HP Printers... what an utter crap pile of dung of a company.

something_totally_different · 9 Jan 2008 at 16:47

This little rants in reference to the driver package they bundle with the printers they sell. never in the decade ive been doing this have i come across more bloated slow and generally bollocksed up software than that of HP.

ive had an absolute bloody nightmare installing this piece of crap which has done nothing but annoy me. Now i have always been a champion of HP hardware, i do believe they make fine reliable well designed robust printers and i do like them, but what in the name of god almighty are they doing packaging this crap with them ?

its taken 22 minutes to install the printer software and just as it asked me to plug in the usb cable, we had a power cut. anyone with half a brain would program the software to recall and continue upon point of failed execution. not HP. Instead the software kicks in, downloads a fault diagnostic tool and trys to fix the error that doesn't exist. upon failing to fix said nonexistant error it then tells me no fix can be found and gives me just 1 button, "UNINSTALL"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! :mad:

davidwilson666 · 9 Jan 2008 at 18:01

Quite agree.
I was trying to install an all-in-one printer-scanner on somebody's laptop once, and before it installs itself, it checks the spec of your computer to see if it can handle it. Needed a 500MHz CPU (for a printer/scanner!?!?!?!?!) but the laptop had a VIA 1GHz CPU that the HP software didn't recognise, so would not install. Why can't you let me think for myself!!!

Confused · 9 Jan 2008 at 18:11

Their home-based systems are mostly software-driven nowadays, meaning crappy, bloated install packages.

However at work we have exclusively HP LaserJets, and most are networked, and they're very, very simple to set up!

Indy500 · 9 Jan 2008 at 18:14

Its a shame they don't let you download drivers seperately from the other software.

pastymuncher · 9 Jan 2008 at 19:02

XanderThal said:
This little rants in reference to the driver package they bundle with the printers they sell. never in the decade ive been doing this have i come across more bloated slow and generally bollocksed up software that that of HP.

ive had an absolute bloody nightmare installing this piece of crap which has done nothing but annoy me. Now i have always been a champion of HP hardware, i do believe they make fine reliable well designed robust printers and i do like them, but what in the name of god almighty are they doing packaging this crap with them ?

its taken 22 minutes to install the printer software and just as it asked me to plug in the usb cable, we had a power cut. anyone with half a brain would program the software to recall and continue upon point of failed execution. not HP. Instead the software kicks in, downloads a fault diagnostic tool and trys to fix the error that doesn't exist. upon failing to fix said nonexistant error it then tells me no fix can be found and gives me just 1 button, "UNINSTALL"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

My partners sister has a HP computer based around a Celeron and 512mb of memory and you should have seen all the bloatware that was installed on that. She wanted to know why it was so slow and gave it to me to fix. From pressing the power button to actually being able to do anything took 7.5 minutes. I reset it to factory settings with a restore of XP and there were over 40 things starting up at bootup, all of which were not needed. It took ages to clean that pc up, not to mention getting rid of the pre-installed Norton rubbish. She had a HP printer come with it and i have to agree with you about all the rubbish that comes with the drivers. At with least my Epson printer i can download just the drivers.

NorthstaNder · 9 Jan 2008 at 19:48

Love my HP printer. Had no hassles with it at all. Installed easily, works flawlessly and I much prefer it from the horrid Canon thing I had previously.

I just stop the HP digital imaging monitor running at startup and I run it when I need it.

Heofz · 9 Jan 2008 at 21:05

HP inkjet printers - 2 years down the line and its paper tray will start feeding itself 3+ sheets at once, printing across the top edges of the paper. I've had about 5 different HP inkjets, and every single one has acted this way :mad:

joey1211 · 9 Jan 2008 at 21:20

pastymuncher said:
My partners sister has a HP computer based around a Celeron and 512mb of memory and you should have seen all the bloatware that was installed on that. She wanted to know why it was so slow and gave it to me to fix. From pressing the power button to actually being able to do anything took 7.5 minutes. I reset it to factory settings with a restore of XP and there were over 40 things starting up at bootup, all of which were not needed. It took ages to clean that pc up, not to mention getting rid of the pre-installed Norton rubbish. She had a HP printer come with it and i have to agree with you about all the rubbish that comes with the drivers. At with least my Epson printer i can download just the drivers.

I reckon this why people are looking for alternatives to windows, be it osx or linux, though mostly osx. The rubbish that pc/laptop manufacturers insist on putting on their machines is a nightmare. A work colleague bought a toshiba laptop before xmas and asked me to set it up for her. I've yet to burn the driver cd because it insists on using Nero7 which just will not burn the disc.

queamin · 9 Jan 2008 at 21:32

XanderThal said:
This little rants in reference to the driver package they bundle with the printers they sell. never in the decade ive been doing this have i come across more bloated slow and generally bollocksed up software that that of HP.

ive had an absolute bloody nightmare installing this piece of crap which has done nothing but annoy me. Now i have always been a champion of HP hardware, i do believe they make fine reliable well designed robust printers and i do like them, but what in the name of god almighty are they doing packaging this crap with them ?

its taken 22 minutes to install the printer software and just as it asked me to plug in the usb cable, we had a power cut. anyone with half a brain would program the software to recall and continue upon point of failed execution. not HP. Instead the software kicks in, downloads a fault diagnostic tool and trys to fix the error that doesn't exist. upon failing to fix said nonexistant error it then tells me no fix can be found and gives me just 1 button, "UNINSTALL"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Agreed i uninstall most of it

Indy500 · 9 Jan 2008 at 21:36

joey1211 said:
I reckon this why people are looking for alternatives to windows, be it osx or linux, though mostly osx. The rubbish that pc/laptop manufacturers insist on putting on their machines is a nightmare. A work colleague bought a toshiba laptop before xmas and asked me to set it up for her. I've yet to burn the driver cd because it insists on using Nero7 which just will not burn the disc.

And a completely closed, proprietary system is better? Just use the serial to do a clean install.

joey1211 · 9 Jan 2008 at 22:20

sr4470 said:
And a completely closed, proprietary system is better? Just use the serial to do a clean install.

True, but most buyers wouldn't know what that meant let alone know how to go about doing so

Indy500 · 9 Jan 2008 at 22:29

joey1211 said:
True, but most buyers wouldn't know what that meant let alone know how to go about doing so

I know, but I'm not an average buyer. However I am interested in keeping things as open as possible, for their benefit. Ultimately I may end up using just Linux, but since most games are DirectX I can only use Windows for them...