One of my old professors worked at HP and chatted about his involvement in putting ICs in ink cartridges. From what I remember hearing, each one is flashed with calibration data to improve the print quality.
Does anyone know if this is still true, or if it makes that much of a difference?
HP cartridges attach the thermal print head to the ink tanks. The calibration is likely for controlling those heads. Each one has tiny heating elements that need to vaporize the ink at a precise temperature. Thermal heads eventually need to be replaced.
Compare to Epson printers that use piezoelectric heads. Those mechanically push droplets through. This is more complicated, but makes smaller dots.
At least on my HP printer, there is a process (I think called alignment?) to self-calibrate new cartridges. I am not sure if that is different from the type of calibration you’re talking about (maybe about colors). However, I’ve personally not found differences between using the printer’s own calibration processes and not doing anything. Nor have I found significant differences between first and third party cartridges. Some third party cartridges will print a little bit ‘fuzzier’, or maybe ‘thicker’ is the right way to put it. But not in a way that makes the printing worse, as much as different.
As much as I love giving the middle finger to a company as awful as HP, people need to stop supporting garbage companies like this and then this wouldn't be necessary.
As an infrequent printer (a few pages every few months), their ink subscription plan (Instant Ink) is awesome for us. For $1/mo you get 10 pages (color included), and overages are 10 cents/pg.
So basically for $12 a year we can have a home printer but never have to worry about cartridges. They just show up in the mail when we need more, and the used ones can be recycled in the included mailer.
> For $1/mo you get 10 pages (color included), and overages are 10 cents/pg.
The math works out when I think about it but for some reason I’m still floored by the fact that $12 only gets you 10 pages of paper for an entire year.
If I have to wait for a cartridge to show up in the mail, why wouldn't I just go to FedEx and do my printing there?
My Brother B&W laser printers never die and a $30 cartridge ($60 if you buy OEM) lasts a minimum of 2600 and will never dry out. I replace the cartridge once every few years and if I need color then driving over to FedEx etc. is much faster than waiting for something to come in the mail to replace an ink cartridge that will inevitably dry up if you're not using it every day.
Color is the biggie. Color lasers are expensive, around $300 or so last I checked? If we printed more, I'd definitely get one, but we don't (and likely never will). At our usage, buying a new color laser would take a few decades to pay itself back vs this subscription.
PS you don't have to wait for new cartridges. It's all connected, so they will automatically mail you a new cartridge as soon as the printer senses it's low-ish, long before it's totally dry.
Their customer service bot is generous too. I lost a cartridge during a move, told it I was running low and it automatically shipped me a couple new ones, no questions asked.
I don't really know how HP manages to make any money on this, but it's incredibly convenient. Probably they hope you'll end up moving to a higher subscription tier, but that makes no sense because if we printed more, we'd just get a laser. Shrug. I'll enjoy it while it lasts though!
In India, 90% of the inkjet printers use refillable ink tanks. The ink is way cheaper than in the US, there are no ink cartridges, print quality is the same, and the printers are roughly the same cost too (in USD).
Americans are dumb for accepting locked inkjet cartridges.
>In India, 90% of the inkjet printers use refillable ink tanks. The ink is way cheaper than in the US, there are no ink cartridges, print quality is the same, and the printers are roughly the same cost too (in USD).
No they don't.
Indian market sells same printer as they sell in US.
Difference is, indians refill those cartridges, reset chips, or use fake cartridges.
There are only few printers in market which can be filled for real.
Indian cartridges are cheap only because labor in india is cheap. If US had same labor prices.
But quality is just not same. I lived in both US and India.
Being exploited doesn't come from being dumb. If anything, the way I see it, it's no coincidence if people just happen to be kept ignorant in a way that's beneficial to the systems that are also exploiting them.
We do have some printers here that are designed for this use case for what it's worth. Dunno if they are any good. Personally, I have had a Brother color laser for years.
"Dumb" is an insult to someone's intelligence, as if the problem is them. Ignorant is a bit closer.
But that's not actually my point to be honest, my point is that the problem is not the people who are getting screwed over. It's the people screwing them over.
Yeah. Either buy their printers and throw them away when the sample ink runs out (because, while you are correct about HP, you are also a terrible person that hates the earth), or just buy from a different brand.
Having said that, we have an old Samsung laser printer, and the Samsung printer business was bought by HP since we got it. Recently, HP started shorting me on toner in the replacement cartridges (they cartridges go streaky with 25%+ “toner remaining”).
Switching to third-party ones that bypasses HP’s authenticity checks was clearly the right move (they’re higher quality, cheaper, and also, screw hp).
Why no FOSS color pencil or pen plotter with robotic paper stack management (next sheet, and bonus: turn-over), ready to 3D print, flash onto pis, and forever replace the supply chain cumbersome ink and toner-based printing??
We can 3D print, why no easy common pencil/pen printer replacement plotters?!!
Plotters don't really represent most people's use-cases. They're slow, and hard to use because they work with vector representations, so you can't really just print an arbitrary document and get acceptable results.
Plotters are really only good at drawing vector plots. Graphs, schematics, line drawing kind of stuff. Plotters are very bad at text.
I'd wager that something like 99% of all pages printed annually are exclusively text and/or raster images (photos).
Very close to nobody has a use for a plotter, and traditional printers can do 99.99% of the jobs a plotter can do. There's simply not one reason for the average consumer to use a plotter. If you're in an industry where you do actually need a plotter, they're available at industrial prices.
Plotters are cool, but they were only useful when the only other option was monochrome dot matrix. Even then they were extremely limited and not widely used.
If plotters can't compete with dot matrix there's no point even discussing whether they can compete with inkjet or laser.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a plotter in a store either.
That said, it wouldn’t be hard to convert any standard 3D printer into a plotter. Keep Z at 0, rubber band a marker to the side of the print head is probably all it would take.
Certainly very clever. The only thing that bugs me about it is that I like the economic effects of the DRM. I don't print very much and the DRM lets HP sell the printers for next to nothing because they'll make it up on the overpriced ink cartridges. If they're forced to sell the cartridges at close to cost, the printers will soar in price. Epson makes one with big tanks that's much higher in price for those that don't want DRM.
One of my old professors worked at HP and chatted about his involvement in putting ICs in ink cartridges. From what I remember hearing, each one is flashed with calibration data to improve the print quality.
Does anyone know if this is still true, or if it makes that much of a difference?
HP cartridges attach the thermal print head to the ink tanks. The calibration is likely for controlling those heads. Each one has tiny heating elements that need to vaporize the ink at a precise temperature. Thermal heads eventually need to be replaced.
Compare to Epson printers that use piezoelectric heads. Those mechanically push droplets through. This is more complicated, but makes smaller dots.
At least on my HP printer, there is a process (I think called alignment?) to self-calibrate new cartridges. I am not sure if that is different from the type of calibration you’re talking about (maybe about colors). However, I’ve personally not found differences between using the printer’s own calibration processes and not doing anything. Nor have I found significant differences between first and third party cartridges. Some third party cartridges will print a little bit ‘fuzzier’, or maybe ‘thicker’ is the right way to put it. But not in a way that makes the printing worse, as much as different.
As much as I love giving the middle finger to a company as awful as HP, people need to stop supporting garbage companies like this and then this wouldn't be necessary.
Pro tip: many businesses are getting rid of their old laserjet printers.
You can pick up one for cheap or free and there are cheap 3rd party laser cartridges that will last a normal households for years.
Is there a good place to find these business liquidations? I'd love a color laser, but everywhere I look, they are still hundreds of dollars.
(Not in the Bay Area though, maybe that's why? I'm in Central Oregon, semi-rural with not a lot of tech.)
As an infrequent printer (a few pages every few months), their ink subscription plan (Instant Ink) is awesome for us. For $1/mo you get 10 pages (color included), and overages are 10 cents/pg.
So basically for $12 a year we can have a home printer but never have to worry about cartridges. They just show up in the mail when we need more, and the used ones can be recycled in the included mailer.
> For $1/mo you get 10 pages (color included), and overages are 10 cents/pg.
The math works out when I think about it but for some reason I’m still floored by the fact that $12 only gets you 10 pages of paper for an entire year.
10 pages per month. So $12 gets you 120 pages.
Print shop down the road charges about twice that much but with no commitment. Bring your files on a USB stick, leave with paper copies.
There's no commitment with instant ink, either, and you don't have to deal with driving, parking, lines, or business hours.
What is this "driving" and "parking"? I walk around the corner from my home.
That's nice. I'm glad you have one of those by you.
facepalm duh
If I have to wait for a cartridge to show up in the mail, why wouldn't I just go to FedEx and do my printing there?
My Brother B&W laser printers never die and a $30 cartridge ($60 if you buy OEM) lasts a minimum of 2600 and will never dry out. I replace the cartridge once every few years and if I need color then driving over to FedEx etc. is much faster than waiting for something to come in the mail to replace an ink cartridge that will inevitably dry up if you're not using it every day.
Color is the biggie. Color lasers are expensive, around $300 or so last I checked? If we printed more, I'd definitely get one, but we don't (and likely never will). At our usage, buying a new color laser would take a few decades to pay itself back vs this subscription.
PS you don't have to wait for new cartridges. It's all connected, so they will automatically mail you a new cartridge as soon as the printer senses it's low-ish, long before it's totally dry.
Their customer service bot is generous too. I lost a cartridge during a move, told it I was running low and it automatically shipped me a couple new ones, no questions asked.
I don't really know how HP manages to make any money on this, but it's incredibly convenient. Probably they hope you'll end up moving to a higher subscription tier, but that makes no sense because if we printed more, we'd just get a laser. Shrug. I'll enjoy it while it lasts though!
In India, 90% of the inkjet printers use refillable ink tanks. The ink is way cheaper than in the US, there are no ink cartridges, print quality is the same, and the printers are roughly the same cost too (in USD).
Americans are dumb for accepting locked inkjet cartridges.
>In India, 90% of the inkjet printers use refillable ink tanks. The ink is way cheaper than in the US, there are no ink cartridges, print quality is the same, and the printers are roughly the same cost too (in USD).
No they don't.
Indian market sells same printer as they sell in US.
Difference is, indians refill those cartridges, reset chips, or use fake cartridges.
There are only few printers in market which can be filled for real.
Indian cartridges are cheap only because labor in india is cheap. If US had same labor prices.
But quality is just not same. I lived in both US and India.
‘Tank’ printers are everywhere. And literally comparing side by side with US versions? Same same.
What you’re talking about are the printers way, way cheaper than you can get in the US.
Being exploited doesn't come from being dumb. If anything, the way I see it, it's no coincidence if people just happen to be kept ignorant in a way that's beneficial to the systems that are also exploiting them.
We do have some printers here that are designed for this use case for what it's worth. Dunno if they are any good. Personally, I have had a Brother color laser for years.
What would you call someone ‘prone to be easily exploitable’, and ‘unable to see/resist exploitation’?
I’m sure there are other words that we can use too.
"Easily exploitable and unable to resist exploitation" is perfectly fine. We're not short on writing space here.
I don’t know, sounds dumb.
"Dumb" is an insult to someone's intelligence, as if the problem is them. Ignorant is a bit closer.
But that's not actually my point to be honest, my point is that the problem is not the people who are getting screwed over. It's the people screwing them over.
The people screwing them over rely on a target rich environment.
One could not exist without the other.
Uh huh. And what do you think causes a "target-rich environment" anyhow? Just people getting dumber for no reason?
Yeah. Either buy their printers and throw them away when the sample ink runs out (because, while you are correct about HP, you are also a terrible person that hates the earth), or just buy from a different brand.
Having said that, we have an old Samsung laser printer, and the Samsung printer business was bought by HP since we got it. Recently, HP started shorting me on toner in the replacement cartridges (they cartridges go streaky with 25%+ “toner remaining”).
Switching to third-party ones that bypasses HP’s authenticity checks was clearly the right move (they’re higher quality, cheaper, and also, screw hp).
Why no FOSS color pencil or pen plotter with robotic paper stack management (next sheet, and bonus: turn-over), ready to 3D print, flash onto pis, and forever replace the supply chain cumbersome ink and toner-based printing??
We can 3D print, why no easy common pencil/pen printer replacement plotters?!!
Plotters don't really represent most people's use-cases. They're slow, and hard to use because they work with vector representations, so you can't really just print an arbitrary document and get acceptable results.
Because you didn't create it yet.
Plotters are really only good at drawing vector plots. Graphs, schematics, line drawing kind of stuff. Plotters are very bad at text.
I'd wager that something like 99% of all pages printed annually are exclusively text and/or raster images (photos).
Very close to nobody has a use for a plotter, and traditional printers can do 99.99% of the jobs a plotter can do. There's simply not one reason for the average consumer to use a plotter. If you're in an industry where you do actually need a plotter, they're available at industrial prices.
Plotters are cool, but they were only useful when the only other option was monochrome dot matrix. Even then they were extremely limited and not widely used.
If plotters can't compete with dot matrix there's no point even discussing whether they can compete with inkjet or laser.
Edge case of an edge case I imagine.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a plotter in a store either.
That said, it wouldn’t be hard to convert any standard 3D printer into a plotter. Keep Z at 0, rubber band a marker to the side of the print head is probably all it would take.
The Big Ink lobby is alive and well.
https://www.dailynews.com/2024/08/13/counterfeit-printer-car...
I LOVE this! A little bit for sticking it to the man but mostly for doing a crazy MITM for cheap.
If anyone here has access to one of these devices, please try to capture the firmware and the traffic for us.
Certainly very clever. The only thing that bugs me about it is that I like the economic effects of the DRM. I don't print very much and the DRM lets HP sell the printers for next to nothing because they'll make it up on the overpriced ink cartridges. If they're forced to sell the cartridges at close to cost, the printers will soar in price. Epson makes one with big tanks that's much higher in price for those that don't want DRM.