Summary
Don't buy an HP printer.
HP has a dark pattern business model where they want to lock you in to an app-based, subscription-based, surveillance-based business model. If you refuse to sign up, the printer will literally stop printing.
But you can refuse to participate by not buying an HP printer.
I'm saying this as someone who is surrounded by HP computers, but given that they have embraced this despicable business model for printers, you probably shouldn't buy any HP products anymore at all.
Details
HP printers with an "e" on the end are evil. No wait, I mean they are mandatory HP+ printers.
You might think you bought a printer, and that you own it, and you can just print to it over USB, but actually HP considers that it is their printer, and they can turn it off whenever they want if you don't obey them.
Even if you print solely over USB, eventually an internal counter will click over and that's it. It won't print any more. It will just cough up an "error" message:
Your HP+ printer must be set up using the HP Smart app. Visit (website) to download the app and complete the guided setup. Any pages you printed were intended for setup and have been exhausted. ...
I will also mention it is profoundly unethical for a programmer to have written the code that disables this printer, but the onus is really on their employer who came up with this terrible business model.
HP argues entirely disingenuously that the onus is on you, the busy consumer, to somehow know that all the "e" printers have this business model and to in the spirit of the free market simply select a different non-"e" HP printer.
Well, what I'm going to do in the free market is never, ever, buy anything from HP again.
Meanwhile, my now-crippled HP LaserJet M140we is going into the garbage, contributing to a stream of electronic waste that this industry cheerfully creates.
If you want more on the history of HP and other printer companies doing terrible things, you can read Boing Boing https://boingboing.net/tag/hp
Emergency Workaround
If you're lucky, the printer may print the very first page (and only the very first page) you send it over USB at startup, so you may be able to print multiple pages using the painful workaround of repeatedly turning the printer on and off and sending one single page after another.
Comments