This is a community for designs specifically crafted to make the experience worse for the user. This can be due to greed, apathy, laziness or just downright scumbaggery.
HP tech here. Stay FAR away from any of their consumer-grade devices. They're cheap, poorly built, and difficult for even HP techs to work on. Save your money and get something with better build quality.
Their business-class devices are okay, because most of those actually have decent build quality and are easily repaired. But stay away from their cheap devices, especially their printers (obviously).
We are also an HP/HPE shop.
Like you said. Not the cheap shit. And definitely not the cheap printer shit!
ProDesk or EliteDesk (maybe even used?)
Thanks for this, good to know. I’ve had nothing but problems with my HP and had many a day of wanting to schwing it out the window.
Any particular brand out there that’s still known for decent build quality? I feel wary of them all now.
I’ve had a Brother laser printer for years now, never given me any issues.
Funny. I was about to mention my brother laser toner printer. Have two. They are black and white but tanks
My Brother "network" laser printer is so old, it has no WiFi or Bluetooth, just an ethernet jack and a USB 1.0 port. Seriously. 1.0. It's that old. I've only had to change the toner cartridge one time because I don't print a ton, but it's a workhorse.
Brother printers are still very decent and most importantly, not DRM ridden.
I love mine... third party toner is dirt cheap and the wireless printing actually works without a cloud service! Just make sure you update the firmware because some models ship with a bug where it won't print after it's been idle for a while.
Get an older version of the HP printers if you like that brand. I've had Officejets 6900 and 7500 and 8500 series. Cartridges still widely available and the printers accept mortification for external tanks. I only have the 7500 now in the wide format and it's still going strong. Easy to maintain too. I do have a laser printer as well which I only use for b/w printing. Have had experience with fixing other brands in the past and by far the Brother is the most user friendly I guess. Epsons are okay and easy to find parts for.
Hewlett-Packard is just an unhinged ad campaign for Brother.
I would hate and love if this were true.
I will never buy any HP product, just out of principle. Every single of their printers I've ever owned had broken down in elaborate ways no one understands, and what only makes it worse, is that the ink costs more than the actual hardware. Obviously it's because they're using only the most premium and exotic materials to make it.
What really nailed the coffin for the final time was my printer refusing to accept the black cartridge, claiming it was not a legitimate one, so it locked down the whole printer into some sort of self-repair loop that it never exited
I have never bought a new, consumer HP printer. Ancient business HP printers though, I have on several occasions. Those are pretty good actually, they work when you need them to, (third party) toners are plentiful, and they're cheap. Much better value than a new one.
The first issue was buying a cheap printer.
The second issue was buying cheap HP printer.
Buy brother or do your research. If it says on some page "No USB only wireless" just don't buy it ffs!
Brother is no longer allowing 3rd party ink and toner too so do your research there as well.
Or buy a printer that uses refillable ink, such as Epson Ecotank. No cartridges - no DRM.
Fuck HP.
This post was brought to you by the Brother Laser Printer gang.
Hell yeah, brother
FUCK YEAH, I got one last month. Best printer I've ever had. No, I'm not being paid to say this. Fuck HP!
I guess I'm not understanding all the comments saying "why is anyone buying printers anymore? What do you need to print at home? Just buy a Brother or don't buy one at all."
Do you really need to understand why someone wants or needs a printer? Do people need to be explaining their purchases so we can all decide if they deserve to get scammed by HP or not? It doesn't matter why they bought it, whether it's a want or a need, whether it's the "right" brand, etc. They still don't deserve to get scammed out of their money by some bullshit company that can brick their device whenever they feel like. If you pay for something, it should belong to you. Period.
Best trick in the book is to download the Windows 7 version of the drivers or software package as it is all prior to this cloud BS. Install that in your windows 10 or 11 and it will all work as intended.
Or just use linux with CUPS and you never have to let hp install spyware on your computer.
Terrible printer. Among the worst purchases I've ever made. Stunningly anti-customer design choices. I will never, ever buy another HP anything.
HP is doomed, sadly. All our parents who slaved and sweated blood to build their wonderful tech, wasted, their lives pointlessly ruined. All thanks to the horrible directors and management of HP. If you know anybody who works for HP today, make sure to victimise, ostracise, belittle, denigrade and castigate and bully their entire families into submission. No mercy for these fuckers and destroyers of all that is decent.
As if any other conglomerate is any better. Just don't buy the cheap bs and do your research before buying shit... >_>
Can someone explain why there's a cloud printing service involved here at all? We've been able to print over WiFi for a decade now.
Data collection is the current in trend for most tech companies. They cant scrape any data if you don't download their spyware app on your phone or use their cloud servers. Any little scrap of data they can gather from you they will sell to anyone and everyone.
Because they want you to subscribe to their ink cartridge auto-ship service that will send you a new one and charge your credit card any time one is empty, clogged, or just because they feel like it.
Symbols on sticker from top to bottom:
Sounds more like "This printer has WiFi, no need for USB, peel here otherwise".
But still stay away from HP consumer shit, I wouldn't even let it connect over USB.
I had a customer come in on Friday because they couldn't get their brand new printer to work. When I pulled the sticker off a new hp hater was born.
Man, this isnt just evil, that's stupid and lazy evil
Can't wait for either open source community, or the pirate community, for starting to jailbreak HP printers. To be honest, if I was more savvy with tech, I'd probably start taking that as a fun little challenging hobby.
I mean the sticker has a peel up icon on the corner. They're obviously not trying to hide this, they're just pushing the user towards wifi.
Also a custom firmware bound by serial number ranges would be even cheaper than the sticker. Logic doesn't hold up
You are absolutely correct.
It's not very expensive not to populate the USB receptacle on the the PCB.
Sealing the hole in the case would be easy. You could have an removable insert in the case's injection mold so there's the option not to have the hole.
If they thought two case parts were too logistically complicated, or they already made the mold and don't want to mill it out to make space for the insert, they could insert plastic plugs with permanent snaps.
If they really didn't care, they could even just put they sticker over the hole in front of an unpopulated port.
They're all as bad. Brother just sent an update to my laser jet and now third part cartridges won't work.
Apparently if you try to use the USB port it’ll stop after having printed 20 or so pages, telling you you need to setup WiFi and install their bloatware app.
When HP shows you who they are, believe them.
HP has such a storied legacy in electronics and computers .. I still use my old 48GX .. It's so sad to see this.
I've never seen a good HP product in my entire life. Really makes me wonder why people still buy it.
My family doesn't print in color anymore so we just have an InkJet that works wonders. Printers do not need to have an app, they don't need to be subscription based, or require you to buy specific ink/paper
I dont know the technical knowhow or how complex will an open source printer hardware and software could be ? Like nobody ever tried building one ?
I've thought of doing hardware design attempts on this before. My rough mental notes:
Ink:
Toner (aka "laser"):
Paper path:
Electronics:
Extras:
Legal:
I am sitting here with HP's very first printer / scanner copier the PSC1200 on my right from well over 20 years ago still working fine and an HPCP1518n1 laser jet on my left that I got from govt surplus used in 2017, and it is a work horse that prints beautiful brochures for me.
I use aftermarket toner and ink with zero issues in bulk.
How often do you guys need to print anything anyway? When my last printer broke I just bought a dedicated scanner and have been going to my local library on the rare occasions when I need to print something. If you're pissed off at HP (and other printer companies) for doing stuff like this, just ask yourself if you really need a printer at all. There's a good chance you don't.
I humbly think the reasons other people have to print something is none of your business. And your personal story is no one else's. Many people, myself included, need to print stuff on a regular basis, for work, school or whatever. The post is not about that, but the scummy practices of a shitty company.
Graphic designer here. I've used their shitty consumer grade laser and inkjet printers with USB and they have had many problems. I HATE their wide format inkjet printers with a passion..... They work great for a few dozen prints and then decide to have random problems that take a few hours to fix.
Their inkjet Indigo digital presses..... are freaking amazing. The color they produce is far better than any laser digital press I've seen. They required a trained operator and is MUCH more expensive than the shitty consumer level stuff but they last forever when easily maintained.
