OT How useless is tech support these days..

[woodchucker]

I just got off the phone with an idiot at my old ISP. I still keep an email account there, and my newsgroup.

I noticed I have not been getting emails lately since the 17th. tbird says downloading 1 of 255 followed by no emails to download.

I asked tech support if anything changed. They tell me NO, that its tbird delete my account and add it back. I refuse.

I said are you sure nothing has changed. Yes nothing has changed. Well there's an email from the 11th from you guys saying you are moving email from one server to another and that there will be sporadic outages to individual accounts. Response yes but that should not affect you, you should be fine once that is done.

Well I am not fine... Well then it's TBIRD.

I go into their web mail interface and delete the first email.. Now I can download emails.

HOW FUCKING STUPID these idiots are.

This is the second issue in a month. My current ISP also made changes 3 months ago. I never was notified. They changed the ports and mail server.

They said the old ones should still work... but guess what... it didn't. But the first thing they tell you is that there are no changes. Well there was... and obviously the change they made to remove the old servers that day caused an outage. Because until that day I was still coming in under the old servers and was fine.

[Swingman]

What do you expect in the "Information Age", when twenty something n*****ts are unarguably in charge of serving up "information"?

[clare]

Particularly when half of them are in India, half the rest in aother third world company where english is not their primary language, and the rest are american computer-game wizards who THINK they are IT specialists.

I bought an HP G3110 scanner and it would not install on my Win7 64 computer - kept saying it could not install on my incompatible XP64 machine. Took HP support over 3 hours to force the driver to install -

- - - - .

[Doug Miller]

[e-mail] wrote in news: [e-mail]:

HP tech support is among the worst I've ever encountered. They're apathetic, they're incompetent, and worst of all, they're rude.

I tell anyone who's contemplating buying any of their products that "Hewlett Packard" sounds like "Useless Bastard" for a *reason*.

[Lew Hodgett]

---------------------------------------------------- I refused to even consider HP for anything except printers based on prior experience.

Bought a printer/scanner/copy device and had problems that HP promptly addressed or at least they tried.

After sending out 5-6 rebuilds as an in warranty replacement, none of which worked, they finally sent out a new unit.

Problem solved.

Would buy another printer/scanner/copy device, but never a puter.

Lew

[clare]

A few of their printers are pretty decent - most of them built over 6 years ago -but I have not had good experience with ANY of their other products. The support on the printers is something approaching average

- certainly not exemplary, but at least reasonable The scanner support was incompetent.

[John Grossbohlin]

Don?t get me started... I could go on for days but I need to sleep!

[woodchucker]

I had pretty good luck with a laptop from HP. But I don't like their printers. Office printers yes, but home printers... no. Their drivers suck.

I like the cannon series they have been good, separate color ink wells (first to do it).

I had bought my son an HP years ago. Nothing but problems with the drivers. They prevented shutdown. Paper was an issue. They had a template for their own printer for something. Using it prevented printing to the printer.

[krw]

I bought my last HP product (printer) six years ago. It's a great printer but the software is bloated crap. My next one is most likely going to be a Brother.

[Leon]

I bought my last HP printer about 6 years ago, and it is long gone.

[Leon]

I guess living in California you have learned to be patient. I would pitch the POS and go with another brand. My absolute last HP printer, that I paid in excess of $400, was trouble from the word go and the moment that it went out of warranty there was no repairs from HP to be had. They did not even want to give an estimate for repairs.

So figure that once out of warranty you buy another if it breaks.

[Puckdropper]

woodchucker wrote in news:deudnSaymdiEisLOnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

I've got an old HP that I use the drivers from Windows Update for. It's a much better experience, as it just works. If you have the choice, install the drivers from Microsoft rather than the HP garbage.

Without the HP drivers, the printer actually used up the ink in the cartridge. The print got so light I had to change it. It was nice to use up all the available ink rather than having some piece of garbage software program tell me it thinks I'm out of ink.

Puckdropper

[Lew Hodgett]

--------------------------------------------- Two things.

Cold day in hell when I would pay $400 for a consumer grade printer and it goes without question you buy a NEW device to replace an out of warranty puter type device.

Over 20 years ago bought a Panasonic 4450I for about $1,200 as an alternate to an HP printer and worth every penny.

Printed 11-12 pages/minute for hours on end.

No longer necessary in today's market.

Lew

[Bill]

My LaserJet HP-1022 has been Far More *economical* than its HP-ink jet predecessor. A $30-40 generic toner cartridge lasts me more than 2 years. No, it doesn't do color--and I can live with that.

[Leon]

That was inexpensive for what I was getting, so to speak. Legal sized all in one with 5 different color large inks. It's biggest issues was software, of course. HP had to help set it up the first time and it was boxed up ready to go back to the store at one time during the first 24 hours. Just out of warranty the scanner quit moving the light/reader across the platen and its days of scanning were over.

1986. Panasonic 9 pin dot matrix, followed by 21 pin same brand. Neither had a problem other than being noisy. Followed by a Canon BJ-300, black only bubble jet. Fast and was capable of printing very thin lines. Replaced because color was becoming common.

Then the HP crap, if you will recall the type that did not use tractor feed paper. As a result, all paper including HP brand paper did not feed straight and bordered prints always looked crooked. I put up with that for years until the last HP, which was the last. Using Lexmark now and was happy until the last year or so. Print heads dry out prematurely. Prints good otherwise. Looking to go laser next time.

[Leon]

I am thinking Laser next time but anything but HP, I'm done with their attitude. I do need color though.

[Swingman]

I've owned a bunch of HP's and never had a problem with them. Owned a Brother and was quite pleased with it. Have a Canon at the lake house that is eight years old and still going strong. Have two Lexmark's and will never own another, even if it were the last printer on earth ... the only printer I've ever owned that I may well take to the range and put a couple of rounds through it just to make damn sure it doesn't come back to life.

Funny how experiences differ.

[none]

You're right about the scanner support in more ways than one. I had a really decent HP scanner and it was working great. I upgraded to Windows 7 and found that HP refused to put out a Win 7 driver for it. No work around for it anywhere. Sold the scanner for $25 and bought myself a good Canon scanner. I refuse to have anything more to do with HP.

[Lee Michaels]

You guys got me scared. I need to buy a printer in the next week or two. And I am having some problems trying to nail down a printer that reviews well or is sturdy at all.

I have used the HP laserjets for many years and they have held up well and were very economical. But now I need color. And the color laser printers do not have the quality of the inkjets and are really expensive to feed.

I have gone out and looked at some inkjets and almost anything out there, even pricy office models, have some cheap flimsy parts on them. I saw a couple HP's that were "highly recommended" that had paper trays that were made from such flimsy materials that they would fall apart by the time you loaded paper in it a few times.

I don't do that much printing any more. I won't need that much paper or ink. So I am not concerned bout the price of consumables. I won't buy bottom of the line. But I won't pay for a big business model that is too big and expensive.

And we also have the "all in one" multi purpose printer. Do people really need to copy, fax and scan too?

I am not sure what I am going to do. Looking on Amazon and other sites, every printer I was considering got a 30% fail rating. That is scary. And the other strategy I kept reading about is to get an "extended warranty". Some of those things would actually double the price of the printer. If I paid twice as much for a printer, would it last longer?

If I had the room, I would keep my old, trusty laserjet. But I need to move on and get something that will serve my needs now. And it seems that most of the choices out there are a real crap shoot. I am figuring about $150 to $200 range.

I will be happy to read any suggestions that you guys have. I need to this soon. I am pretty sure that I want it to be networkable and wireless. Reasonable print quality, etc. A color inkjet that will not fall apart from occasional use. Maybe I should consult a psychic. :-(

[none]

On Tue, 29 Apr 2014 07:30:43 -0500, Leon

You might want to have a look at Xerox when you go laser. I've got an old Xerox laser printer that uses solid ink instead of powdered toner. I was very impressed when I bought it a number of years ago and I'm still impressed with it.

One thing really nice about solid ink is that you can add it as needed to the printer even when it's running. Can't do that with toner cartridges.

There's cheaper laser printers, but none I've found that are as convenient.