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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

In Germany, walk down the street to the print shop with a USB drive and give them about 10 cents per page.

There's significant overlap between the few things it's now necessary to print (mainly official forms), and things I wouldn't trust to some clerk at some random print shop, or whatever junk PC they're running the printer off.

That PC is prime malware target (easy access vector since anyone can pay a few Euros to put a USB device into it, lots of opportunity for identity theft, plus the chance of accidental infection from all the thousands of random USB sticks it'll see in its lifetme), and there's no way the employees are security-conscious enough to engage in the appropriate mitigations (re-imaging the PC every day). And the scenario of the print shop employee (probably not paid very much) earning extra cash on the side by selling any valuable personal details they get isn't unimaginable.

Then walk one kilometer and cross the border to France and it's... 50 cents/page. So totally not viable of you have any significant printing to do.

If that's not viable for you, then one of these HP+ printers probably isn't either, even without the subscription. You'd be buying a laser printer or some specialized photo printer.

More realistically, email it to your work email and print it there tomorrow.

It's significantly more than that.

No it's not. https://www.dm.de/services/services-im-markt/fotoservice/cop...

That's a supermarket though where they hope you buy other stuff. Though already colored pages cost 55 cents. In dedicated print shops it usually will be significantly more expensive.

Looked at one local print shop. It's 5 cents per page plus 1€ per order. Of course this is in an area with multiple competing print shops but your assertion is at least not true everywhere.

While dm might hope you buy other stuff from them you definitely don't have to. If you are suggesting that their print service is a loss leader then please show some evidence backing that up.

My evidence is that I never see prices of 10 cents (let alone 5 cents) per b/w page in actual copy shops.

Maybe. That drugstore chain mainly sells hygiene products. Their "main" side-business is printing photos, both digital and on film. (Yes, even in 2024 in Germany it's still possible to hand in your film in a small drugstore and have the photos developed and ready for pick-up a week later.) So I guess printing on normal paper is just a side-side business that developed naturally.

Anyway, the 10c/page (A4 b/w) is still a good estimate, at least when I looked pre-pandemic (it might've increased slightly to 12 or 15c by now). A lot of cities, especially those with a University, have dedicated small "Copyshops" where you can walk in and get your 100+ pages thesis printed and bound within 20min. So the prices and service are aimed mostly at Students. It's true colored pages are significantly more expensive than b/w, but overall that's still cheaper.

> That's a supermarket though where they hope you buy other stuff.

And why does that matter? If there is a shop (idc how it's called) that lets me print for 10c then I chose that.

> Though already colored pages cost 55 cents.

The GP was about documents that you may have to send in / bring physically. I've never seen such institutions demanding the forms being printed on premium paper in color.

Until the next covid lockdown.

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