Fuck you too HP!

[spank]

• HP have complete power over the most promising mobile platform since the iPhone appeared (TouchPad/Pre/WebOS), but they pissed it all away with lousy hardware.
  
• Their management is a bunch of pussies who bail out at the first sign of market failure. Instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to improve the aspects where the TouchPad was failing, they threw it all down the drain. What, were they expecting to reach competitiveness vs. iPad in a matter of weeks? When the software ecosystem hasn't had time to mature? Shitheads.
  
• Their laptops are shit, but when they were finally producing a laptop that was decently priced and had competitive advantage (the 14" Envy with that excellent 1600x900 monitor), they decide to drop exactly the feature that made that product stand out, so now it's only a pretty, slightly overpriced, completely bog-standard computer, to join the ranks of their other sub-par models.
  

[boris]

I like their storage systems.

[deathbringer]

I had one of their scanners years ago, the bastard needed re-installing completely (a process that took 3 reboots of a 450mhz computer) every third scan.
I also have a laserjet 5500n which is... not too bad, but then I don't use it often. Still last time I did heavily use it it jammed several times and I had to pull out pages that had gone halfway through and were covered with unfixed cyan toner, which got everywhere.

[Doom_Dude]

My first digital camera was an HP with 2.1mp and I was happy with it at the time. Now it's discarded in a box.. meh. Now I use a Canon A630.

I have an HP cheapy deskjet 5150 printer. I rarely print anything and it's almost always a black and white text file. Can't say I'm displeased with it... it does the job and hasn't blowed up like the crappy Lexmark printers I've had in the past. Bleagh.

[Snakes]

I have an HP laptop and it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Then again, I don't have to use the computer for too much... My last one was an HP and went a good 5 years without having any serious problems. That's all I really need from a computer.

[Bucket]

They have an excellent driver database, though it's somewhat difficult to navigate.

[Enjay]

My HP Laserjet 6L is still going strong after something like 10-12 years I think.

[Lüt]

By "strong," do you mean loading 3-6 sheets of paper per printed page instead of just 1?

Because it certainly outperforms all other printers that way.

In fact, mine outperformed itself straight into the trash bin.

[Enjay]

Aha! that's because when that fault reared its ugly head, you didn't ask HP for a free fixing kit. I did and a 10 second fix almost a decade ago fixed it permanently.

Yes, it was a known problem. I forget the exact reason for it but in the face of a class action, HP devised a very simple fix and a cardboard applicator to, well, apply the fix. They gave them out to anyone that asked.

[Aliotroph?]

Funny about olde LaserJets. They would work forever until the paper feed thing found some way to die. I bet that was the first thing to fail on 90% of them. Must be like the transmissions on Dodge Caravans from the 80s.

I think HP jumping out the consumer market is the best thing that's happened in ages! Their computers have mostly not had a reputation for quality for decades. People like their printers, but that reputation must have come entirely from those ancient LaserJets. Their response to their all-on-ones not working on Vista was "get a new one" compared with Dell's "give us two weeks." Their customer support is almost worst in class (Sony is bottom).

Of course, they're just going to sell that part of the company, so we might get another Chinese company that makes LaserJets and Pavilions. Maybe we'll get some funny Chinese branding on the worst HP products and keep the same on the few that are pretty good.

They're going to try and pull an IBM now. This could be fun to watch. HP neutered its R&D a few years ago. That gives them a disadvantage starting out as a service company that IBM lacked. It's not entirely a bad idea, though. Service companies often have huge margins compared with hardware companies.

[kristus]

Only HP product I had was a Scanner that outperformed it's way to the garbage as it became obsolete due to lack of drivers for Windows 7. Not big deal though, I was planning to get another scanner anyway and I did most of my "scanning work" using my Canon EOS Digital camera instead. As the quality of the images were greatly superior to those of the scanner.

[hobomaster22]

I don't agree that HP products shit. In fact I recommend their mid range laptops for normal use. I've had an older pavilion all through college and never had a problem with. I've stepped on it after getting out of bed, slammed it around, it's really just taken a beating. I've upgraded to a newer one almost three years ago and have had absolutely no problems with and love it. It lasts just under three hours watching movies or whatever on battery with a 1600 x 900 screen.

But I guess it's what you're looking for in a laptop. Mine was probably 700 and I don't think the Dell's even compare in this price range (my girlfriend has one). With her Dell the hard drive clicks, the screen kind of flops open, and we've already had to replace the power adapter. I would only go with a Precision for Dell but they're stupid expensive (I have one for work). And this my problem with Apples products as they're completely overpriced for what they are, at least for what I would use it for.

I also personally don't have a use for tablets - I just leave my laptop on 24/7 in the living and just pop on it whenever I feel I 'need' to use the computer so I don't really see the difference, except I guess tablets are 'hip' and 'cool'. Whatever.

[Maes]

I have a HP PSC 1510 all-in-one Printer/Scanner. Performs great, worked with anything from Windows 98 to Debian, and is very easy to manually refill (similar to a PSC 1310 we have at home). Ask me about how shit EPSON printers are, though ;-)

[Gez]

Epson printers really are terrible. Switching from a horrible Stylus Color to a Canon Pixma IP300 was like night and day. Suddenly was opened a doorway to a universe where it was possible to have a printer that doesn't engulf the paper sheets like a glutton in a gorging orgy, tearing them up in its voracious maw before choking to death on the scraps, and where the colors didn't need to be recalibrated every time the beast was woken up from a week or two of inactivity. Yeah, never buying Epson again.

[CODOR]

My Epson Stylus Photo has nice quality print, but likes to clog if you don't use it at least once every 15 minutes or so.

(I use it mostly to print nice colour labels when I copy old analog media to CD/DVD, which is the main reason it hasn't been thrown out by now. I understand that many Canon Pixmas can print on printable discs, so one of them might be a future replacement. The other reason is that I added a continuous ink system, so I've wasted far less money in ink while trying to resolve clogs than I would have if I were using Epson cartridges.)

[boris]

Gez said:

Canon

Canon managed to supply Windows 7 64bit drivers for my printer just last month. That's pretty fail.

[Lüt]

Enjay said:

Aha! that's because when that fault reared its ugly head, you didn't ask HP for a free fixing kit. I did and a 10 second fix almost a decade ago fixed it permanently.

Yes, it was a known problem. I forget the exact reason for it but in the face of a class action, HP devised a very simple fix and a cardboard applicator to, well, apply the fix. They gave them out to anyone that asked.

I got two of them for free from places I worked. One in 2002, the other in 2008.

Both lasted a few weeks at best.

I searched the internet for the issue when I got the second one. Found a couple hundred people who had the problem, and plenty of reviews confirming it.

Interesting how you're the only one who's ever heard of a fix.

Gez said:

Epson printers really are terrible.

The $25,000 one we have in our school's graphic arts department is one of the best printers I've ever printed on. Far better than any of the HPs they have.

I can't say anything about their home products, but their professional ones are top-grade.

hobomaster22 said:

I don't agree that HP products shit.

I would sure hope they don't O_o

[Maes]

Lüt said:

I can't say anything about their home products, but their professional ones are top-grade.

Your experience is definitively typical of the average home user's one with EPSON products :-p

I once had to make do with one for two years (before I got that HP and regained my sanity). It was so bad that I thought it would be worth writing a guide about it ;-)

[Enjay]

Lüt said:

Interesting how you're the only one who's ever heard of a fix.

I know at least 4 people who know of the fix. Me, my friend who I told about it, my friend's friend who he told about it and my work who I told about it. ;)

Seriously, at the time when I found the fix I just did some generic "laserjet 6l multiple sheets of paper" (or some such) Google search and was taken straight to the HP site offering to post out the fix kit for free. It arrived pretty quickly and was easy to use.

I must admit, I had my doubts as to whether it would work (or last) because it was such a simple fix - but it did. IIRC, the fix just involved sticking a strip of thin plastic on to the the edge of the guide deep inside the machine where the paper is pulled through. To apply the fix, it came with a cardboard applicator that you shoved down inside where the paper goes. When you removed the applicator, the plastic strip stayed in place and the machine was fixed.

[exp(x)]

I'll never forgive HP for killing its calculator division.

[deathbringer]

*goes to HP Calculator website*
*Goes to software section*
*Scrolls to D*
Just as I thought...

[Lüt]

Enjay said:

I know at least 4 people who know of the fix. Me, my friend who I told about it, my friend's friend who he told about it and my work who I told about it. ;)

Seriously, at the time when I found the fix I just did some generic "laserjet 6l multiple sheets of paper" (or some such) Google search and was taken straight to the HP site offering to post out the fix kit for free. It arrived pretty quickly and was easy to use.

Hmmm. Must be some Britlandic thing then.