HP to discontinue online-only e-series LaserJet amid user gripes HP is discontinuing its e-series LaserJet printers due to customer complaints, along with the HP+ and the "Instant Ink" toner subscription services tied to the hardware. The PC and printer biz initially rolled out HP+ in 2020 as a totally cloud-based ecosystem based around its existing Instant Ink subscription service, which …
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I still will not buy a HP printer
They lost my trust a long time ago.
I also avoid products that require some on-line connection in order to work.
Yeah I don't like products that won't function without online access either. I tried to buy a camera for viewing my front door. It was just for letting me see who was at the door making a delivery, when (and this is crucial) I was at home, in the garden or out the back. It would be hardwired to a router and on a closed circuit wifi network. So trying to buy from a bricks and mortar store instaed of online. Went into my local electrical retailer named after an Indian dish as I happened to be passing. Gave the sales bloke my exact requirements, told him it was only for viewing whilst at home and there obviously couldn't be any internet or cloud element. I also said that I didn't really need recording and if he'd got nothing that fit the bill please would he tell me now so I could go elsewhere.
He then proceeded to show me a Ring doorbell which when queried if they'd released an update to allow offline working admitted no they hadn't. So strike one there.
I then was shown a Nest, Hive and I think something else all of which needed an internet/cloud connection to work at all. More strikes there then and reluctant admittance that yes they all needed the internet/cloud etc.
When I said no to all of them he informed me that I was obviously going to need the internet or how could I view the camera when away from home? I asked if he'd listened to my requirements when I first spoke to him and he rather bizarrely said yes. I asked what use the camera would be if the the cloud service went down or the company went bust? He didn't have an answer to that. I told him I'd try elsewhere and got a Foscam on Amazon.
Jimbo Smith,
I don't believe your story for a minute. You're lying to us!
You never found a member of staff to talk to in Curry's!
To be fair to them, they actually seem to have had some product knowledge. So I don't think you have the right to complain that they didn't listen to your question as well. If they'd done that, the most likely outcome would have been some sort of universe-destroying paradox.
The couple of times I've managed to snag a member of stuff in there and asked even a really simple question, they've grabbed a tablet and stared at it slack-jawed, trying to find the answer on their own website.
I don't believe your story for a minute. You're lying to us!
You never found a member of staff to talk to in Curry's!
This was a while ago and sadly I didn’t find him, he found me. In my local branch they pounce on customers who are viewing certain products. If you’re looking at something cheap like mouse mats or photo paper fugeddaboutit but something expensive will instantly see you in their crosshairs. I managed a good 20 mins looking at inexpensive items with an intent to purchase*. Before getting bored and wandering over to a laptop to check when the next bus was coming. Sales bloke immediately appeared in front of me like Road Runner in the cartoons and asked if I needed help with purchasing anything.
*did actually need to know if that was the extent of the range they had etc.
JimboSmith,
I tried to buy a TV off them before Christmas. Went to my local one two or three times at non busy periods when I was in the area. Managed to get help from non TV staff - none of them ever found a TV person. So I went to John Lewis. I could buy online and save some cash, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted and being visually impaired have a requirement to be able to read the onscreen display. Which means finding a staff member to find the remote control. Although I suppose I could just get a Humax set-top box to do all that, and have the telly be a complete dumb screen. Plus some have horribly over-saturated demo programs on in the store, so getting the two you like set up showing some football at the same time says a lot about the picture quality.
I think I upset John Lewis guy by telling him there was no difference between the one I bought, and the £200 more expensive (and smaller) one with the fancy super mega quantum pixels. I did explain that I can't see properly and can barely tell the difference between the normal and HD channels. I couldn't tell HD from 4k if my life depended on it. But HDR is lovely - when some director decides to film only by candlelight...
'course not. All that this move signifies is that too few business customers were willing to buy LJe, and the result was that the particular lines were losing money, so they've canned it.
The whole HP+ and works-online-only scams continue, but largely targeted at residential customers and a few smaller businesses.
I had an Epson that failed on me after a couple of days. Couldn't take it back as it had been in storage (all in it's original boxes and such) for a few years as I have the cheap little HP thing that's been going far longer than I expected it to manage. Anyway, needed to do some testing with IPP and it looked good, updated it's firmware, nice printout (arguably better than the HP, it has a built in head doesn't it? those tend to be more sophisticated than in-cart heads). But after a couple of days something failed inside. A bit of pokery showed the power input (between the PSU block and the motherboard) to be a dead short. Quality...
Who thought of it?
"All of this stems from HP's desire to keep its revenue growing in a world where users are printing fewer pages by getting them onto subscription plans"
The answer is right there: bold-faced rent seeking. They KNOW that the world is changing, that fewer paper pages are being printed, so let's work out a plan that squeezes every possible pence of value out of our customers for as long as humanly possible. We will DENY the world's reality and replace it with our own; if we lock you into (our) forced supply chain with DRM'd ink cartridges and then guarantee the sale of said cartridges via a required use of our ink storefront, via required internet nannying, we'll be able to write up a guaranteed flow of income on our Wall Street quarterly statements.
And then, Bob's your uncle and it all comes to pass.
Customers were NEVER a consideration in the equation. It was all business by spreadsheet calculation.
The erro in the logic, of course is that disregard for customers means fewer customers and fewer customers means fewer purchases. Trying to squeeze more money from those fewer purchases leads to even fewer customers.
Never mind. It'll still be good for another few quarters.
HP printers?
Brilliant machines, won't hear a word against 'em.
From my first - a Deskjet 500C (which was built like a brick outhouse) to my latest, a LaserJet 5550dn, they've been solid.
Admittedly my latest is now old enough to vote...
Perhaps it's just the younger models?
A few years ago, I had a HP Photosmart printer which worked very well and I was very pleased with it. I printed thousands of 6"x4" photos on it, never had any issues at all, the replacement cartridges were not too expensive so I was happy to pay for genuine ones, and the drivers all worked fine with XP and Vista. However, when MS launched Win7 HP did not release any drivers for it so effectively made the printer redundant. At the time their support site issued a list of printers which would not be getting any further driver updates, and mine was one of them. No reasons given as to why, and as Vista was 64-bit, why not provide drivers for Win7 as well?
I moved to Canon then and can't say I've had any issues, even when using non-Canon ink cartridges.
My 19 year old Canon Pixma ip8500 works fine on Windows 11 with 64bit XP drivers.
You have to run the installer, grab the temporary files it unpacks, copy them elsewhere, then manually install it from the old Control Panel, but it does work fine after that.
Why is it that there are about 5 different ways to install a printer in Windows, only one of which will work for a specific model?
Sorry for the nit-pic, but this is an incorrect use of the word "redundant". If it was redundant, it would still work.
redundant:
exceeding what is necessary or normal : SUPERFLUOUS
serving as a duplicate for preventing failure of an entire system (such as a spacecraft) upon failure of a single component
Yup. They send me emails about my printer needing to be connected. So I plug it in, turn it on, leave it for a couple of hours, then unplug it again.
If I'm not going to be using it for a week or two, they can piss right off if they think that I'm going to keep it plugged in and always on just to satisfy their desire to know that nothing is happening. With my sort of consumption (LED bulbs, my main computer is a Pi, I watch movies on my phone, etc etc) the printer, even when it's on low power mode, is not insignificant.
Thanks to my smart meter, it uses about 2VA when plugged in and off, which rises to around 5VA when on and in standby, then drops to ~4VA in the lower power mode. Even so, that's about the same as an LED bulb. Would you leave a light on 24/7 because a company told you that you should?
Protip 1 - before printing anything, ensure the "connected to HP stuff" indicator is on, or you risk a cartridge (usually the black one) suddenly becoming "faulty". Bloody DRM...
Protip 2 - if that happens, pull the thing out and it'll fake it using the colour inks; call customer support as soon as possible because they absolutely do not send replacements in anything even remotely resembling a hurry.
I have an ageing LaserJet that has given me 20 years solid service but needs replacing. Having looked into the T&Cs for one of these new LaserJets, I decided not to bother. Where do HP get off demanding vast amounts of personal information and requiring your printer to be online the whole time? Underpinned by the threat of bricking the printer you shelled out for and now own. Talk about taking a simple, effective product and adding a web of complete BS around it.
Oh and on the same subject, it should be on me whether or not to risk using third party cartridges!
"it should be on me whether or not to risk using third party cartridges!"
With HP, it's bullshit and FUD. Asides from faulty electronics, there is no risk. The print heads are built into the cartridge. Head failure? Just change the cartridge. Messed up trying to refill it? Just change the cartridge. Bad refill ink? Just change the bloody cartridge. Shoving in authentic HP cartridges (yes, I know, I've seen the price, that's why I pay a fiver a month to InstantInk, I can print whatever rubbish I like far cheaper than buying cartridges ever was), anyway shoving in real ones should bring your printer's capabilities back to nearly "as new" as it's fresh new print heads.
Nearly "as new", because my god what a mess the printer makes inside itself...
Unless you have a very specific need specifically for an inkjet-type printer, just don't buy one.
Never buy inkjets.
Lasers are the only way to go. Unused toner will last decades.
Even colour (A4) lasers aren't very expensive. The money saved on ink refills will have paid off a cheapish laser over a few years.
If you are after bigger, say A3, then go buy a 2nd hand ex-business equipment auction printer.
> Carly Fiorina was the deflection point for HP. She basically destroyed the culture and chased most of the competent employees away.
One of my friends worked for HP and said that Carly held-up the prototype of their product at an annual "state of the union" type, all-company presentation and said that this was the kind of product HP needed more of, not realising it came from a division she had just canned the day before.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: HP never needed to merge with Compaq. They wanted to get into the Wintel server market as well as dramatically improve their desktop PC range so Carly Fiorini saw a merger as a quick way to accomplish that. Thing is, at that time, HP had all the engineering talent and manufacturing capability to achieve this in house in only three to four years, and would have delivered hardware which would have been as good, if not better than the Compaq stuff.
The Compaq merger was the first in a number of stupid executive decisions which ruined what was a truly great company.
The Brother Inkjet from 2012 got a paper feed problem I could not find. It sure owed me nothing, let's replace it. That model went UP from $200 to $600 and is now unavailable.
There's two ultra-similar Brothers today. The 1010 AIO is stupid cheap (~~$70) and appeared to have all the old one had..... oops, no Ethernet! The manual discusses Ethernet but it covers two models and it is NOT clear which is being covered. It is the J1170DW which has Ethernet (and a less useful display!). Even so, I'd endorse either or both if you tire of H-P's rent-games and Epson's software bloat. (Actually I take that back: the Brother "has" to download a driver collection for ALL their printers, then lets you guess which to install.)
I've been a happy owner of a black and white Brother laser printer for nearly 2 decades. I think I spent about $100 on it, and probably less than that in toner during its lifetime. I estimate that I only print between 10 and 50 pages per year these days, but when I need a hard copy of something, the Brother spits it out without complaining.
our brother B&W MFC laser has printed around 40,000 pages, including both of our kids school work from k-12, and my wife's assorted stuff for scouts, and volunteer groups and drafts of her tech writing before she retired. its had maybe 3-4 misfeeds, generally the last page of the stack in it that got a corner bent when it was loaded. it prints double sided, it scans double sided in one pass. I think we're on the 4th extra-life toner cartridge. I think we've gotten our money's worth.
We have a Brother MFC-240c inkjet, still technically functional but only just. Print head dried out from years of disuse. If it was used, say, weekly, it probably would be fine now. Cartridges are about $15 for a 12-pack. (Aftermarket, of course.)
We also have a Brother color laser (don't know the model offhand) that's a network printer. I can't praise it enough. Been using aftermarket cartridges since the first replacement.
I've got a 20+ year old HP Laserjet. Works just fine and toner appears to be available on EBay at very sensible prices. B&W so missing out on any colour printing. I've always thought that inkjet printing on an occasional basis was the swift route to frustration and hate. Don't know what I will do when this printer dies. :-(
even expensive hp printers come with 250 page paper trays. used to be 500 sheet paper trays. can't buy a decent hp printer for under $1000 with a 500 sheet paper tray. not much good for a business anymore. Few years ago got a pagewide inkjet for about $500. had a 500 sheet paper tray. fast 50 ppm. quiet. inexpensive to use at about 7 cents a page for color printing even at hp's cartridge prices. wonderful printer, but they don't make them anymore. don't think they sell a reasonably priced printer for a business to use anymore. been using them since the laserjet iid.
Us techies on this fine forum are not HP's target customer market. HP is targeting non-technical people who just know the nice kid at the store gave them a really good deal on a shiny printer. They do not understand the implications of entering their credit card number during the on-line setup.
Ooops. Did I say "targeting". I meant to say "preying upon".
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