HP wants you to print things through its cloud service, wherein you pay a subscription fee for ink and your usage is routed through its servers. To encourage you to do this, it covers the USB port …
I switched to a brother laser printer last year and will never go back to a hp or Epson, especially ink.
Like 15 years ago I bought the cheapest Brother laser printer. It’s still going strong. The ink never dries out or fucks up. I’ve never felt like the company was trying to rape my asshole. Why anyone still plays the ink jet game I do not fuckin know. I’ve boycotted HP decades ago and to this day I continue to see reasons to never change that decision.
Never buying HP printers again, not after I got a Brother one last year. It works OOTB even with linux and there’s no such lockdown bullshit.
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! Removing this sticker will reveal a consumer-friendly communications port that will deprive HP of even more money than it’s already milking you for with overpriced ink!
The original mastodon post that kicked off this controversy: https://haunted.computer/@netspooky/110832978569741892
the original mastodon post
Unrelated to this post:
IMO it’s stuff like this, original content that shows up on Mastodon/Lemmy/Kbin first, that will get people to switch over.
Slow organic growth is nice. Keep making good quality content and people will shift over
For the love of the old gods what kind of Lovecraftian horror is this
JFC! HP sucks. Just buy a Brother laser printer used and never worry about it because it’s bulletproof and a workhorse.
And will work OOTB on Linux with CUPS. Easiest process ever.
I don’t know what CUPS is, but I had 3 major reservations about switching my barely functional computer to Linux:
- Ive never worked in Linux before
- My dive computer only uploads to proprietary software using a proprietary cable.
- My Brother laser printer was working SO well wirelessly. It’s the first time I’ve ever not hated my printer
Turns out some amazing people made open source dive logging software so I can still download my dives.
And for printing, I meant to get around to setting it up, then one day I forgot and accidentally printed something and it just worked. I was so shocked that for a bit I assumed that reformatting the hard drive and changing operating systems must’ve somehow preserved my printer settings.
- Is your device supported by https://subsurface.github.io/SupportedDivecomputers/ ?
Yup! I had a little difficulty communicating with the computer, but all I had to do was add my user to the “dial-out” group and it worked like a charm.
Wow, HP. Way to make even Lexmark look like a paragon of corporate virtue in the home printer market.
What’s stopping some printer company from being nice and pleasant?
Is us, who buy the cheapest model in the store without considering maintenance cost?
I shop for ink first and then a printer. Monoprice used to offer insanely cheap ink for my brother printer.
