What are your thoughts about HP Instant Ink?
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@thanksaj said:
I won't deny that if you have 1 bad batch of ink that ruins a printer and it happens to be after 9 good batches that saved you a ton of money, that's fine. But what if that bad batch is on the first or second round? It can happen.
Wearing a seatbelt can kill you by trapping you in a burning car, it happens. It's rare. But, on average, wearing a seatbelt saves lives, a lot of them. You don't put your life at risk 99% of the time in the fear of surviving the one rare case where the seatbelt is what endangers you. Same here. You take the path that, on average, saves you money.
It's like Best Buy insurance. Everyone knows that it is a rip off. Sure, your equipment might die and it might have saved you, but on average it costs you an arm and a leg. You have to look at the average, not the fear factor.
Both crappy insurance and OEM ink rely on emotion and irrational thinking to make sales by scaring people into not doing the math. It doesn't matter if you get hit with your "bad ink" on the first or tenth time, it's the average over all ink that you ever buy that saves you the money. If you buy OEM ink, you are guaranteeing that you will lose, just not necessarily on day one.
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@thanksaj said:
@IRJ said:
@thanksaj said:
@Dashrender said:
@thanksaj said:
@Dashrender said:
But do you still support the purchasing of OEM only ink for normal home users considering the current paradigm?
For basic documents, etc, it's fine. But never use 3rd party in a photo printer being used for photos, or anything high quality...
Why do they use cheaper ink?
The ink isn't typically up to snuff, but it also has to do with the cartridge itself. Most 3rd party cartridges are remans. They buy used up <insert brand here> cartridges and rework the chip on them and refill them with their own ink. Some ink is pretty close, other ink is not even in the parking lot of the rival's ballpark...it depends and it's completely luck of the draw figuring out which is good and which is bad...
The cartridges you buy for inkjets have a life built-in...after they use up the ink in them, the cartridge itself is generally pretty well shot too, not just out of ink. That's how they're designed. 3rd party basically takes something used up and broken and tries to make it work again. This is why 3rd party cartridges, as a rule, have so many issues and are so unreliable. OEM works because they are always new and always use what is best for that given make and model of machine.
The only exception to using 3rd party vs OEM is when you do things like print with edible ink, for cakes, etc. OEM doesn't make that, so 3rd party is the only way to go. That being said, most people know what they're getting into with that and are prepared for it...
The reasons why third party are bad aren't actually relevant and I think dwelling on them is what misleads you. At the end of the day it is the cost calculation and nothing else that matters. And that calculation appears to show that third party ink is the huge winner, no real room for error as it appears to win by a landslide financially. At least with the printers and ink in the examples. Looking into why third party ink fails is getting into details that are already included in the cost calculation so while it is a point of interest, it doesn't change the actual decision which showed that third party ink was cheaper - even when it fails more than usual.
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@StrongBad Or compare it to the lotto. It's really the lottery in reverse. People will often play the lotto thinking "but I might get lucky" and one in a million really do get lucky, but you are more likely to be hit by falling airplane debris. The same with buying OEM ink. Sure, you might get lucky, but the odds are against you. The solid, rational decision is to not play the lotto at all and while you might not strike it rich you are guaranteed not to lose unnecessary money and the reality is that you were never going to actually win and never buy OEM ink because third party ink is cheap and mostly reliable. Playing the lott and buying OEM ink are betting against solid odds and yeah, someone might get lucky, but chances are it won't be you.
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@StrongBad said:
@thanksaj said:
@IRJ said:
@thanksaj said:
@Dashrender said:
@thanksaj said:
@Dashrender said:
But do you still support the purchasing of OEM only ink for normal home users considering the current paradigm?
For basic documents, etc, it's fine. But never use 3rd party in a photo printer being used for photos, or anything high quality...
Why do they use cheaper ink?
The ink isn't typically up to snuff, but it also has to do with the cartridge itself. Most 3rd party cartridges are remans. They buy used up <insert brand here> cartridges and rework the chip on them and refill them with their own ink. Some ink is pretty close, other ink is not even in the parking lot of the rival's ballpark...it depends and it's completely luck of the draw figuring out which is good and which is bad...
The cartridges you buy for inkjets have a life built-in...after they use up the ink in them, the cartridge itself is generally pretty well shot too, not just out of ink. That's how they're designed. 3rd party basically takes something used up and broken and tries to make it work again. This is why 3rd party cartridges, as a rule, have so many issues and are so unreliable. OEM works because they are always new and always use what is best for that given make and model of machine.
The only exception to using 3rd party vs OEM is when you do things like print with edible ink, for cakes, etc. OEM doesn't make that, so 3rd party is the only way to go. That being said, most people know what they're getting into with that and are prepared for it...
The reasons why third party are bad aren't actually relevant and I think dwelling on them is what misleads you. At the end of the day it is the cost calculation and nothing else that matters. And that calculation appears to show that third party ink is the huge winner, no real room for error as it appears to win by a landslide financially. At least with the printers and ink in the examples. Looking into why third party ink fails is getting into details that are already included in the cost calculation so while it is a point of interest, it doesn't change the actual decision which showed that third party ink was cheaper - even when it fails more than usual.
To each their own. My inkjets have always been photo printers, so I stick to OEM.
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@thanksaj said:
To each their own. My inkjets have always been photo printers, so I stick to OEM.
"To each their own" is another way of stating that you are avoiding rational thinking and are looking for a justification for it. It's a financial business decision, if there isn't a reason for OEM ink, why buy it? If you know that you are wasting money and getting nothing for it, why do it? There should be a reason for your decision making. If you are struggling to rationalize it, do some self reflection and look for "reverse rationalization" - the thing that the mind does when we make an emotional decision but the brain attempts to rationalize something, after the fact, that wasn't rational up front. It's a standard thing that all people do. You have to tackle it to learn to improve your own decision making processes.
Now if you are really doing nothing but photo printing, but is that the case? I tried this and it was insane. It was so expensive that I could do Walgreens for 10% of the price, even including the gas to drive there. It was several dollars per page to print at home with an HP Proto Printer.
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A great book that talks about reverse rationalization and how humans make decisions faster than our brains can rationalize but, being human, we can't accept being non-rational and then faking rational thought after the fact is Predictably Irrational. I highly recommend it. It helped me to step back and recognize my own irrationality and accept that all people are irrational unless forced not to be and it really opened my eyes. Reading forums like this the amount that I see of people defending decisions that obviously had little thought into them in the first place with tons and tons of failed logic after the fact or just attempting to justify decisions that were made long ago because they won't accept that they could have made a bad decision was staggering.
It's helped me accept that I've made tons of bad decisions in the past. Tons and tons. But instead of denying them and covering them up I embrace them and learn not only to make better decisions, but to allow my brain to recognize emotionally driven decision making and circumvent it.
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Another thing that the book taught me about was "middle" marketing. How you can give people fake, insane options on a product and "force" them to buy something they didn't want because it is better than something they obviously would never want. It was really interesting. To the point where they told a Harvard MBA class that they were going to do it and the irrational thinking in the class, even with warning, was so strong that they were still able to maneuver them with the tactic.
And also the idea of the endearment of "objects that we own." If you own a car today and are offered another car of equal value, in every way, nearly all people will passionately want to keep their existing car. It's an emotional thing. The car isn't better, but it is "ours." People do this with houses all of the time. Even when we get something equal or even a little better in return we experience a sense of loss over losing the old item even though it wasn't something we particularly liked. It makes people into hoarders and makes people make bad life decisions, especially around things like housing and investments. They think of those things as treasured possessions rather than as investments that need to maintain value.
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@thanksaj said:
Then again, most people don't print that size...or have the equipment to print that size...however, ask @NetworkNerdWifey about printing that size...it's addicting..
Well I have yet to print that size at home.....
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@NetworkNerdWifey said:
@thanksaj said:
Then again, most people don't print that size...or have the equipment to print that size...however, ask @NetworkNerdWifey about printing that size...it's addicting..
Well I have yet to print that size at home.....
It's kind of like getting tattoos, or so I'm told...
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@scottalanmiller said:
It makes people into hoarders and makes people make bad life decisions, especially around things like housing and investments. They think of those things as treasured possessions rather than as investments that need to maintain value.
It makes people into human beings. Irrationality is sometimes called ruling with the heart instead of head. It's about our souls. It's part of what makes life worth living. If you want to go through life like some uber-rational Dr Spock then fine, but I don't think you should knock others for being more Kirkesque.
I appreciate I'm stretching the analogy somewhat for OEM ink
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@scottalanmiller said:
"To each their own" is another way of stating that you are avoiding rational thinking and are looking for a justification for it.
"To each their own" is also another way of stating that you can't be bothered to argue with someone on the internet about a relatively trivial thing so let's agree to disagree.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
"To each their own" is another way of stating that you are avoiding rational thinking and are looking for a justification for it.
"To each their own" is also another way of stating that you can't be bothered to argue with someone on the internet about a relatively trivial thing so let's agree to disagree.
Thank you.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
"To each their own" is also another way of stating that you can't be bothered to argue with someone on the internet about a relatively trivial thing so let's agree to disagree.
Agree to disagree is another thing that makes no sense to me. It's like stating that you know that you are wrong and are arguing just for the sake of arguing, but realized that everyone knows you don't have a solid argument and were arguing for its own sake not because you had a valid point, but instead of admitting that you state this in the hopes that people let you walk away pretending that you weren't just arguing for its own sake.
Honestly, I find both statements equal and both offensive, to some degree. It means that everyone who was working hard to make a point and demonstrate the importance of good decision making and helping companies were being trolled.
If you are going to take the time to state an opinion, back it up. If you find out that you didn't have a reason for your opinion, admit it. We all have times where we need to do that. Zero shame in that. But defending a point until demonstrated to be incorrect and only then playing the "agree to disagree" card is an attempt at misdirection. It's not agreeing to disagree, it's secretly acknowledging that the point made wasn't valid but not willing to admit it.
This is a very common tactic that I see a lot and it is not professional nor polite. Imagine if you were giving advise to a business or customer, they challenged you on why you were giving reckless or wasteful advice, and your reason was simply "because we agree to disagree."
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He could easily say "given that I've acknowledged that third party ink makes sense for normal printing, I will recommend that to others now that I've realized that OEM ink is wasteful." And then said "but for me, I just like OEM ink and it is my own money, so irrational though it be, that's fine." Nothing wrong with that.
What makes this important and why ignoring the discussion is important is that both here and in real life he advises people on ink to buy. He's shown that, except for doing photo printing which is not a normal task, third party ink is the better choice. He's stated it in the thread above (not in so many words, but he agreed that it was the better business decision) but then went on to keep promoting what was them a known bad decision. That's the concern. If I was a customer and read his comments here, then had him tell me to get OEM ink I would feel that he was scamming me - knowing that third party was better but intentionally giving bad advice.
We are IT professionals. Ignoring what we know to be true, ignoring logic and common sense, isn't about what we buy at home. It's about the advice we give to others. Agreeing to disagree or "intentionally giving bad advice" isn't a trivial thing in many cases. This is other people's money, other people's jobs, that we put on the line. People entrust us to at least attempt to make good decisions and advise them honestly. What we do matters. If it didn't, why do people hire IT pros rather than just making random decisions on their own?
There are only two choices of ink most of the time, one is cost effective, one is not, relatively. If we intentionally give the wrong advice we aren't just failing to give the best advice, we are deciding to intentionally give the worst advice. Sure, the worst advice is probably not the end of the world, but it is bad advice nonetheless and it matters.
And when you work in a printer-centric role like he does, that could, in an extreme case, end up mattering a few times per day. If we say it impacts one person per day at $300 per person savings, that is $1,500 per week or around $70,000 per year (spread over many people, of course) it savings OR loss that that advice would provide just for one person.
Even if this one decision is seen as trivial at this time, learning to recognize good decision making versus bad decision making is a critical IT skill. Without it, we risk not only lacking the value that IT normally has but actually becoming of negative value to the organization.
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So I did some math on this and I've revised my view on this program...
For people with fairly efficient printers, so 8600s basically, if you buy OEM XL cartridges, it's 1.7¢/page for black and 5.8¢/page for color. If you print almost exclusively black and just enough color to keep the cartridges good, as a general rule, it's cheap to buy the cartridges outright. However, the average person, so including non-IT people, go weeks between printing, or go to FL for six months a year and they have their ink dry up, etc. I think the program is great for the list tiers. If you're printing more than the 300 pages/month, the advantage in price starts to disappear. However, for the average person, the HP Ink program is actually a good value.
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Also, they mail the cartridges to you. If you sign up as soon as you buy the printer, they immediately send you a backup set of cartridges to replace your starters when they are used up. Then, as soon as the system detects you've installed that replacement, it automatically sends you a replacement for your hot spare. All that being said, I like this program a lot.
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So I learned from the HP rep who comes to Staples that, to date, over 95% of people who have signed up for the HP instant ink program, which to be fair is relatively new, have kept the subscription so far. Personally, especially for people who are snowbirds or do very minimal printing, this is a very cost-effective solution. The only downside is the printer must maintain an active internet connection for it to work. While this isn't really an issue for most home users, I could see it being an issue, potentially.
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@thanksajdotcom Good to know. Thanks
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That's actually pretty cool, but a bit scary to......Paranoia kicking in
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@BMarie said:
That's actually pretty cool, but a bit scary to......Paranoia kicking in
I've seen their web interface for tracking it too. It's actually pretty neat and clean.
