HP TV Ads Claim Its Printers Are 'Made To Be Less Hated'

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The mildly irritating part of this, that "PC LOAD LETTER" is an example of a non-user friendly machine, is that the message is quite clear. It's an instruction to load letter sized paper into the paper cassette. No, I really am not fun at parties.

I've discovered over my career that reaction of a user to an error message is inversely proportional to how technical the message is (e.g. if you have a nice message box that says something like "You have forgotten to enter the delivery address into page 1 of the form, please correct before continuing" the user will freeze and likely call the helpdesk asking what this message means and how they can resolve it. Conversely, if you have a message that says "Flux Capacitor Error 0x8002930, please call helpdesk before proceeding or record damage will occur" not just that user, but every warm body in the surrounding cubes will throw every conceivable action at the problem and likely delete half the database, then call the helpdesk and say "is there a problem with the server?")

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"paper tray empty" is a clear error message. "pc load letter" is a small step above "ERR:A054FB357"

Except "paper tray empty" may not be the correct message.
"PC Load Letter" means to load letter sized paper into the paper cartridge. Which may imply the tray is empty, but it can also be the tray is full of legal sized paper, or A4 sized paper, or other non-letter sized paper and someone sent a print job that required letter sized paper.

Other messages are possible, but you see PC Load Letter often because in t

I finally got rid of Dad's old LaserJet II. Just didn't have enough memory for modern printing, and was slow as molasses. I'm pretty familiar with the meaning, still don't find it helpful. That printer never failed, it just worked for a couple of decades. HP has not make any printer even close to that level of reliability in a very long time.

Since I live outside the US, like the other 95% of the planet, I have never wanted to print to Letter size paper. Yet it remains the default for every damned printer driver and printer, and even after you change the settings in multiple places, sometimes some new app decides it's going to try to print to letter, or a driver or windows update resets it, and I have to go over to the printer and press the resume button to print to A4.

There are still fan clubs for Hitler with a massive online presence. I can't say the same about HP printers.

But seriously. How has this brand gone so far off the rails. As a consumer I don't really want to touch them, because word-of-mouth has spread. Friends and family all get sucked into some bullshit technical support problem.

What I don't get is that online reviews of HP's products, especially on store sites like Best Buy, don't include the hardships of dealing with these printers. It's always something inane like "Great printer! Replaces the one I bought 18 years ago." ... It's almost like we can't trust online reviews.

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What I don't get is that online reviews of HP's products, especially on store sites like Best Buy, don't include the hardships of dealing with these printers.

Welcome to the fast paced news cycle of the world. You click "buy" and get an email "please leave a review for your item". At this point your entire experience with the item is how quick USPS can send you the tracking code for your parcel.

The vast majority of the "It works great" reviews which actually *are* legitimate (and let's face it, many are not) can only be used to ascertain that the printer didn't arrive broken, and nothing more. People do not wait for experience before running their mouths.

by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) writes: on Thursday December 07, 2023 @11:56AM ( #64063869 ) Journal

Well... no.

Their printers are far from fine. The quality is sub-par, their drivers are among the worst and most bloated in the industry and the printer hardware is made of so flimsy plastic that accusing them of planned obsolescence isn't too far fetched .And since they're loss leaders to snare you into their ink racket, it's only logical that they're made as cheaply as they can get away with. The worst that could happen to HP is that someone discovers a way to use their printers as something other than as

I bought a brother, then became an obnoxious brother fanboi.

You can buy first and third party toner. You can keep resetting toner carts until they actually run out and get vast life out of them. You can even (with care) reset the waste toner box. Brother don't encourage that at all since it's actually quite dangerous but if you happen to have proper kit (I have an H class dust vac), they don't DRM it, so you can suck out the toner, flip back the switch and get printing again.

Brother. Takes any kind of toner (well, as long as whoever made them did so for that model of printer, of course) and lets you decide when the toner is REALLY empty (may take a trip to some "secret" menu in the printer interface, but you can tell it "nope, that toner is full, you're wrong" and the printer will nod and consider the cartridge full... now it's your problem to see when it actually is empty, though).

Same works for their ink printers, in case anyone still uses that technology.

HP is not the worst printer company in the world. Second worst, yes (they even fail at failing), but not the worst. That distinction is reserved for Dymo, and their current line of label printers, made out of plastic and shit (Epson's equivalent models, you can drive over with a trunk and it won't hurt them), which only work with Dymo brand labels (which have an NFC chip in each roll that tracks how many labels you've printed - on the chip, so you can't just move the chip to a generic roll). Their labels co

Here next to me is a working LaserJet 1100 that I bought over 25 years ago. You can even still get toner for it.

I replaced it because the paper feed is kinda wonky (it pulls in however many pieces of paper you put into it and of course jam it in the process) and because it's hard to find a computer with a parallel port these days but it still works.

And of course HP is literally the source of almost all printer hatred these days. I mean, no joke... they are deserve all of the hatred directed towards them. They have literally turned their printers into inefficient, DRM-locked in garbage, responsible for millions of metric tons of e-waste with their customer-unfriendly practices with their printers. I warn everybody I know to stay far, far away from HP printers. You are literally shooting yourself in both feet with an HP printer purchase. I do not wish that on anyone. Utter and complete garbage. I guess HP needs to figure out how to be customer friendly. Doubt they will ever figure that out again. They have been going down the tubes for decades now, willing to screw customers in any way possible in order to make some sort of profit. Do you research, and find out why you should stay away from HP.

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I guess HP needs to figure out how to be customer friendly.

They also need to figure out how to make hardware that isn't shit (which they used to be masters of), and how to write drivers that are stable (which they've never been good at).

But learning how to treat customers as something other than ATMs they have someone elses PIN number for should be their top priority.

Tell me about it. I do computer support for my neighbor and they have two of these atrocities. Two identical printers where one printer claims the (genuine HP) cartridge is "not a genuine HP" (and of course refuses to do anything related to printing until you deliver it from the 'illegal' cartridge) if you put it from one into the other.

Screw that shit.

To be less hated, do the following...
Sell printers at a fair price, not as loss leaders for expensive ink
Sell ink at a fair price
Remove ALL DRM and other tech that restricts how the printer is used
Provide minimal drivers without the bloatware
Stop ALL subscriptions and plans for future subscriptions

Share twitter facebook by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) writes: on Thursday December 07, 2023 @12:24PM ( #64064003 ) Journal

It's funny - there are open hardware 3D printers everywhere. We probably won't get a fully open hardware inkjet printer any time soon. There are plenty of people here on Slashdot that can handle PCL / PDF processing, stepper motor control for paper feed and ink carriage, but the hard part is the nozzles themselves. Tiny micro-piezo printheads are expensive to produce in small quantities.

I say a project needs to get going to just adapt commercially available OEM replacement printheads and build a printer around that. No DRM. No proprietary cartridges. Just the printheads and standard hardware. And a design where dried/clogged ink can be handled by taking the printhead out and simply using solvents or flushing with more cheap ink. Because the real failure mode of every inkjet printer is a perfectly fine printhead that's clogged with dried ink and you have to disassemble literally the entire printer just to attempt a manual cleaning. Or flush $100 of ink through it to clean it.

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For DIY, not. Toner is pretty messy to DIY with and not great for some photos/graphics. I also think that ink is actually way cheaper to make - just not the name brands. Laser printers usually recoup more of the manufacturing cost up front so they don't *have* to gouge as much. I do use a color laser as my primary but it doesn't do everything.

> I do use a color laser as my primary but it doesn't do everything.

My local Walgreens used to have a minilab and I could just get photos done there without having to buy ink for trivial amounts of money.

They replaced it with an uncalibrated inkjet printer and now it's complete trash.

So I have to send away for color prints now, which really sucks and I don't impulse buy overpriced snacks and candy at Walgreens.

At least in the old days there was a service bureau around. "Hey, baby, can you handle an 88MB

Nothing screams "I don't get it" louder than the tone-deaf ad mentioned in the summary. If you access TFA, you can go to the link that TFS should have included:

https://vimeo.com/891466251

The punchline of the ad is "No more installation fails with the HP Smart App". Well guess what, you fucking stupid evil smurfs at HP - installation isn't the primary problem!

The BIG problem is products aggressively engineered for near-term obsolescence, coupled with over-priced supplies (to which the product is locked) that aren't anywhere near exhausted at the time the printer says "out of ink" and refuses to run. All your sly, witty, pseudo-self-effacing bullshit acknowledging that people hate you isn't going to fool anyone. We all still hate you, and after all the crap you've pulled there's no way that former love is ever coming back.

I'm willing to wager that notwithstanding existing investments in product and supplies, virtually everyone who deals with your products would cheer if you failed hard, died a horrible death, and took your investors with you. Fuck the fuck off, you greedy evil smirking tards.

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It seems to be a primary part of marketing these days.

Acknowledge you hate us.

Change something unrelated to the problem.

Claim that the matter is fixed.

Be surprised that the hatred continues.

Blame the customer.

In this case, as you pointed out, installation is not the problem. The business model is the problem.

The punchline of the ad is "No more installation fails with the HP Smart App". Well guess what, you fucking stupid evil smurfs at HP - installation isn't the primary problem!

And just 2 days ago I had to go to a client and remove this "Smart App" to get printing working again. Even when you don't buy HP, HP manages to destroy productivity.

It's like when someone charges a really high price for an item they like to put in 'This reasonably priced item'. Even though it's bull and we know it.
As soon as they made the HP smart app and that crap it was to be hated. So here they are, "It's designed not to be hated'. I'm surprised they don't market their stuff as 'Reasonable offering that is not hated'

My first serious printer was an HP LaserJet 4, using one of the old Canon engines. Man, those Canons were just beasts, and were an absolute treat to service - especially compared to some of their contemporaries.... I'm looking at you, Okidata...

My infatuation with the hardware waned over the years, but it's the drivers that have torpedoed my desire to ever buy another HP product.

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My infatuation with the hardware waned over the years, but it's the drivers that have torpedoed my desire to ever buy another HP product.

Drivers? I can't remember the last piece of hardware I bought that only installed Drivers under Windows or Mac OS. All of them require some massive software package that scoop up data, need you to log into some service, need to be sure to collect all your contact info to report home, on and on and on. I miss the days where you just right clicked an .inf on a disc and said install.

by ebh ( 116526 ) writes: < ed@horchSLACKWARE.org minus distro > on Thursday December 07, 2023 @01:01PM ( #64064147 ) Journal

My several-year-old HP all-in-one has been working fine, even though it whines about the third-party ink I've been using (at a quarter the cost of HP-branded ink). The other day, it prompted me for a firmware update. Right there on the printer's little touch screen, it told me flat out that the main reason for the update was to prevent more third-party cartridges from working.

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Having it on your own network is fine, but the last damn thing I'm giving any printer is a default gateway.

If you're a printer company, and you want people to hate your printers less, there's an easy way to accomplish that.

Step 1: Spin off your inkjet printer division as a separate company.
Step 2: Don't let the inkjet-printer company use your name or logo.
Step 3: Make sure all your printers have ethernet / port-9100 support.
Step 4: Make it easy to find the .ppd files for all your printers on your support website.

There will still be some hatred, because let's face it, we're talking about printers here, there's on

Once upon a time, HP printers "just worked". Then the quality got shoddy. The printer driver got more and more complicated - the business drivers were ok, but the ones you were supposed to install as a private person insisted on getting in your way. Finally, they started playing stupid games with ink and toner. I used to buy nothing but HP. Now? I haven't bought an HP printer in 20+ years.

Short-term thinking. The CxOs probably met all of their quarterly targets, but they destroyed the long-term reputation of the company.

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If printers made printers and not ink, they would be liked. (Wait, those exist, are called thermal printers.)

If they did not attempt to overcharge you for already expensive ink, they would be merely neutral.

If they did not attempt to prevent you from using other companies' ink, they would merely be disliked.

If they did not lock you out of printing black and white when your color ink was out, they would merely be hated.

If they did not lock you out of SCANNING when their scan-printer combos were out of ink, they would merely despised.

As it is, they should be all thrown in jail for their vile fraudulent and deceptive practices.

Buyer-beware is not a license to commit fraud.

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I will never recommend another HP printer, and haven't for years...

I love my Epson EcoTank printer. No cartridges, thousands of pages per ink bottle. It prints and scans and then gets out of my way. I was able to set it up without an online account, using my phone, subscriptions, or any other "modern" setup techniques. It just works.

It's not just HP...I've been in the copier service side since 81. Now, a LOT of the multifunction copiers, printers etc have "locks" that once you put the toner cartridge in the machine, it can't be removed until the screen says it is out of toner. It's done that way because a lot of machines are sold in a "managed" system. The dealer is notified when the machine is at 10-15% toner level and will automatically send them a new replacement cartridge. On the machines I have, I have the "lock" disabled because

Lol.. you think some small company can come in and steal world production resources away from anyone at this point?

I literally was talking about APPLE COMPUTER. Who had a 5 BILLION dollar market cap before they entered the smartphone market. Jesus man, did you even read the whole sentence before you started typing? WTF?

That would be because the ipod made them relevant again when it was released in 2001. Prior to the ipod Apple as almost dead. The ipod brought them back from the dead and they sold lots of them. And when you release a iphone and already have a customer reputation from the ipod everything is much easier.

Who under the age of 50 prints photos?

I'm almost 50 and I have never ever had the urge to print a photo. Now, my dad, being from an age when "photograph" meant "cardboard with colorful picture of something or someone on it" will certainly disagree, but frankly, I don't know anyone my age or under who considers a picture something that isn't far easier transported, stored, duplicated or simply looked at on some digital tool.

In my generation that's computers, for the generation following us that's probably ce

I'm almost 50 and I have never ever had the urge to print a photo.

I'm over 70, and I never print photos. The closest I ever come is including an occasional photo in a .pdf that's going to be printed out and collated into an apa. (Amateur Press Association, a sort of hobby magazine.) And even then, I make sure the .pdf is in greyscale to save ink unless the colors are very important to appreciating the image.