP and its bullshit exists and never touch their products again.
$36 a month for something I would use maybe 2 or 3 times a year? That's $432 I would pay for those 2-3 prints. Subscription based printer accessibility (not ownership) is a lossing strategy for normies like me. Maybe it may work for b2b segment. Aslo, Fuck you, HP. Thanks for convincing me not to buy your other products.
I recently trashed my HP and bought a really old Dell LaserJet from government auction. $25 and it came with a 60% full toner. Been using it for 2 months and still have 54% toner left.
I'll probably never replace this thing and keep fixing it until I can't find parts anymore.
I'll just print off the odd thing I need a paper copy of from work and continue as I've done for a dexade by puposefully denying myself from the sincere privilege of paying HP another god damned red cent for as long as draw breath, kthxbai. 🖕
My last printer was an hp , the ink only lasted a few months. I’m done with it. At most I print a few items per month so we now go to fedex office and have it printed there for $0.20
HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee.
HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment.
Prices range from $6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages.
A web connection can also concern users about security or HP-issued firmware updates that make printers stop functioning with non-HP ink.
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."
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.
The original article contains 471 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!