beep beep boop

[seventhe]

So, you may or may not know: when I bought my desktop I bought a printer from Dell. This was in retrospect a bad life choice. It's wireless but can only find the network about 10% of the time, and the cartridges liteally print 8 pages and die, I wish I were joking.

I've been meaning to get another one, but in the meantime, labs gotta get printed, so I've been using my ancient HP Photosmart. It's 10 years old. The color was dying a bit (I wasn't getting blues), so I decided to go get new ink for that one. Eventually I'm going to return the Dell one and buy a new one, right, but for right now, I need a working GD printer like a grownup.

So I go to OfficeMax and cartridges for my old one total at $60. Damn, I think! They didn't used to be that expensive! Maybe they're trying to force people out of the old models. Whatever. So I pick them up, and I decide to go browse the printers, to see whether there's a new model that uses the same cartridge. If I'm putting $60 into ink only to buy a new printer, I want it to use my ink, you know?

But as I browse the lines I find a HP wireless printer/scanner for $60.

Hmm, sez I. So I could pay $60 for the ink for an old printer I'm going to replace anyway... Or I could pay $60 for a new printer/scanner PLUS ink, one that will do everything I want the new model to do (wireless is a must). For the same price.

While dithering, I go to check the ink for the *new* printer thinking, if the ink's still $60 for black+color, I'm not really making a good choice here. I find the cartridges. The black is $13 and the color is like $15.

Sold.

So I walked into the store to get ink and left with a new printer.

Comments

[whitemage]

UPGRADE!

[zen_monk]

If only they treat bullets for guns like they do for printer ink. Like Chris Rock said, you'll really going to consider who to give that bullet to.

You know, it really does seem like an incentive to upgrade your tech; why buy expensive ink for an obsolete model when you can help a salesperson make a commission by buying a new printer?

[salarta.livejournal.com]

Only eight pages and then die? Holy hell.

Also $60 for ink? Dear lord. Why is old crap so expensive. That sort of thing makes no sense to me. I mean I guess it could be reasoned that since it's old ink, there may be limited quantities or mass-production of that ink isn't as worthwhile, but still, it's old ink. Making someone pay the same amount it'd cost to just get a new printer is absurd. It's like making someone pay $500 to get a bulky small-screened desktop monitor (you know, the kind that take up your whole desk) repaired when they can buy a better and bigger LCD or whatever for half the price.

[safety-caesars.livejournal.com]

HEY. HEY.

HOW ABOUT YOU GET A TYPEWRITER AND QUITCHER BITCHIN.

MOTHERFUCKIN' RIBBON AND CORRECTION TAPE IS WHERE IT'S AT.

OR YOU KNOW, PICK UP A GODDAMN PENCIL.

THAT'S RIGHT, I'M SUGGESTING YOU HAND-WRITE YOUR LABS, YOUWANNAFIGHTABOUTIT

[hilldo.livejournal.com]

That does sound like they were trying to get rid of old printers by discouraging their use. I got a cheap (free actually) HP one with my last computer and it ran out of black ink in 5 pages as well, but I've never replaced it because it pissed me off so much that they would do that.

Printers are traditionally loss leader type products (like razors). Sell them at a loss because they don't work unless you buy complimentary products that are usually profitable to sell.

I hear crayons are cheap though, do all your labs in crayon! :)

[salarta.livejournal.com]

Oh, oh, and sev should submit all her answers as colorful drawings using stick figures!