261–270 of 297 posts
I thought that was well known. In EU printers cannot be sold "inked locked". They do lock themselves as soon as they have an opportunity to update their firmware. My Brother never had Internet access. I configured it with the Internet gateway unplugged and assigned it a static address to which I forbid Internet access. It is now running on compatible color cartridges. For black I stay on OEM ink. It is funny that my…
I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers". I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spendin…
> I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device For printing something like once a month, it is even harder to justify wasting space by putting a printer. Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device For printing something like once a month, it is even harder to justify wasting space by putting a printer. Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.
I for one, like being able to print content in the privacy of my own home without letting private companies like Fedex/Kinkos see it, and potentially filter/share it with third parties. We're already shifting towards a society where things that offer a traditional offline, anonymous way of transacting information or currency is being construed as a threat because "terrorism", aka it cannot be monitored and controlled…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spending several hundred bucks on a device For printing something like once a month, it is even harder to justify wasting space by putting a printer. Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs.
> Printers should be put around in form of vending machines which would let you you insert a USB stick, drop some pennies and print the PDFs. Every Fedex Print/Office center has this service. Most city libraries do as well.
I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers". I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spendin…
If you print something once a month, then shouldn't the starter cartridge last for about the life of the printer (maybe a decade or so)? That's been my experience with the B&W Brother laser printer I bought about 2010. I've never changed anything on it. And really I don't find much need to print anything these days anyway.
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I haven't had a printer for the past 3 years and I refuse to buy one because of the disgusting economic and environmental practices of the ink mafia. Their behaviour has been beyond despicable for decades but somehow the world has just shrugged their shoulders and accepted it. I have an iPad and downloaded PDF Expert and got an Apple Pencil to sign digital documents and I've only occasionally had issues I can't get a…
You can return Amazon purchases without a printer. I've done it multiple times. You can either have them mail you a label (for $1) or take it to a UPS Store where they scan a barcode on your phone.
I don't think you get to pick that service anywhere as such, so it might be regional or limited in some other way. When you initiate a return, you don't know whether you'll need a printer or not.
I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers". I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spendin…
I think it boils down to companies finding legal ways of artificially lowering the baseline price signal that they send into highly price-sensitive markets. Similar phenomena in this sense include phone/DSL/cable plans that don't include various fees in the advertised price, the "sticker price" of a new car, smart TVs not mentioning that they're going to show you ads, and so on.
I can't wrap my head around how the printer market has turned into this absolutely dispicable, foul state that it is in right now. Decades of innovation that have been invested, not to make a better product, but mostly on how to extract more and more money from their victims, I mean "customers". I would like to own a printer again, but for printing something like once a month, I just can't financially justify spendin…
Its because American consumers value cheapness over everything else and American corporations value profit over anything else. Setting aside the general decline of the printer industry, and simplifying slightly, those two interests compliment each other into: 1. Producing the cheapest possible product, and then selling it for a loss while concocting subscription schemes to make-up for the lost profits at the point of…
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Well, Brother had never done this to date. That is the real shocker.
Exactly. I looked at eco-tanks, and aside from the fact that the tanks would dry out given how little I need to print, it was avoiding the evil printing companies selling those printers. That left Brother: Linux-friendly, inexpensive open printers. Kinda took them at their name.
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They do it for the same reason as anything else: to charge different prices in different parts of the world and still stymie the gray market.
Importing ink from another part of the world isn't gray market, it's a perfectly legitimate option that the vendor happens to not like.