HP - stop drinking the juice that Microsoft made for you
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Cancel the order, get a Laser. You plug it in, you print, you turn it off. It just works, unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months. And the toner may be expensive, but ... a full set of compatible toners (CMYK) lasts ~1500 pages and the last set cost me £50.48 from Amazon. Which is a load less than I used to pay for inkjets once I figure in the full-but-dried-up cartridges I threw away! :laugh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Exactly why I bought a little Brother monochrome laser printer a week ago :) I have a Canon multifunction that has a pretty nice scanner, but the printing part has frustrated me. I tried refill ink, but that didn't work out. I had my eye on another cheaper laser printer, but the toners are almost twice the printer's price. The Brother's toner are more affordable and there are generics available as well for half the price. The 1 toner=1000 pages is a bit of a marketing ploy - it's usually at 5% coverage, which isn't a lot. Ink tank printers seem to be more affordable to run than traditional inkjets if you print frequently and need colour.
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life?
Nowadays you have all of these completely unnecessary extras... Just last weekend, a friend of a friend brought me a laptop that's not all that old, but for the last few months had now become unbearably slow. Event Viewer showed the culprit - a component of the printer software (that monitors ink levels, from what I've been able to infer from the logs) was crashing 3 times in a row, giving up, restarting after a one minute pause, and crashing again 3 times in a row...essentially, Windows was being kept busy, in an infinite loop, generating error reports. Found the file that auto-started on every boot, renamed it, then from that point forward, Event Viewer showed everything going quiet. The owner hasn't complained about anything now being different when trying to print, so whatever that thing was doing turned out to be no loss at all. Whenever I get a new printer for myself, the first thing I try is to locate the folder from the installer that contains an .inf file, a .sys file, and maybe some .dlls...point Windows's printer installer to that folder, and skip everything else. You don't get fancy frontends, but I've never found one that offered anything I couldn't do without. And for those installers that don't lend themselves to going directly for the .inf/.sys driver...the printer software gets installed in a VM, which is left powered off until I actually need to print. No need to waste resources 24/7 when I only print once a month...
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Cancel the order, get a Laser. You plug it in, you print, you turn it off. It just works, unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months. And the toner may be expensive, but ... a full set of compatible toners (CMYK) lasts ~1500 pages and the last set cost me £50.48 from Amazon. Which is a load less than I used to pay for inkjets once I figure in the full-but-dried-up cartridges I threw away! :laugh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
OriginalGriff wrote:
unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months.
Ahhh, it's not just me then. I very seldom print anything, but when I do need to: Nope! New cartridges needed. Very annoying - and, yes, it works out being very expensive at two ink cartridges for every 2-3 A4 sheets that I print. Are there no "tricks of the trade" to bring dried up ink cartridges back to life?
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers.
Yup, my friend returned her printer because of this level of invasion. She didn't want her ink cartridges monitored (and god knows what else) and new ones automatically sent to her, along with whatever other invasion of the corporate computer snatchers is going on. This trend is really pathetic. And on top of it, what if I don't have an Internet connection? What if I want to print my version of Walden's Pond from my solar run computer system in the middle of the woods that is air gapped by a good 50 miles from any connection and no SkyNet satellite dish? Eh?
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OriginalGriff wrote:
it would need a cartridge, or a clean, or a nozzle check, or ... Every. Damn. Time.
Exactly my experience as well. I bought a Brother laser printer last year, and it just works, every damn time. For the number of prints I do, the cartridge that came with the machine should last a good long time.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
Amen. I recently bought a Brother colour laser printer to replace another Brother colour laser printer that broke down after 8 years. It may not reorder supplies over the net, but it does everything else (it prints, in colour, double-sided). It's also not going to stop printing if/when Brother in their infinite wisdom decide its time for an upgrade...
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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charlieg wrote:
HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers.
Yup, my friend returned her printer because of this level of invasion. She didn't want her ink cartridges monitored (and god knows what else) and new ones automatically sent to her, along with whatever other invasion of the corporate computer snatchers is going on. This trend is really pathetic. And on top of it, what if I don't have an Internet connection? What if I want to print my version of Walden's Pond from my solar run computer system in the middle of the woods that is air gapped by a good 50 miles from any connection and no SkyNet satellite dish? Eh?
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DivWindow: Size, drag, minimize, and maximize floating windows with layout persistenceMarc Clifton wrote:
What if I want to print my version of Walden's Pond from my solar run computer system in the middle of the woods that is air gapped by a good 50 miles from any connection and no SkyNet satellite dish?
What are you, some kind of Luddite? :mad: :omg: :)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Old days HP was great and the printers were built like tanks. I have an InkJet 690c (parallel port) that already fell off the desk (at least) twice and is still working. I still use it sometimes to print documents from my old PCs that do not have USB/Wifi/Lan because it is more troublesome to transfer those documents over serial to a modern PC. There was no automatic head cleaning. You had to do it manually when the prints turned up with scratches. Modern day HP is below crap. A few years ago I bought a very expensive (for me), small office inkjet from them to use mainly for scanning documents and, the first time I turned it on... "Paper jam"!! and I hadn't even inserted any paper :wtf: Then, the first job I had for it was to scan a 100 page document and, thanks to its wonderful working speed and constant interruptions to clean the heads (for scanning :confused:) and ghost paper jams, it took me six months and spent almost a set of 500 sheets of paper and 4 sets of cartridges and print heads :omg: The cartridges and print heads were all separate components but had to be exchanged simultaneously because the printer would refuse to work with "old consumables" when new were detected. What I spent on those alone was more than what I paid for the printer. That printer was so good that when I complained to HP while still in warranty, they just sent me a new one I told me to trash the old one. And the new one was as bad as the old one. Fortunately, that cloud thing was optional at that time otherwise I would have lost a lot more money because, with that service activated (as I understood it), when the printer detects that a cartridge is running low it will send you a replacement and charge you for the cartridge, the shipping and the service! That means that they also must have data on you (like an address and direct debit account) that they might later sell. Afterward, I had enough and bought a Brother inkjet MFC-J5730DW and that thing is marvelous. Turn on, no head cleaning, scan, print, turn off. The same 100 page scanning job on this Brother toke less than 30 minutes :-D My advice would be to stay way from HP, even if it is a laser printer.
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
HP is an ink company; not a printer company. I switched to Brother for a printer that lasts at least as long as the ink.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
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HP is an ink company; not a printer company. I switched to Brother for a printer that lasts at least as long as the ink.
It was only in wine that he laid down no limit for himself, but he did not allow himself to be confused by it. ― Confucian Analects: Rules of Confucius about his food
Gerry Schmitz wrote:
HP is an ink company; not a printer company.
:thumbsup: Good way of putting it, though most other inkjet manufacturers probably fall into that same category.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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I agree, but this is for SHMBO. :) I have my eye on a laser for my office. We don't do that much heavy printing.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
I have my eye on a laser for my office.
Just be sure not to look into the laser with your remaining eye!
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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OriginalGriff wrote:
unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months.
Ahhh, it's not just me then. I very seldom print anything, but when I do need to: Nope! New cartridges needed. Very annoying - and, yes, it works out being very expensive at two ink cartridges for every 2-3 A4 sheets that I print. Are there no "tricks of the trade" to bring dried up ink cartridges back to life?
What really got my back up was when I wanted to scan a document ... and it wouldn't scan because it didn't like an ink cartridge ... :mad:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
My dad has a couple really nice HPs a few years old, probably right at the beginning of this 'trend.' He wanted to scan from one of them, and I had to figure it out. Of course, its '192.168.1.X' page has a 'scan' button on it. But if you press it, it requires you to create an account to continue! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: X| X| X| But I could get it to successfully scan by using the Windows 'Scan' program without any account! :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: Morons. And Idiots. That is what the people forcing those policies are.
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Get a Brother laser printer. They always work, and work well. Not a single problem since the day we started getting them. I own a MFC9340CDW, ugly as hell but it is a wonderful printer, it starts reasonably fast, it has WIFI and LAN connections, it can scan double sides automatically, and it can send FAXES!!!! I left the best for the end... :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: But seriously, unless you need a super special printer, the "brother" robustness makes it a no brainer to me. Hope this helps.
www.robotecnik.com[^] - robots, CNC and PLC programming
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Cancel the order, get a Laser. You plug it in, you print, you turn it off. It just works, unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months. And the toner may be expensive, but ... a full set of compatible toners (CMYK) lasts ~1500 pages and the last set cost me £50.48 from Amazon. Which is a load less than I used to pay for inkjets once I figure in the full-but-dried-up cartridges I threw away! :laugh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Get a Brother laser printer. They always work, and work well. Not a single problem since the day we started getting them. I own a MFC9340CDW, ugly as hell but it is a wonderful printer, it starts reasonably fast, it has WIFI and LAN connections, it can scan double sides automatically, and it can send FAXES!!!! I left the best for the end... :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: But seriously, unless you need a super special printer, the "brother" robustness makes it a no brainer to me. Hope this helps.
www.robotecnik.com[^] - robots, CNC and PLC programming
It does. I had my basic laser for 10+ years. :( sniff. What's shocking to me is how HP Marketing is making this effort to tie people into the elephanting over priced cartridges. I can understand that, but I need a cloud account, and I need to vote out of my printing habits? Jesus, I'll fold my own laundry thank you. The best part is the "terms may change without notification." Yeah, there's a legal contract. I refuse to be a lemming.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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How large can I print my photographs with one?
Mine goes up to A4 - but you can get A3 (and possibly larger) if you don't mind paying a lot more for it.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Mine goes up to A4 - but you can get A3 (and possibly larger) if you don't mind paying a lot more for it.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
I do mind. My current ink jet does A3 and I'm using it for 11"x17" prints.
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
I can also attest to laser printers. We bought one 4 years ago, and just replaced the provided toner cartridges about a month ago. We don’t print much, and this majorly saves money. It also has flatbed and feed scanners.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question? The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism. Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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Nor do I - that's why I got a laser. I may have six months of no printing, maybe a year. Or a week - it's at Herself's demand (she's something of a Luddite). And every damn time I turned on the injket, it would need a cartridge, or a clean, or a nozzle check, or ... Every. Damn. Time. And that wastes my time, my paper, my ink. The laser? It sits in a corner with a cover over it (to keep the cat out more than anything) and I plug it in, print, and unplug it. It's really that easy. The toner that came with it lasted me a year or two, and that's with printing the Christmas cards two Decembers! Just remember: inkjet - and laser - printers are there to sell consumables. With HP, you get what? 120 sheets per cartridge? And that's £13 or so each. Lasers may seem more expensive, but they save money in the long run!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Here here, well said! I have an HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M477fdw which cost around £300 5 years ago, it prints, copies, scans (would fax too I think) and using 3rd party cartridges it costs peanuts to run. As Griff says, no more scrapped ink cartridges because you haven't printed for a few weeks. Honestly, over 5 years (and it's still working perfectly) it's cost way less than previous ink jet printers and much less hassle.
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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm. FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead. The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed. Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else. Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? :doh:
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
charlieg wrote:
as soon as we get the return label printed
Classic. People in returns dept are probably twiddling their thumbs, pleased no-one ever sends them anything. (Like the time, long ago, I had to install the drivers for a new CD drive. That was fine; they came on a CD.) Re ink vs laser; I've had a Brother inkjet (multi-function) for about 10 years, very "patchy" load on printing, and never had the "ink drying up" issue. What I have had is a useful scanner and fax machine reduced to junk by Microsoft updating driver requirements - even in "minor upgrades" to Win10 - so that if I want to scan something I now have to fire up a VMWare box running XP and then fight VMWares/Windows networking complexities to try and get the resulting scan somewhere useful. Oh, and I can't remotely monitor ink levels any more, again due to software incompatibilities introduced without my say-so by Microsoft.
