Fed up with HP

[The Natural Philosopher]

Doesn't it? seems to on my plotter..

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I suppose it depends on your standards...

[David in Normandy]

HP customer support stinks nowadays. It used to be very good. I've bought HP computers and printers for many years and prior to my last purchase contacted their customer support with a minor technical question and after a week they finally emailed back, not answering my question but giving the impression they had to say something to meet some customer response time target. Basically they didn't give a damn - that came through loud and clear in their email. So I did not buy the HP computer I had originally planned to and have not bought any HP products since.

HP customer support seems designed to lose existing customers.

[Rod]

My relatively recent experience was that you get better support from HP on, for example, an average laptop than on an expensive server. E.g. Friday appointment missed - so special Saturday appointment made. I turn up (special journey) - and they don't. Perhaps the oddest bit is that the laptop support was provided by BT...

[Bob Eager]

I've had ones with a much higher page count here! The rated life is, I believe, 1Mpage.

I have two LJ4+ machines, and a few more for spares! Both have duplexers and large paper trays. Last fault was a broken microswitch on the paper tray - easily fixed.

[Adrian C]

Depends on the inkjet and how much precious ink it splatters the paper with. And also on the ink itself (Manufacturers own vs. third party)

I've mainly no problems here with a Canon Pixma ip4300 and normal paper, unless I've landed a solid block of color - then that needs a little time drying but rarely crinkles.

However, I do use a laser printer for most of my printing. It's a Panasonic network printer (KX-P7510) that has NT4.0 drivers that just about work on Windows 2003 Server, but no support in Vista unless I pretend it's a PCL HP something.

Incidently, I find mentioning the words "get a Laser printer" to the non-technical makes them rather scared of the idea. "Ink Jet" sounds somewhat safe and "less expensive" ....

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Trouble is most of these cheap old machines are rather big for domestic use. The Samsung I bought for under 50 quid takes up less space than the inkjet it replaces.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Right. Any time I've tried copier paper on a variety of inkjets the results are poor.

If I got fed up with the running costs of an inkjet with my light use I'd have thought an office environment would have found the same only more so.

[Bruce]

The HP LaserJet 4P is a good choice. It is quite compact, has 600 x

600 dpi resolution, is very economical with toner and is extremely reliable.

You need a parallel port but Windows XP drivers are available.

[Adrian C]

You'd think so. But ink jet printers are so popular... it's the cheap up-front cost of the printer, especially the all-in-one variety and the ability to do colour that suckers some people in - when they should maybe have looked at laser (colour if must) and separate scanners.

And small office IT buying decisions are run by technophobes as I have come across. Whole office with 5 Dell 720 all-in-one printers running as they were "free" with the systems, and the drivers wouldn't easily allow shared network use.

Cartridge World is _so_ popular :-(

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. As the IT techie in charge of such, I had people complaining about the fact they had to get up and walk a mere 10 feet to the 'shared' printer.

Getting them to learn how to select the letterhead tray from the normal one proved almost impossible.

They all wanted 'their own' printer.

One that they cold stick in whatever bit of paper they wanted.

"Its only 50 quid"

Multiply that by 50 people though..

Sigh.

Marketing 'had to have postcript' despite the fact it was dog slow and useless for everything else.

Accounts wanted a dot matrix for labele stock, and another one for fan fold pre - printed..

The techies wanted something that would spit out a complete manual in udner 24 hours..duplex preferably..

I think printers were the most controversial part of trying to keep IT costs annd user satisfaction under some sort of balance.

Plus the sales people insisting on keeping all their data private to their own machines, and then complaining they had lost it.

Fortunately I sold the business about the time that laptops were just coming in.

I cant believe the stupidity f people who take laptops WITH DATA on them on trains and leave them in cars.

Should use VPN instead. No laptop should be allowed to enter or leave an organisations with any sensitive data in it.

[Huge]

Good luck getting that past the business; the people who pay IT's salaries.

[Timothy Murphy]

I must say my experience with HP has been very good. My Photosmart C4280 all-in-one developed a paper-feed problem. I rang the HP service number mentioned in their documentation, and got put through to a tech guy in South Africa who took me through quite a lengthy operation - basically re-booting the printer (not the same as switching off and on) - and to my surprise the problem disappeared.

I was so pleased I got a 2-year extended warranty for £19.

Incidentally, I got extended life cartridges from HP, and didn't think they were exorbitantly expensive.

One advantage for me is that my Linux system recognised the printer when I attached it, and set it up under CUPS.

Like the other posters, I also have an ancient LaserJet 5L, which just keeps working. I did have a problem with a broken spring a year or so ago, but I got a mending kit on eBay (with video to explain what to do) and it was relatively easy to take the printer apart and mend it.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Bruce writes

It's called razor-blade marketing - give away the razor but charge a fortune for the blades.

[Mike Tomlinson]

In article , Richard Perkin writes

And your electricity bill is?

The 4500 uses a lot of power when on, and takes too long to come ready on power up to be of any use in a domestic environment.

Have a couple at work, they're good printers if slow.

[srp]

s'pose a lot of peolpe are using the online photo printer places which are cheaper and better arn't they ?

I am still using my 6yr old epson 750 for general stuff, ink costs =A33 from 7dayshop. It still works pretty much the same as ever ( which means I need to spend 30 mins cleaning/ testing each time I come to use it !)

Simon

[Bruce]

Thanks, Mike. A very apt phrase.

[PeterMcC]

To follow up, they replied:

"Thank you for your enquiry!

Our internet site has always been freely available and still is. We guarantee our website free from viruses or similar technical problems. Please check your own software or the system administration of your computer, whether it works safely and properly, and delete your internet cookies, etc. before visiting our site."

So I don't know where that leaves it. I will certainly carry on using them but, in the light of Rod's attack detection, others may want to think twice.

[Rod]

I have just tried it again:

In Mozilla - still as I described; In Safari - no problem; in IE7 - no problem.

Odd - but, for me, not worth worrying about. I shall see what happens when I need some inks!

[PeterMcC]

And I shall see what happens next time I need a trojan :)