To be fair, this has been pretty standard corporate-speak in most industries for a long time. It’s (typically) referring to giving people a reason to stay with your product - we used to use this exact phrase in reference to our complementary training programmes that were included with the product.
But, this is HP, so locked in means LOCKED IN. So, fuck HP 😂
Yeah, if it was just a subscription and you could halt it but still use what you paid for it would be fine, but they shut off access as soon as you halt your subscription. people have full ink they can’t use. For that reason I will never buy HP printers. ironically this week HP auto insalled an HP printer Assistant app on my workstation, and I don’t have am HP printer. So that got deleted immediately along with all HP support and driver tools.
What they don’t mention is that some of their printers don’t work on the 5ghz band, which means that it’s difficult to get it to work with newer routers and band switching. This also breaks usb printing and wifi direct printing. Print anywhere barely works and other fun times since trying out one of their printers.
yeah well HP, fuck you too
I looked into upgrading the ancient HP LaserJet 1200 in our home office because it is 20+ years old and slow to print some black and white documents with embedded graphics. This printer is due for it’s 3rd or 4th toner cartridge.
I briefly thought moving from this network-attached printer (via USB-A to Airport Express) to a newer AirPrint compatible HP laser printer might be nice. Read about the HP printer issues (ink drm, ink subscriptions, reliability problems, etc) and decided another third-party toner cartridge for the LJ 1200 was the right choice. Glad to wait for this old HP to print our few hundred pages per year, considering the alternative! :)
Thanks to everyone for sharing their Brother recommendations. Will look into a light-duty BW laser printer from Brother if the LJ 1200 ever gives up the ghost.
I wonder about these companies that try to lock users into their ecosystem. I’m sure they do the business math, but there must be quite a few of us who won’t by HP because of this. I won’t buy Adobe software any more because of their subscription-only model. I won’t buy Roland software synths for the same reason. And I won’t try an Apple computer or phone because it would not work well with my other devices so for the best experience I’d have to buy a whole bunch of Apple stuff. All these companies are pleased to be locking in their customers, but they’re also locking out other potential customers.
Jokes on you buddy, I’ve ditched my HP printers because of this nonsense. They literally locked me out of a printer all of a sudden after an update, deciding my cartridge bought from HP was no longer valid. Not to mention, just sitting there the inks use themselves up, I’m guessing just drying out from crappy design.
