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How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

theverge.com

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Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#181

Post by YuriNiyazov »

mthoms wrote: post #170
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a $1/month subscription. You get 10 pages a month. The author would pay $12/year for 10 pages per year, without the cost of the cartridge. You need 20 years before you reach the cost of a $240 cartridge. The cartridge would’ve dried out before then. This entire article is an exercise in “I can’t do math”

Are you talking about something else? The article is about region locking which means, by definition, that the ink available in North America won’t work. Money isn’t the only consideration in these situations anyways. For some people it’s the principle. More directly to your point - the author plainly acknowledges the sunk cost fallacy at play here. I’m pretty sure he can do the math.

I’m talking about the snide remarks towards InstankInk throughout the article. The GP says that because the author prints 10 pages a year it’s a bad deal. I’m arguing that InstantInk is a great deal for someone that prints 10 pages a year. The author should’ve said “yea, I followed principles here, but honestly I should’ve gotten InstankInk from the very beginning” instead of crapping on it

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#182

Post by zrobotics »

hedora wrote: post #136
benjamoon wrote: post #70

I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer (with built in scanner) for £250 and it was bundled with 6 spare toner cartridges. That was two years ago, we’re still on the first cartridge. The printer before that was also a monochrome laser printer and that lasted nearly a decade (only got rid of it because it didn’t support wireless and I couldn’t be bothered running cables anymore). Basically, I think monochrome lase…

We have an old samsung, from before that division was acquired by HP. Instead of supporting HP’s printer business, I buy third party toner cartridges on Amazon for 25% the price. The official supplies are generally inferior. I’m not sure how much this applies to brother, but it means I pay $5-10 per year for toner. We use multiple reams of paper a year.

Our shipping department runs on brother machines, the 6200 something. I don't recall the model number offhand, but these printers are intended for a office, they really aren't true commercial spec machines. That being said, the oldest one has a page count of 1.5m last I had looked and the only real maintenance they have needed is occasional disassembly to dust them from paper fibers.

The off brand toner cartridges work OK, but they have much lower than advertised capacity. I had run the numbers 6 months ago, and the most economical option is the high capacity OEM brother units. However, my one real annoyance is the printer reports low toner well before it is actually low, we get ~500-1k pages after the low toner warning before the prints start getting faint.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#184

Post by Andrex »

skunkworker wrote: post #154
MisterSandman wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Verge is honestly pretty great. Usually. It's the only mainstream tech news publication that feels like it's not bought out by every company (re: CNET)

Even though Arstechnica is owned by Conde Nast, it's still my go-to for most tech news, albeit normally more specialized in certain fields. But at least once per week they have a really excellent and in-depth article about a variety of topics.

Ars has always been consistently in-depth and technically insightful, somewhere in-between TechCrunch/The Verge and Phoronix/XDA Devs.

My only minor complaint is that Ron Amadeo is so transparently bitter about every little bit of Google news, to the point these days he only reports the bad and very rarely the good.

Like, the last news article on RCS was about 3 years ago... Right before all four US carriers standardized on Google Messages + Universal Profile (and three of them on Jibe). There's been a mountain of RCS developments happening lately but it doesn't fit the narrative of "Google is bad at messaging" so no articles are written. You can bet if RCS has even a minor gaffe, it'll get an article. (See this play out with Ars' reporting on Google's payments efforts.)

Other than that, Ars is my go-to as well. I just have to mentally apply the Amadeo Bias Filter before I read any article about Google.

For the record, I am also incredibly bitter about Google[1]. But I'm not a reporter.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29566313

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#185

Post by antonvs »

kmarc wrote: post #108
antonvs wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article opens with a hint at another possible course of action: buy a cheap Brother laser printer, which currently go for about $129 in the US. Read the beginning of the article for the testimony, which many people have found for themselves. What you actually need to avoid are manufacturers like HP, unless the idea of an “ink subscription” appeals to you. It’s also best to avoid ink jets both because of ink costs…

I happen to have an HP inkjet printer which I use every three or so months, and never had the dried ink problem. Always works reliably, including the display ink level function. I think this "the ink dries up!" mantra is either outdated, doesn't affect HP anymore, or I got extremely lucky with my HP printers since 2014

The reason I posted is that I'm about to throw out an HP OfficeJet Pro with that issue. It's a few years old but it hasn't worked properly for a while now, and given the costs of ink it's not worth repairing. I used to have a laser and I'm planning to switch back.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#186

Post by antonvs »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #153
Spooky23 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never get why people get so angry about this. I’m a stupid consumer with printers. I have a HP office jet and pay like $5/month for their ink subscription. I print 30-80 pages a month. The economics work. I have a cheap capable inkjet MFP in the same cost envelope of a bigger, lower toner cost laser. The printer talks PCL and works with anything I’ve tried including Linux.

Same here, except I print way less, so I’m on a dollar per month sub, and just pay for overages sometimes. I think instant ink is a better product in terms of money saved, especially when you account for the risk of cartridges drying out. Now, to be clear, when it first came out, I thought “evil capitalists” just like everyone else in this thread. But I think it’s wrong, there’s just a yuckiness factor associated wit…

> I think instant ink is a better product in terms of money saved, especially when you account for the risk of cartridges drying out.

They created a problem for which the solution was a subscription. Laser toner doesn't have this issue.

> I think we should just move on as a society from the idea that you somehow “own” cheap personal property like phones and printers and fridges, etc.

You do own it. If you want to pay someone a monthly fee to help you manage it, that's your choice. But to say that everyone else should "move on as a society" because of your personal choices is very arrogant.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#188

Post by refurb »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #118
chatmasta wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places (government included) accept e-signature now, don't they? You might need to upload the PDF to docusign to make it a "legit" e-signature, but that sounds better than the absurdity of printing and rescanning an originally digital document.

Tried this with a couple of forms in Alaska and they were rejected because the signature looked like a digital one. (Even though my digital signature is a scan of an actual signature)

I had this with the IRS. Someone hand reviewed the form and used a highlighter to highlight the two digital signatures that were identical (they were, but not placed exactly the same, so im surprised they noticed) and said “this is not a legal signature, please sign again in ink and return”.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#189

Post by rtpg »

rekabis wrote: post #82
rtpg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to advise against this. Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. I have gotten 2 used printers out of not wanting to generate e-waste, only to have constant printer jams and other frustrations leading to me having to just print at the grocery store instead. "That Brother printer" will cost you more (and be Yet Another Plastic Thing To Go To A Lan…

> Most people selling their printer are doing so out of frustration due to paper jams or other nonsense. Consumer printers? Sure. Highly likely. That stuff was designed to be disposable. Business-class or Enterprise-class printers that had been used in larger offices or have low page counts? A much lower probability. The business/enterprise stuff is meant to last because they cost a lot going out the door, and so are…

I do think that used enterprise things will be likely to work well.

I do not live in a place that can fit an “enterprise” printer though, and I think for many people living in apartments it’s a bit of an ask. But it’s also pretty dependent on both the value of the surface area required to you and your printing needs.

Re: How to change the region on an HP OfficeJet printer in 57 easy steps

#190

Post by WirelessGigabit »

skunkworker wrote: post #154
MisterSandman wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Verge is honestly pretty great. Usually. It's the only mainstream tech news publication that feels like it's not bought out by every company (re: CNET)

Even though Arstechnica is owned by Conde Nast, it's still my go-to for most tech news, albeit normally more specialized in certain fields. But at least once per week they have a really excellent and in-depth article about a variety of topics.

Ars would be better if it wasn't for their auto playing videos.
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