[HN Gopher] Thoughts on Intel software-defined silicon
___________________________________________________________________
Thoughts on Intel software-defined silicon
Author : pabs3
Score : 142 points
Date : 2022-02-19 06:44 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lwn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (lwn.net)
| axiolite wrote:
| This could be good for consumers if implemented reasonably. If
| Intel can save money having just one product line, selling i7s at
| Celeron prices with cores just disabled in software, it could be
| good for everyone. Their method of disabling will probably take
| some time to crack, so people who buy these at Celeron prices can
| sell them as i7s, flooding the used market with good-performing
| CPUs.
|
| We already see this with other hardware... Think Dell iDRACs and
| HP iLOs, which just need a few tricks to get all those licensed
| features once they're out-of-support and the vendor isn't keeping
| track of them as part of the support contract.
|
| I'd also like to think this will lower the bar on upgrades during
| sales negotiations. HP, Dell and Lenovo are trying to get you to
| buy 100+ servers from them instead of their competitors, one of
| them might offer a free software upgrade for the CPUs as part of
| the deal, since it really doesn't cost anyone anything to do
| so... We've all seen deep discounts on software sales/licenses
| because their per-unit cost is nominally $0, now that model may
| be extended to hardware.
|
| Of course the counter-point that comes to mind is IP-KVMs. If
| you've seen them being sold used for $20, that's because the
| hardware is useless without an ongoing subscription from the
| vendor. I suspect that only persists because IP-KVMs are too
| small of a market to attract the kind of effort needed to crack
| the mechanisms.
|
| We'll have to wait and see.
| burnte wrote:
| This won't save them money, it'll just extract more from us.
| It'll make upgrades easier, but at the expense of witholding
| things from the start. They'll still bin CPUs so they sell the
| top performers at top prices.
| hughrr wrote:
| I'm rather a fan of this sort of stuff but only with my middle
| finger firmly raised at the vendor. Electronic test equipment has
| been doing this for a long time. You can buy a base model item
| for $1000 and crack it to the $5000 part in thirty seconds.
| benreesman wrote:
| I like your style, but if Intel has phabbed a run of 1000 chips
| that are worth un-breaking because someone got EUV moving I
| missed that news.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| I think some vendors are doing it for purpose, there are
| trivial to use keygens available for years and they are doing
| nothing to stop it. That way they can increase value for
| hobbyists (who couldn't afford to pay for more than base model
| anyway, but they will pick it over competition which cannot be
| easily unlocked) but still earn more from big customers who
| have money and aren't willing to use keygens.
| snackypoo wrote:
| I'll simply boycott Intel if they follow through with this. AMDs
| offerings have been far better value for some time now but Intel
| was always an option at a lower price point. Now it's AMD or
| nothing, and so I think in fact this strategy gives AMD too much
| power.
| 5e92cb50239222b wrote:
| Unless they follow Intel's lead like that did with IME.
| xattt wrote:
| AMD is working towards integrating the Pluton security
| processor.
| snackypoo wrote:
| That's also a problem. I had high hopes for 'free' RISC-V
| alternatives while not really being a fan of the ISA, but
| Intel's 'foundary innovation' chiplet program is totally
| unacceptable - because it keeps a company I simply don't
| trust (ME) controlling the root of trust in silicon where
| the most desirable quality is the absence of exactly that.
| I may end up using Ampere chips in spite of a distaste of
| ARM. I'm also seriously pursuing an OpenSPARC based SoC,
| with a test design through Skywater. At the latest process
| node SPARC V9 is plenty competitive and there's a clear
| market for a high core count SoC absent of additional IP. I
| just need a modern memory controller. I'm going to document
| the process at silicon.engineering although that site is
| just a placeholder now.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| So I saw a comment once which suggested all intel cpu's are the
| same and they just disable certain features before its sold.
|
| So this article would make sense when thinking about the above
| comment, only instead of features being factory fused or
| disabled, they become a payable option which might be a one time
| fee or an option which can be switched on for a period of time.
|
| From a recycling point of view, it would make sense, people dont
| have to throw away a computer or shelve it when they want to
| upgrade, but I cant help but think what about the realisation
| over time people may come to if this instruction set on/off
| service/rental/purchase becomes an option? Would that then harm
| intel or not if it became known that and would that spawn some
| new hacking interest in microcode or whatever it is that controls
| the enabling of different instruction sets?
| BeetleB wrote:
| > So I saw a comment once which suggested all intel cpu's are
| the same and they just disable certain features before its
| sold.
|
| Really not true. What happens is that during manufacturing of a
| particular design, you get a distribution - not all units will
| have all features working. They analyze the data, and partition
| the units into segments based on (common) features that do
| work. Those on the tail end of the distribution (on the
| positive side) are the most featureful and sold with a premium.
| And so on from there.
|
| If they actually tried to manufacture different CPUs for high
| and low end features, then each of those would have their own
| distributions, and they'd waste a lot of units for not meeting
| the spec. This way they can simplify the production and not
| waste the units.
| togs wrote:
| Oh interesting, I didn't know this. So an i3 is just
| partially botched i7
| BeetleB wrote:
| I believe so.
|
| Not saying they may not _also_ do what the GP said, but
| from what I 've heard most of it is my explanation. I think
| his comment is more applicable to the data center chips
| they make, and less for the consumer chips.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Haven't Intel tried this before?
|
| A quick search hints at [1] circa 2010, but I think I recall a
| previous attempt circa 2004
|
| I'm pretty sure it was unpopular and short-lived.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service
| pabs3 wrote:
| Yeah, the LWN comments mention that Intel attempt and some
| other ones like the RPi video decoders.
| benreesman wrote:
| I hate to be a hater, I grew up on Intel. But they've been
| doing increasingly desperate cash-grab stuff for years and
| years now. Oh great, let's default all the ML stuff to the SIMD
| extension that doesn't de-clock you. How did I ever live
| without it.
|
| I want them to win on some level, but this isn't how to do
| that. If I had to I could tweak/fix/touch-up re-build all my
| stuff on ARM and life would go on.
| trasz wrote:
| Sounds like what IBM is doing with mainframes - you always get a
| standard CPU module full of cores, and then pay for license to
| selectively unlock them. It's been like this for... two decades
| now?
| classichasclass wrote:
| IBM does this with their Power iron too. I had to get a
| Capacity on Demand (more like Crippled by Default) code to get
| the second CPU in my AIX POWER6 turned on. When the system
| planar had to be replaced, it had to be regenerated. What a
| pain.
|
| OpenPOWER and PowerNV systems running on the metal don't do
| this, but if there's an LPAR involved (AIX, i5), you could be
| on the hook. The moral of the story is to buy your Power gear
| from a company like Raptor unless you must run AIX.
| p_l wrote:
| Shorter, used to be that you still had different CPU books
| (still might be so) but the leasing model where it often makes
| sense for IBM to ship more hw than less is very popular with
| clients.
|
| Prime difference might be that from money point of view the way
| IBM handles it does end up in savings for the client (as it
| allows a pay-for-use/capacity rather than pay-for-hw model, and
| you can go 90% of the month in cheaper configuration and only
| pay for higher one for end of month/year ops).
|
| Another difference is that technically with IBM you're paying a
| license for microcode running on the CPUs, and you mix and
| match differently licensed versions to match your workload.
| indymike wrote:
| Intel is behaving as a monopolist, but they do not have a
| monopoly. This move will fail spectacularly because no one will
| be forced to adopt the feature, and the engineering effort going
| into software defined silicon is mostly waste of human capital.
| valyagolev wrote:
| lots of slippery-slope-type ideas come to mind, including time-
| limited subscriptions that weren't mentioned in the article
|
| i think that environmental/ recycling/ reusage argument can be a
| good basis for a campaign for a blanket ban against any such
| measures in any customer electronics. it seems like a very
| important battle
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Will this result in an illegal number situation once the keys are
| found?
|
| Also, to steel man Intel's position, reducing hardware skus can
| improve yield and increase quality (due to the known silicon
| lottery phenomenon), that is one abstract benefit to consumers.
|
| This is basically taking the tiered SAAS and trying to manifest
| that business model ability into hardware.
| le-mark wrote:
| > This is basically taking the tiered SAAS and trying to
| manifest that business model ability into hardware.
|
| IBM did it for years with mainframe pricing, they had excess
| mips installed and allowed burstable performance setups for a
| fee, on hardware you "owned". Amazon took this strategy over,
| albeit without the ownership sham. Now Intel wants a slice.
| It's turtles (ie greedy MBAs) all the way down.
| protomyth wrote:
| IBM also did it with their POWER AIX boxes. The big
| difference was those instances were Business To Business
| contracts and not consumers. I get the feeling the consumer
| market will react differently to Intel.
| chaosite wrote:
| The threat in business to business contracts, in addition
| to "we'll sue you" for licensing violations, is "that's an
| unsupported configuration, you're on your own."
| pmorici wrote:
| Depends on how they implement it. They will probably do it in a
| way where the license is linked to the processor's serial
| number via cryptographic signature using public / private key
| pair so it can't be installed on more than the part it is meant
| for.
|
| In that case, that number has no use except with that specific
| processor. This is different than how DRM content protection
| works because the nature of that problem is different.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Fully-functioning silicon being wasted on paywalled features.
| When there's a semiconductor shortage. It's a greedy and wasteful
| idea in any day and age, but right now it comes off as tone-deaf,
| too.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| CPU binning (with fuses) already wastes "good" silicon. An i3
| is just an i7 that wasn't as good and had some features
| disabled. See also: the "silicon lottery" for more info. It's
| been this way since the beginning. All this is doing is
| replacing unrepairable fuses with ones that can be disabled
| after the fact.
|
| _Theoretically,_ this is just giving you access to the
| features that would've been permanently fused off, but still
| good. Is it scummy? Yes. But is it wasting any more silicon
| than before? No.
| notriddle wrote:
| The semiconductor shortage is caused by shipping bottlenecks,
| not raw materials.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| CPU manufacturing is already impossible to compete with. This, I
| believe, will give Intel too much power. They will be able to
| sell processors at a loss if they can remove features after the
| fact (make the money back in subscription after the "free trial")
| and undercut any possible competitor out of the market.
|
| For example, Intel could offer, say Zhaoxin's level of
| performance for free for a short time, making sure companies like
| Zhaoxin never make into the consumer market.
|
| This is a great move for Intel but terrible for the consumers.
| Laforet wrote:
| It's not like they have not tried. At few years back in time,
| the market was flooded with cheap x86 tablets because Intel was
| pretty much handing out pallets of Bay Trail SoC for free to
| any willing manufacturer in an attempt to kick start an mobile
| ecosystem. Suffice to say it never got any traction.
| benreesman wrote:
| Intel has a better story for not being stomped on via process
| than they did a year ago, but that chip still isn't like on AWS.
|
| Maybe get your shit together on being eaten alive on one side by
| aarch64 and Threadripper on the other before inventing some new
| way that what used to be called a nasty zero day is now a
| "feature"?
| flenserboy wrote:
| We're going to end up using vetted RISC-V FPGAs, aren't we? It
| could be that there will be a significant speed / security divide
| that will only grow; not a fun world to live in, but one which
| might become a necessity.
| diegocg wrote:
| I can't wait until people finds exploits to get those features
| for free
| ris wrote:
| I'm interested in what the legal basis for this is. If someone
| found a way to circumvent the check (and presumably they will),
| what law would they be breaking by unlocking everything in sight?
| h2odragon wrote:
| Welcome Intel's patches for their planned use of the facility.
| Then welcome anyone else's patches that allow _un_ planned use of
| the facility; and tell Intel to piss up a rope when they whine
| about that.
| mlindner wrote:
| This is really the beginning of the end then. This is the same
| route that IBM went before it's failure in the business market
| with vendor lock-in and other nonsense. I had hoped that intel
| could recover but they don't seem to want to.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| > an off-the-shelf processor might be unable to run anything more
| demanding than "hello world" until additional licenses have been
| purchased.
|
| That's probably a bit extreme, but generally the right train of
| thought.
| Tsiklon wrote:
| This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, as it feels potentially
| quite predatory.
|
| I think this will almost certainly be used to either kill second
| hand processor sales (by either burning the processor to a given
| motherboard), or to allow Intel to double dip post sale, much
| like EA's "project ten dollar" did with used video games.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Yup. Like Tesla, I am certain that extra features will not
| transfer during resale. If they already plan to lock us out of
| working hardware, you can be damn sure they plan to charge us
| for those same features every time that chip is resold.
|
| Seriously, does anyone believe otherwise? This is straight out
| of the rent-seeking playbook.
| coobird wrote:
| It may be easy to dismiss Intel's move to SDSi by saying "just
| buy AMD instead," but if this model turns out to be lucrative
| enough, there's no guarantee that AMD wouldn't follow suit. We'll
| have to see how this plays out and how it will affect the x86
| landscape.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I cannot imagine this bet paying off for Intel, because I will
| be choosing AMD in all of the workstations for my engineering
| group. Beyond my own group, I will use my influence to be sure
| my entire organization avoids them as much as possible.
|
| If anything, I expect this will hurt them where it counts. IT
| folk will not be amused and find other places to spend their
| money. The decision to lock up working silicon is radioactive
| and will have long lasting consequences on buying. I like to
| imagine this sort of decision being made across the world, as
| other engineers learn of these anti-consumer shenanigans and
| make waves in their own organizations.
| ac29 wrote:
| > I will be choosing AMD in all of the workstations for my
| engineering group
|
| Too bad AMD has largely ignored the workstation market. The
| last threadripper release was mid 2020 and is a Zen 2
| product. Newer Zen3 based chips have been credibly rumoured,
| but AMD themselves havent said anything about it.
| theevilsharpie wrote:
| > Too bad AMD has largely ignored the workstation market.
| The last threadripper release was mid 2020 and is a Zen 2
| product.
|
| Intel has also been ignoring the workstation market
| (although perhaps not by choice).
|
| Despite the current-model Threadripper being nearly two-
| years old and last generation technology, it is still far
| and away the performance leader in that segment in terms of
| perf/watt, perf/dollar, and oftentimes outright
| performance.
| ponow wrote:
| My only real concern here is whether the manufacturer may be able
| to unilaterally _limit_ already-enabled hardware capabilities in
| the future. If they can do so without your express consent _at
| the time that the capability is downgraded_, well then one can
| fairly say that the capability is not owned. That would be
| tragic.
| vardump wrote:
| Seeing only negative comments here, a bit of a counterpoint: I
| welcome this, if it means the sales price of the CPU will be
| _significantly lower_. This could be better than charging
| everyone a higher price, even for those who never touch the to-
| be-paywalled features.
|
| Although it does depend on what kind of features are paywalled. I
| can see many ways how this could turn into a disaster for
| consumers.
| atq2119 wrote:
| Any feature that's a serious benefit for raw performance takes
| up serious area. At Intel's volumes, it's better to produce a
| different (and smaller) die for performance-based market
| segmentations.
|
| Expect this to be used for features that are comparatively
| cheap in terms of area but valuable for enterprise.
| Virtualization features, ECC, that sort of thing.
|
| This will slow the adoption of those features in software
| ecosystems since many developers still quite reasonably focus
| on stuff that works on their local machine.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Intel seems to be able to economically produce Core-series
| mainstream chips that contain huge but disabled AVX-512
| units. I think the die area concern may not be so important.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Yep, Intel clearly hasn't learned a single thing from the
| disaster that has been price segmentation on features like
| AVX-512, the result is the vast majority of software never
| bothering to use it, because it can't be guaranteed to
| actually be present.
| namibj wrote:
| I'd argue exposing the IEEE 754 binary64 (aka f64; aka
| double) FMA unit's `((u52 * u52) & (1 << 51)) + u64` and
| `((u52 * u52) >> 52) + u64` (low half/high half,
| respectively) in the AVX-512IFMA instruction set was quite
| effective for the cost being comparatively cheap bypassing of
| exponent/sign handling and corresponding instruction decoder
| additions.
|
| Note: these help for wide multiply, as needed most prominent
| by ed25519 and RSA. They do apply for "just" 256bit vectors
| using 4 lanes of 64bit (where multiplicands are just the low
| 52bits), without the AVX-512-typical clock penalty.
|
| In similar spirit, it would have been nice to get emulated
| AVX-512 on AMD and Intel's E-cores, as it uses just one
| instruction to process twice the width, reducing the frontend
| throughout requirements. Also said AVX-512IFMA is rather
| nice, regardless of vector width.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| information asymmetry and lack of competition pretty much
| absolutely guarantees there will be no _significantly lower_
| involved
| jesprenj wrote:
| > And, of course, there are dodgy web sites out there demanding
| payments for access to their content.
|
| Nice self reflection (:
| silvercove wrote:
| xoa wrote:
| Some of the LWN comments suggest this is similar to
| previous/existing gating of features being fused off for example
| or only some cores being enabled. I think this looks very
| significantly worse for multiple reasons though. While clearly
| much of it is pure segmentation for pricing, fusing
| features/cores can have genuine yield justification too. If some
| silicon is simply off for good then it doesn't need to work let
| alone be stable, so if testing reveals defects that can be a
| reasonable way to salvage a chip. That the lower probability and
| thus lower count defect free chips would cost more made sense.
| And fusing also at least requires commitment: once done, the chip
| is permanently less valuable, which is at least some check on
| overly aggressive artificial monetization.
|
| The perverse incentives here seem a ton worse. There is direct
| incentive to be very aggressive with it, because even if they get
| the balance wrong they can adjust it later and employ all the
| marketing stuff done with software (50% off sale on vector math
| acceleration 2 days only!). It'll by definition always be used
| with features that the chips are fully capable of and thus even
| further pushes towards tiering capabilities without any
| connection to yield. The centralized control requirements moving
| further into underlying hardware are concerning as well from a
| redundancy and security perspective. I'm a big believer in
| businesses following the incentive tracks they create long term,
| for better and for worse. With this development, Intel's are
| diverging further from their customers'.
|
| About the best that can be said is that at least the market now
| is a lot more competitive. Between Intel's fab woes, TSMC, AMD
| and both Arm and burgeoning RISC-V efforts, Intel is more on than
| I think they've been in a very long time. Maybe ever? Which does
| make it all the more curious to me why they're trying this now of
| all times. Seems like 5-7 years ago they'd have really has us.
| Now though it's just another thing in strong competitors favor.
| The end of a lot of core x86-64 patents is starting to kick off
| too. Or maybe Intel thinks this will let them do sticker prices
| that are drastically lower and thus look better vs AMD et al even
| as they can still extract more money in the end? It's worrying.
| In fact now that I think more on it, Intel weakening but using
| this brings its _own_ extra worries. If they feel the need (or
| are forced) to juice returns for shareholders and themselves down
| the road if their competitiveness falters, or even if they regain
| dominance, they will have an installed base with a capability to
| squeeze it.
| snek_case wrote:
| The worst thing here would be recurring payments, and also
| maybe the idea that Intel can act like platform providers, and
| revoke your CPU's license to execute code if they deem your
| usage unacceptable. Just another step towards you not owning
| the hardware you already paid for.
|
| I hope AMD doesn't copy this. Intel has been on a downwards
| trend recently and maybe this is just a dumb, desperate move
| from them. As you say the landscape is getting more
| competitive, which is a good thing for consumers.
| Someone wrote:
| > Just another step towards you not owning the hardware you
| already paid for.
|
| I understand the sentiment, but Intel will argue you didn't
| pay in full for your hardware, so you didn't pay for the
| features you won't be able to use.
|
| I see this as a continuum. At one extreme end, you pay a lump
| sum for perpetual use of the hardware ("buying"). At the
| other extreme end, they lend you the hardware as long as you
| have a subscription to their offerings ("renting"). Somewhere
| in-between, they offer you some basic functionality or a
| lower subscription rate if you pay a sum up front.
|
| We have that intermediate with cable subscriptions. You get X
| channels with the subscription, but have to pay extra for
| others, or for a higher quality signal.
|
| Again, I understand the sentiment, but I don't think that you
| can claim you paid for something if the seller says you
| didn't, and the seller advertised that you wouldn't get what
| you think you bought for the price.
|
| And yes, I can understand customers not being happy about
| this.
| [deleted]
| togs wrote:
| Agreed. Everything is becoming a service and we just sort
| of need to deal with it.
| salawat wrote:
| No, we don't. We need to enforce right of First Sale, and
| stop propping up predatory buisness models by giving them
| a free pass.
|
| The moment things started to not ship with programming
| guides, and everyone started hiding their IC schemata and
| docs for fear of being sued were the first steps down
| this path we're going down.
|
| I will not continue to follow it blindly, and I hope more
| people will join me as well. This has to stop.
| ponow wrote:
| Independent of copyright law, people have a more
| fundamental right to contract as they wish. If people
| wish to pay less by allowing a lack of full control of
| hardware in their possession, then we shouldn't stop
| them. To assert otherwise is to deny them a basic
| liberty. True, if many accept such limitations then it
| creates a kind of market pressure, but that's just
| competition, and we have no natural right to be protected
| from competition.
| snek_case wrote:
| I think at some point, it will become a competitive
| advantage to sell devices and platforms that are not
| locked in. Kind of like the way Linux crushed the
| competition in the server space. Open hardware might
| eventually become what everybody wants. Seems like right
| now everyone is on a path to Windowsify everything, but
| that could change.
|
| Sounds crazy? Keep in mind, people used to pay money for
| programming language licenses. How many people are doing
| that anymore? Are the people who pay for that kind of
| stuff competitive businesses?
| smolder wrote:
| We can deal with it by not buying them.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >and revoke your CPU's license to execute code if they deem
| your usage unacceptable
|
| Is this even possible? Revocation is not simple to do
| especially if the CPU isn't connected to the internet.
| to11mtm wrote:
| > I hope AMD doesn't copy this. Intel has been on a downwards
| trend recently and maybe this is just a dumb, desperate move
| from them. As you say the landscape is getting more
| competitive, which is a good thing for consumers.
|
| IDK. EPYCs board-lock to boards with Platform by blowing
| e-fuses. In some ways that's a bit more painful. (I get that
| it supposedly provides a Secure Boot. OTOH HP has supposedly
| done similar without having to blow the fuses.)
| voakbasda wrote:
| I will be shocked if they do not make this a subscription
| based feature. And honestly, do you trust them not to make it
| one in the future? If given the opportunity, I expect them to
| seek rent.
| tomxor wrote:
| > Or maybe Intel thinks this will let them do sticker prices
| that are drastically lower and thus look better vs AMD et al
| even as they can still extract more money in the end? It's
| worrying. In fact now that I think more on it, Intel weakening
| but using this [...] they will have an installed base with a
| capability to squeeze it.
|
| I think this is the most concerning possibility... people
| building servers or devs and gamers will be able to wise up to
| the shenanigans and then pick a competitor; but punters walking
| around a computer store are not going to appreciate the
| differences if Intel get away with making big claims on the
| sticker (possibly even spinning "software defined silicon" as a
| way for them to upgrade hardware over the wire) - for the
| average consumer this would making an already difficult to
| achieve informed comparisons hopeless.
|
| Reality may be different though, it's easy to assume the worst
| with the blue chips - perhaps this is just an optimisation on
| their current practices rather than a squeeze on customers, the
| concern is of course if they will exploit this new capability
| to the full potential we are all speculating on.
| snek_case wrote:
| > Intel get away with making big claims on the sticker
| (possibly even spinning "software defined silicon" as a way
| for them to upgrade hardware over the wire)
|
| Kind of like buy now, pay later. You can buy this cheap
| computer now but don't worry, you can always upgrade it
| later.
| dr_zoidberg wrote:
| > ...but punters walking around a computer store are not
| going to appreciate the differences if Intel get away with
| making big claims on the sticker (possibly even spinning
| "software defined silicon" as a way for them to upgrade
| hardware over the wire) - for the average consumer this would
| making an already difficult to achieve informed comparisons
| hopeless.
|
| This. I can already imagine it: "hey, my notebook was getting
| a bit sluggish, but I upgraded it over the internet with
| Software Defined Silicon(TM) and just spent $100 instead of
| $500 that a new one would've costed".
|
| And everyone who knows the "extra" capabilities were already
| there to begin with would be screaming on the inside.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Why?
|
| Old laptop would have cost $100 more if they optioned it in
| at purchase like we currently do.
|
| That'd be a neat trick to be honest, buy a base CPU, and if
| it works for your usage you saved, if not, buy the upgrade.
|
| Subscriptions getting non technical users are the only way
| this goes wrong, and not saying it won't, but that's not
| really where things are at.
|
| -
|
| HP is doing that with ink, I was truly deeply horrified to
| find out my mother pays a subscription for her printer.
|
| The printer won't work without internet, even for local
| printing.
|
| And you pay per page, not for ink. So they send you ink
| whenever you're out for "free", but if you run out of pages
| you can't print anymore...
| charcircuit wrote:
| >So they send you ink whenever you're out for "free"
|
| Actually they try and predict when you will run out as
| opposed to waiting for you to run out.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of the HP ink subscription for privacy
| reasons (but my mom likes it), but isn't most of your
| comment just wrong?
|
| - IIRC the printer will work without internet for a while
| (a week?), eventually you'll have to hook it back up
| though. (Makes sense to me if you're paying by the page.)
|
| - You can't run out of pages. If you overrun your
| subscription, you just pay a few cents per extra page.
| Also, you can carry over pages up to a few months (so if
| your subscription is for 100 pages/month, and you didn't
| print in the last 2 months, you can print 300 pages this
| month without having to pay extra).
|
| - Cost-wise, the subscription is actually a pretty good
| value compared to buying cartridges outright.
| ziml77 wrote:
| You don't have to imagine it
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Upgrade_Service
|
| But it sounds like the pushback was strong enough that it
| was quickly killed off.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-02-19 23:02 UTC)