Comment by snvzz

1 year ago

I was thinking "where do I order?" but then realized it's not actual OSH (Open Source Hardware) but just a publicity stunt.

This is a textbook case where the headline should be editorialized as it contains misinformation, and many are only ever gonna read the headline.

Once, a long time ago. Richard Stallman was pissed off at an hostile printer. We got Free Software just because. Yet the printer problem remains unsolved.

I still hope somebody, somewhere, will eventually get it done and commoditize printing forever, riding us of the mafia which is printer makers.

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snvzz

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nine_k  1 year ago

Inkjet printer makers sell printers way below cost of production, making the money on the ink.

There will always be enough people who would buy a $129 printer and postpone the reckoning in ink, instead of buying a $329 printer that can print reams using cheap bulk ink.

(Laser printers are superior anyway, unless you print photos.)

  • hakfoo  1 year ago

    What keeps the production cost high?

    A new inkjet-- especially if you're not getting a photo-optimized one-- isn't doing that much technically different from a 20-year-old one. You don't need 4800DPI and rich six-ink photo finishes if all you're asking for is one four-colour pie chart in a 20-page report, so you don't need to be at the edge of premium technology here.

    So why can't they just keep manufacturing a 20-year-old DeskJet, using long-amortized tooling and fully-worked-out mechanicals, but with a new controller board to replace parallel with USB/Ethernet/Wi-fi?

  • bityard  1 year ago

    In the mid 2000s, there was a model of inkjet printer that came with full size ink cartridges. It was usually priced "on sale" for less than the price of a new set of ink cartridges. Meaning if you did a normal amount of printing, it was more economically viable to buy a new printer every every few months and throw the old one away than it was to buy replacement cartridges.

    It revealed a lot about the incentive structure of the inkjet printer market.

    • me-vs-cat  1 year ago

      Are you thinking of a specific model? What model?

      All models I personally experienced came with ink cartridges containing less ink than replacement cartridges. I participated in a ton of ink cartridge refilling during 1998-2007.

      For most consumers back then, I could easily imagine that it was still more cost effective to buy new printers (with partial cartridges) than it was to buy replacements.