What I find extremely annoying is that no one is charge saw this coming. How stupid do you need to be to release an online-only subscription laser printer?<p>Somewhere in the HP hierarchy reality is removed. I feel like at least one of the lower level people saw this coming. Somewhere in the management layers this became a good idea, an idea completely removed from reality.<p>The only logic that makes sense is that you have a segment of users that doesn't need to print much, so rather than doing a large upfront purchase, they basically rent a printer, but where is the break even for HP, where is the break even for the customer? When you cancel your subscription does the printer then go back to HP for refurbishment so that another customer can rent it? I doubt it, it becomes e-waste.<p>The article even says: "To provide our customers with an exceptional printing experience in all office environments, we will no longer offer LaserJet series products with HP+. " So the HP+ didn't provide exceptional printing experiences? I could understand the reasoning that "Some customers purchased an HP product that would not work in their environment, so we're now more clearly communicating the limitations of HP+", but no, they are cancelling it entirely, so it's not about those office environments where always online didn't work. This is an entirely predictably failure of a product, except HP management wasn't smart enough to realise it, because they f-ing priorities are not their customers.
I found one these all-in-one units out on sidewalk and thought I had scored a cool freebie. It was nearly new. Now I know why they threw it away. Total garbage and bricked without that HP+ subscription. Can't use the scanner because the ink is too low. The worst part is that I couldn't even reset the printer to use a new subscription! It was tied to the previous owner at a hardware level and support said I had to contact them to release their account, even though it was no longer active. The HP support forums are full of angry people trying to get away from these units.<p>Printers are still needed, btw. Maybe not in the USA, but Germany requires all kinds of paper documentation to be mailed. Many other countries as well.
I have a HP LaserJet 4050TN released in 1999. Still printing away. Zero scamology.<p>Imagine all the effort they've made since then to make their products terrible.
HP is constantly confirming the stance I have of never buying HP devices in the future. This probably wasn't their aim, but in the past decade I could only hear negative sentiment about them, and reading stories like this - it doesn't seem without reason.
With no apparent way of unlocking these devices promised or foreshown in the article, I wonder how long those e-types already sold with the on-line requirement will keep working. Pretty soon the 'e' at the end of the model number will be short for 'e-waste'.
I urge everyone to permanently boycott HP. In the past, I would only buy their products, from laptops to printers; everything develops a critical problem that cannot be fixed. They look to milk the customer. HP are a terrible company and their products are of poor quality.
Dealing with an HP printer easily was the worst tech experience I have had in my life. I don't understand how "non-tech" people even deal with this. The process was so unimaginably convoluted, requiring third party software, new accounts a very bad mobile app, a tiny display with terrible delays on the printer and so much more.<p>This has to be another peak though and something where I think the EU could reasonably step in. Selling devices so utterly broken and ridiculous to set up and maintain should not be acceptable.
> <i>In any case, it's important to clarify that this discontinuation of HP printers will only impact HP LaserJet printers that have an "e" added to the end of their model name to denote the alternative business model.</i><p>Nice of them to make it easy to know which models to avoid (on the new-old-stock, used, and curb markets). Mnemonic: "'e' for 'ewww...'"<p>As much as I'm cautious of Fiorina-and-later HP, and as much as I wouldn't connect an HP printer to the Internet nor use HP supplied drivers (bricking risk, security unknowns, mixed trustworthiness)... I still like LaserJets as reliable workhorse printers.<p>Maybe HP will re-emphasize trustworthiness, so that future generations can love the LaserJet and future HP product lines in the same tradition.
Not that happy about Instant Ink being discountinued; was paying like £12 a year for ink, printed infrequently enough that I could print super high res photos fairly regularly too (think I get 10 pages a month that could roll over to a max of 30)
I dream of the day we can come up with good OSS printer firmware as a society. I know it has been discussed to death (as to why it can't happen), but the heart wants what the heart wants.
It's quite a thing to behold that the only technological advancement in printing technology in the last decade has been the erosion of ownership to the point of absurdity. In a fair world, this decades long clownshow should have caused the mother of all anti trust lawsuits, yet here we are.
I'm probably super biased because I work in a relatively modern office that produces relatively modern tech, but we barely ever use paper for anything anymore. The same goes for my home office use; I moved a few months ago and left my printer behind. With the advent of QR code tickets and parcel barcodes and iOS's Continuity scanning features I just don't see the point of having a space-, paper- and toner-eating monster on my desk anymore. I used to administer about 12 leased Toshiba reproduction units and that has planted a deep seated hatred for printers. Is the public at large wise to avoiding these fuckers like the plague, or am I an outlier?