If we must name a peripheral that generates instant hatred among all computer users, regardless of language, region, chosen brand or installed operating system… it's the printer. Even with years of development behind it, every manufacturer has managed to launch one dreadful model after another, while in the background there is something much worse: their abusive practices when it comes to selling ink, whose original cost is a few cents, and reaches the shelves being more expensive than the tears of a mermaid.
Any effort to understand the economics of printer ink inevitably leads us to the beginning of the so-called "bait and hook model", much better known on the other side of the pond as "razor and blades". The idea behind this model is that an item is offered at a very low price (or free if possible) to then obtain income through a complementary item. Believe it or not, it was not Gillette who invented this model, but its direct competitors who took advantage of the expiration of patents. Even more forceful was the case of John Rockefeller and Standard Oil, with the effective dumping of eight million kerosene lamps in China to boost the demand for fuel.
And so we come to the story of our youtuber of the hour, Gregory Austin McConnell, who ten years ago worked in the telephone technical support section for a high-profile company. Logically, the employer required that its support staff also operate as telemarketing team (in fact, they are trained that way) and try during the session to sell their clients some extra accessory in the catalog.
In one of his many calls, everything seemed ready to close the sale of a printer, and when exploring the list of available models McConnell noticed that each product had two prices, one indicating the final sale value, and another of manufacturing. When he reached the ink section, he discovered the horror: The cartridge package was sold at 60 dollars, but its manufacturing cost was only 23 cents of a dollar.
That makes printer ink one of the ten most expensive liquids in the world, surpassing even human blood. The rest of the video explores the aforementioned "razor and blades" model, and explains the basic construction of a cartridge, which beyond official statements remains a plastic shell full of ink. At the same time, the chips integrated into the cartridges are responsible for generating false notifications about lack of ink once they cross a certain threshold, and in many cases, for detecting when the cartridge has been refilled, accusing the user of being a sinful thief who will burn in hell (?)
The fraud of ink cartridges is so big that it even reached the Supreme Court of the United States ("Impression Products v. Lexmark"), but there's more: Several printer models mix a little cyan ink with the black, accelerating the consumption of the color cartridge. Ink is expensive, cartridges are small and drivers are repulsive, wireless mode almost never works "and" is a security risk... unacceptable. McConnell calls for a radical change in the inkjet printer model, although at first he basically gives us the answer: Abandon that technology, and adopt a laser printer whose toners are easy to hack/refill.
