•  Baggins   ( @baggins@beehaw.org ) 
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    1 year ago

    Thing is, I’ve never has a problem with this - it works out at £35.88 (£2.99 x 12) per year for my HP Envy 5032. I don’t use their paper and have only once in 3 years run over allowance. I print about 2 or 3 times per week, sometimes more. I don’t change the ink as soon as warning comes on, I’ll wait until prints start deteriorating. Like I say - it’s not a problem. Just under £36 per year for ink isn’t a deal breaker for me. Having the right cartridge available without trying to find a shop selling them is.

    Edit. Just to point out I’ve used printers from most of them. Colour/black and white lasers. Multifunction printers, photo, label printers and all.

    Samsung colour laser was the best, but can’t justify the price now.

    If I want photos, I get them done by a photo service. They will always have a better printer than me, and can afford the overheads.

    If HP ever stiff the firmware and I can’t get CUPS to run it I’ll bin it.

    Until then, it stays on my shelf and prints every few days. For £2.99 a month.

    • There’s actually a fairly large sweet spot where the sub makes a lot of sense (ignoring the fact that subscriptions inherently suck, of course). If you print infrequently enough that your cartridges are likely to dry out, it’s generally quite a bit cheaper.

      Of course the correct answer for most people is to just buy a laser printer and go to CVS or something the couple timed you need photo quality prints. Don’t have to worry about toner drying out

    • Having the right cartridge available without trying to find a shop selling them is.

      One of the obstacles in this is if your printer only takes a single brand of ink.
      I usually just order ink, but it’s not too hard to find ones compatible with my brother in a store if I need one immediately.

    • Yeah if it works for you. For myself I just couldn’t agree to subscription and had an old canon with large black ink tank around $29-$34, but I would wait for the Amazon sale whem they would drop it to $8. That woud last me all year. But after 10 years it was finally was time to move on, so Canon again.