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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.
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 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?
It's a pro 9000 mk ii. Quite a bit older than the 1000