I find it interesting that many commenters here do not regard anything as 'competitive' unless it offers the same price/performance, while completely disregarding these lock-ins and privacy invasions. It seems that the reason we have all these restrictive and otherwise problematic companies is that you folks just do not assign a cost to their behaviour.

I was not aware of this behaviour when I bought it.

But you raise a good issue: are they selling these at a loss in order to leverage some sort of lock-in? If that's the reason they're so cheap, that's important to know.

I honestly wouldn't mind paying twice as much for something that's more open. But it's also an issue I haven't looked very deeply into. For my first 3d printer I just wanted something cheap and foolproof.