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.
Brother printers are still very decent and most importantly, not DRM ridden.
Would you say they're...A bro?
I have two oki mc363's (office and home).
Cost about $600, 6 years ago. Weighs about 30kg, must have a cast iron chassis or something.
Rock solid, great printer scanner in every way. Wouldn't change a thing.
My parents have an okidata microline 82 that still prints. One of the dots hits a little light these days.
They also have a 1994 HP LaserJet 4 plus that is still chugging along. Back from when HP made decent printers.
I’ve had a Brother laser printer for years now, never given me any issues.
Brother.
The Omen laptops are pretty good as well. Even the fan blades are made of aluminum. But I would avoid their desktop PCs because they use proprietary components.
Like any other company, some products they make are junk but others are decent.
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.
Yes and no.
Allowed? Probably no 1st party vendor allows it.
Can do? Yeah sure.
Will I get warranty for violating some kind of EULA (or some other equivalent) for using 3rd Party? Probably not.
As an IT helpdesk we usually just tell them to get 1st party as the toner is not that expensive for that volume and just eat it. At least they have warranty for the 11k of printed papers.
Fuck HP.
This post was brought to you by the Brother Laser Printer gang.
Hell yeah, brother
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.
I just learned how to manually install PCL5 from the "Professionals ONLY!" Section of their driver download page.
Best trick is to not buy HP.
He's using a Mac, they can't run Windows 7 drivers.
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.
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... >_>
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.
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.
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.
Just stop buying their product. Issue fixed !
HP are on the top of my shitlist. Every day I hear a new reason to keep them there!
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:
Probably easier to make a replacement control board.
if you mean computer software and driver stack, there's unix cups and various open source printer firmwares for linux.
When HP shows you who they are, believe them.
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.
HP has such a storied legacy in electronics and computers .. I still use my old 48GX .. It's so sad to see this.
Hewlett-Packard is just an unhinged ad campaign for Brother.
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.
What happens if you factory reset the printer?
Man, this isnt just evil, that's stupid and lazy evil
I really don't understand why people keep buying HP printers. There are so many better options and you end up paying far more in ink with these shit brands.
256
We're talking about the same company that tries to "gift" free months of ink in exchange of buying only genuine (and overpriced) HP ink for the rest of the printer's lifetime, and obviously if you accept you can't use the printer offline.
I still have an "old" HP printer and, as long as it works, I'll keep it, but seeing their practices I don't know if I would choose HP again for a new printer
I think I have the same model (dont judge me, didnt pay for that shit lol), but no sticker here. Not using cable anyway Im thinking should I toss it after reading about hp
