Comment by danpalmer
3 years ago
> 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.
This is the dying gasps of an industry that is mostly irrelevant in the modern age.
When I was growing up we always had a printer, and while ink wasn't cheap, it wasn't too bad, so we used it a lot and printed everything we needed. The industry grew to expect this, most households with a computer also owning a printer and regularly buying ink for it.
This isn't the case anymore. So much of our lives happens "digital-only" that printers aren't needed by most people, and those who do need them don't need as much ink. I have never owned a printer myself, and my parents still own one but buy ink on a yearly basis now.
The market should be shrinking naturally, and so every printer company is trying everything they possibly can to grow or at least keep from shrinking as much. In the panic they are in, it's understandable that this will lead to crappy business practices.
Once again the "market" is abusing everyone in the pursuit of endless economic growth. Our economic system forces successful businesses into enemies of the consumer once they can't keep momentum.
Coupled with the concentrating monopolisation of the economy, this creates a phenomenon where helpless consumers are held at ransom: the ultimatum being that they either continue to be exploited in ever more devious ways, or to simply do without. Small businesses that spring up to fulfill the void are bought up quickly in order to squash any hope of real competition.
This is not an economy that works for ordinary people. Ordinary people does include temporarily embarrassed millionaires (and real millionaires, and startups and micro-businesses for that matter) on Hacker News.
The only people who are benefiting overall from these practices are major shareholders and those chasing endless quarterly growth targets.
Uh... Pretty sure the printer industry is holding literally no one hostage. As mentioned in several comments—this industry is dead.
My point is a general one - the printer market is doing exactly what all elastic markets do.
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It isn't dead. I use my printer now more than ever for printing postage labels.
Will home printer usage decline? Probably yes, but just like I have a home phone that I barely use, people will probably keep a printer around just in case.
> Coupled with the concentrating monopolisation of the economy,
There is no “monopoly” in the printer industry and it’s definitely not holding the economy “hostage”.
We do not need the government to break up “Big Printer”.
Capitalism optimises for monopolies. Everyone agrees on this - this is why we have antitrust mechanisms. Unfortunately, they tend to facilitate and reinforce the problem instead of combat it.
My comment is a general one on markets at large, hyper-focusing on the printer market is only valid as a rhetorical device.
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IDK, I'm in my mid 30s and I really can't remember printers being alright.
I do. I had a number of great printers before they adopted the DRM to enforce their razor+blades model.
1. HP Deskwriter. Built-in localtalk networking, connected to two Macs over phonenet. Bulletproof, paper handling was great.
2. HP Laserjet 4N. Built-in Ethernet print server, fast, bulletproof. Worked with 3rd party toner just fine. It was priced to pay HP enough for the printer even if you never bought toner.
3. HP Deskjet 6000-series. 6210? Worked great, beautiful color, obsoleted by USB replacing parallel ports.
4. Lexmark laser, bought used, worked with 3rd party toner, fast, networked, postscript. Was the workhorse for a political campaign.
Since about 2007 I haven't been happy with a printer. The toner is very expensive and the products are poorly made and not easily repaired.
Epson Workforce Pro: needs to print every week or its jets dry out.
HP OfficeJet X page at once, a great idea, but the jets jam if you don't use enough color, and the paper path breaks.
Brother printers: always yelling at me for some reason, and they wear out.
Lexmark color laser: great physical printer but the controller board hangs. Too unreliable for business. Toner is expensive.
Before the Deskwriter I had printers I was less happy with. An Epson dot matrix, I mean, nobody liked their dot matrix printers, and an Apple Stylewriter that was finicky, not crisp, and didn't hold much ink.
Those HP Laserjet printers were just incredible. They printed pages so quickly and crisply. That warm toner smell :)
I am the same age as you; when we were young the printers themselves were garbage. Constantly breaking, ink cartridges drying out quickly if you weren't printing regularly. Do they still have that damn ribbon thing inside of them? I seem to remember that being a constant source of pain for 13-15 year old me.
Now the printers, mechanically, seem pretty good. Some still feel cheap but not necessarily low quality. But all the firmware and software around them seems to be geared at whatever it takes to get you to spend a little more money. Stories like this one are exactly why I don't update my Brother TN-730 firmware.
I don't remember printers having ink back then. They were all laser. Inkjets came later, but they were seen as toys to print large banners.
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My early laser printer in 1992 was great - the LaserWriter 300.
I'm in my late 40s and I remember the joy of printing out banners with Print Shop on a Commodore 64 using a dot matrix printer. It was fantastic but it's been pretty downhill since there. Video to show what I mean:
https://youtu.be/BIltpheSZPs
In the modern era, I've just bought a cheap Brother black and white laser printer and called it a day. The toner lasts F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
> The toner lasts F-O-R-E-V-E-R.
Now you know why the manufacturer wants to change things.
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Printers became garbage when we switched from dot-matrix to inkjet.
Then they were horrible for 20 years until I decided to buy a Brother laser printer, and suddenly everything was right in the world.
I had a inkjet (bought for an Atari 1020?) printer in college. Four years plus graduate school, and all I needed to pay extra for was 2 ribbons which were cheap.
I was concerned my instructors might question wether I typed it, or used a dot matrix printer. None had a clue.
I was one of the first people to have a computer and printer, and I was embarrassed. It felt like cheating.
I will never understand why we as a society go from a device that works and is built well; to overpriced gadgets that are constantly trying to trick us to giving them more money.
I would like to see a ratings system, like that one we had here from I believe the EU that rated items on repair, but include any other shinaggigans after sale.
It's too bad Brother's caved in to greed. I was one of their unpaid promotional guys up until today.
I like to give credit where credit is due. I throw this in.
If you need a plumbing fixture buy Moen. I have two faucets that I have gotten free parts with for 15 years plus. I fill out a simple form, and send my receipt to them via email, and the parts arrive in the mail. In all honesty, I need to change my pipes to copper, or pex, but have procrastinating for years. Hence, I always buy Moen, and tell people just how good the company is. Moen recently changed up their lifetime warranty, but most products are still lifetime. If I was CEO at that they would go back to a simple lifetime guarantee on every product. It's free word of mouth advertising, and it's honest customer advertising. Once a company has word of mouth fairness on their side; they will actively have to make stupid decisions to not attract new customers. They should teach this in MBA day school. Just be fair, and honest.
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I am mid 30s, and the Brother MFC black and white laser printers have been solid since I was 15.
No, this did not go bad recently in a declining market. There were never good actors - inkjet printers were physical malware in the 90s, too.
The cheap printer market has always been an abusive, anti-user shitshow. Arguably bad for the sellers, too - I've heard an argument that making cheap printers was the catalyst that ruined HP.
> printers aren't needed by most people, and those who do need them don't need as much ink
Cool anecdote. Here in Brazil, some small shops and cybercaffes will offer copy/printing services to you for a small change. That's usually where people go if they have to print/scan something. BTW this service is also know as Xerox.
I saw some shops running on retail printers, but most use those printers you can just fill with cheap ink.
Funny thing with my printer - I bought a "SAMSUNG Xpress M2026W Mono Laser Printer" for £60 about 4 years ago. Thought this is pretty good - Samsung's the way.
Then HP bought Samsung and killed that model.
Now I see they go for £130+ second hand on ebay.
I think that says something about how the market's going to hell as it were.
I still love my Samsung laser (ML-2251N), but it will be my last. On the other hand, I was able to get more toner fairly inexpensively, so it'll keep running for years now.