HP to Region-code Cartridges

prostoalex writes "Looks like the printer cartridge manufacturers will be borrowing techniques from Hollywood. HP introduced region coding for some of the newest printers sold in Europe. HP's US location and US dollar sliding lead to the situation, where cartridge prices in Europe are significantly higher than those in the States. In the Wall Street Journal article HP representative in Europe claims the company doesn't make any money off regional coding for cartridges, and that consumers will win once the US dollar rises over Euro."

Why HP's region coding excuse is bogus (Boing-Boi

[grnchile]

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/18/why_hps_regio n_codin.html [boingboing.net]

Re:Import printers?

[dmayle]

Oh well, time to find a printer manufacturer with printers as their core business instead of selling printer ink for gold-prices.

Try Canon. I did my research because I was disgusted with all the crappy printer companies, and Canon is still doing it right. I recommend the i4000r. It prints out flawless photos, has networking built-in, and, if you live in Europe, also has a CD/DVD printer builtin. It's got two inputs (a tray, and a tilted slot, and even prints on both sides of the page. At 200 Euros, it's more expensive than your standard crappy printers, but the money you save in ink should more than make up for it.

Re:once ...

[Senjaz]

True, or translation for us Brits. ... once [sic, read: if] the US dollar rises over the Pound.

Yeah right. That's going to happen. The pound is so strong against the dollar right now it's silly.

Importing stuff from the US makes sense to comsumers here, especially now the Internet makes it easy.

US companies have ritually shafted us for years with their foreign price fixing and they're not happy when we won't take it and import instead.

I can import Levis 501s for $32 that's £17.13. Here they cost £45. Even if Customs and Excise notice and charge me duty I'm still paying less than half the price they set here. Typically I get my American friends to bring a new pair over for me when they visit.

Electronics and Computers too. A friend of mine flew over from Birmingham, UK to New York City for a break a couple of years ago. He bought a Powerbook G4 whilst there. He said the money he saved covered the cost of his flight.

I'm pretty sure we have laws governing free market to stop this crap.

Re:Greedy?

[myom]

In Sweden HP and a few other manufacturers set the prices on the replacement cartridges so high that there exists a huge market in refillables as well refill kits for existing ones.

It is quite obvious HP makes more money off their expensive cartridges than the printer sales themselves. If you are smart you actually buy new printer for 40 including a cartridge instead of... just a refill cartridge for 40.

I can see a trend where HP and other manufacturers odify their ink:

- harder to refill
- have even tougher to crack IDs (to precent the use of refillable third party cartridges) DMCA and the European equivalents will surely be used some day as a move
- country or region coded

I for one avoid HP and Lexmark inkjets, and this aversion for these brands has also lead to many purchase decisions affecting HPs computer, laptop and laser printer sales in organisations where I am involved.

This reeks of greed.

Buy CANON

[Spy Handler]

PC Magazine had a poll thing where readers submit ratings for various makes of printers. HP was rated WORST when it comes to "How satisfied are you with replacement ink prices?" Cannon came out best.

They had a blurb quoting a few prices for HP ink and Canon ink, and Canon was almost half the price of HP ink. (I wish I could find the damn magazine so I can quote exact numbers.... gotta clean my room)

Boing Boing coverage of this

[Z303]

Here [boingboing.net], a HP employee response [boingboing.net] and a business analysis [boingboing.net] of region coding Cartridges.

"Consumers will win once the US dollar rises"

[Biotech9]

In other News....


Warren Buffett sees no way but down for US dollar

The dollar cannot avoid further declines against other major currencies unless the US trade and current account deficits improve, legendary investor and businessman Warren Buffett said.

"I think, over time, unless we have a major change in trade policies, I don't see how the dollar avoids going down," the world's second-richest individual told CNBC television.

"I don't know when it happens. I don't have any idea whether it will be this month or this year or next year, but we are force-feeding dollars on to the rest of the world at the rate of close to a couple billion dollars a day, and that's going to weigh on the dollar."

Buffett noted the record US deficit of 164.7 billion dollars in the third quarter of 2004 in the current account, which measures trade and investment flows.

Re:Greedy?

[Anonymous Coward]

lots of times the cartridge that comes with the printer is just a trial one with less ink than a refill..

Re:Greedy?

[adeydas]

I don't know about the US and the UK but in India an Epson Styllus Printer costs somewhere around Rs. 5000 and its cartridge Rs. 800. So if you buy 5 cartridges, approximately you pay the cost of a new printer... So I agree with you completely.

But you have no real alternatives...

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

But - since HP's pricing has gone worse over time anyway, I think it's time to ditch them for good and no longer buy their products... (and just hope that this whole thing doesn't catch on in the printer industry).

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done. Take a look at the list of Suggested Printers for Free Software Users [linuxprinting.org] and try to find a printer that is well supported on BSD, Linux and friends. The list is a bit outdated, but in general it's a good guideline. I researched this in detail a few months ago when I was shopping for a new printer and in the end, as much as I hate HP, I decided that an HP PSC series printer would be the most suitable and economic choice for my needs.

Epson is even worse than HP in many ways as most modern Epson printers seem to be the disposable type which gets clogged up within 6 months in such a way that buying a new printer is cheaper than replacing the head.

Canon printers seem nice in terms of quality, but there are no realiable high quality drivers for BSD or Linux. The same can be said for all the other major manufacturers. Ink cost is also an issue and with HP you can at least resort to refilling the cartridges yourself, which reduces the cost about 4 to 5 times.

Re:Greedy?

[hcdejong]

If it works like Epson's printers, you do have a big problem when the print head clogs, though. At least with an HP, you swap out the print head with the cartridge.

Re:Import printers?

[AndrewRUK]

You'd think that, wouldn't you? But from TFA:

Nintendo sells the same Game Boy Advance SP everywhere. But the ones sold in the U.S., which cost nearly 30% less than in Europe, come with a single-voltage power adaptor that won't work in Europe.

And:

[Guy in Fiji bought an iMac in the US, which went bang when plugged in in Fiji (240V) because] iMac G5s sold in the U.S. are designed to work only with the electric power systems in the U.S. and Japan ... The iMac G5s Apple sells everywhere except the U.S. and Japan are dual voltage, meaning they can cope with the electrical systems in Fiji, Europe and most of Asia, as well as those in Japan and the U.S.

The trick is, that although different power supplies increase manufacturing costs, they also increase the company's ability to price fix internationally.

Re:But you have no real alternatives...

[MS_is_the_best]

Buy a samsung. They even deliver with linux drivers, but you don't need them, drivers are included with your favorite distro, so it is plug and no need to pray..

(no affl. etc., just my experience).

Re:First they came for the DVD's

[Anonymous Coward]

Just as a reference [wikipedia.org].

Samsung offers Linux Drivers

[karlk79]

Please people speak with your wallet. Next printer purchase put Samsung printers in consideration, since they offer Linux drivers. I am not "with" samsung, just I only consider, linux supported printers. To get other markets to open these days there has to be a few that start making it profitable to do so.

Re:Where's AntiTrust when you need them?

[Jim_Maryland]

About two years ago, my company delivered a complete solution (hardware, software, training) to Turkey and the equipment was purchased in the US to be preconfigured. This included the printers (HP) and (HP) plotters (no, they didn't need configured really but the customer wanted a thorough test of the system, including output) as part of the US purchased equipment list. Now I'm sure the end users would just be thrilled if they had to purchase replacment cartridges from the US rather then going to their local suppliers.

Region encoding consumable items just sounds like a greedy scheme without benefits for the consumers.

Re:Buy a Postscript printer

[B2382F29]

Buy a Kyocera, prices per paper are very small (cheap toner and low energy consumption)

Re:My opinion: Fire Carly Fiorina!

[lacheur]

While I agree with your sentiment, comparing the laserjet 6 with the laserjet 4 is a little disengenous. The LJ6 was never meant to be a replacement for the much more serious LJ4. A more valid comparison would be between the LJ4 and LJ4000, which came out roughly around the time of the LJ6. The LJ4 retailed for around $2000, as did the LJ4000. The LJ6 retailed for under $800.

The LJ4000 is a fine printer in my opinion, as are its successors, the 4050 and to a lesser extent the 4100. I do agree though, that the LJ4 probably beats them all for sheer tanklike reliability.

Re:My opinion: Fire Carly Fiorina!

[RichMeatyTaste]

FYI the LaserJet 4, 4 Plus, and 5 (all built nearly identical engines/drivetrains) are by far one of the best printers HP ever built.
Not only is it built like a tank, and idiot with nothing more than a phillips screwdriver and access to google can fix it. I've seen LJ 4's with over 500K pages that haven't even been serviced once!
Of course toners are expensive, but one cart would last a home user for years.

Re:My opinion: Fire Carly Fiorina!

[The Archon V2.0]

>What happened to HP? They used to have good
>hardware that was extremely reliable and which
>performed well.

Yeah, they did. I worked at EDS for a while, back when the HP Deskjet support contract (which EDS holds a good chunk of) was still in North America. When I started, the 900 series was just winding down. Some of the sacrificial lambs we'd poke and prod while on a call actually printed fine a month or two being abused by the newbies. If some part sprung out of place and was blocking the paper route, snapping it off would sometimes even fix things. (Unless it was metal, then giving it a good shove with a screwdriver or sturdy pen would force it back into place.)

And then the 3x00s came along. A bunch of infernal breadboxes. Less than a week in the stores, and the second tier tells us NEVER to force anything back into place, because it's all plastic now and it'll break into pieces if you try. Basically the only hardware fix we were allowed to try was rolling the wheels, which doesn't work all that often. Everything else we could do to another model printer, we were warned away from on the grounds that it would break something.

The sacrificial demos we had looked eviscerated within a week or two - any amount of force anywhere would break something. Any weaker and they'd be made of glass. (Which would've at least looked cooler.)

And it didn't help that - the way I heard it - Parts Distribution was refusing to send ordered parts out and lying about stock levels to keep its budget and call time down. While I can't verify it, I DO remember when an agent in another department and I spent two hours (four man-hours total, not counting our supervisors, who got involved eventually) trying to beat Parts into sending a set of cables out to someone who'd been gypped out of a set.

Don't know what was going on there, but someone on the hardware end suddenly got *really* cheap, both in design and in distribution. Of course, it was cheap on the support end, too, but that's another story and another rant....)