The part of HP that was widely considered praise-worthy is their test equipment branch. Which, naturally, isn't HP anymore but is now Keysight after HP spun them out as Agilent in the late 90s.
The funny thing about the customer relations team is that they don't have an inbound phone number. If they aren't answering your emails, not only can you not get anything that way, but even if you phone the customer support team, they're internally segregated so they can't see what's going on either.
I've been trying to get a working laptop out of HP since the third week of September, and as far as I can tell that's just not something they're capable of.
In the end I'm pretty happy with the laptop but I will never buy from them again.
I'm left with the sinking realisation that the only option I've got left is to pursue a refund, hope that doesn't take an age to sort out, and start the whole process over again with either Dell or Lenovo. Then deal with whatever mess I get left with if I do get a delivery.
Ironically I went with HP because I'd heard Dell was having delivery issues and I wanted to avoid that hassle. More fool me.
compaq bought DEC, HP bought compaq. The things "left" from those veins in the company have been praised, but they have been drying out for a long time by now.
The old HP made great printers. Before that, they made great test equipment, calculators, etc.
They still make pretty good servers and networking equipment, but their storage is a mixed bag.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett_Packard_Enterprise
But their consumer inkjet people are awful.
The whole "ink as a service" debacle is ridiculous, but their normal printers with normal ink cartridges work perfectly.
I can imagine HP printing to have 0 fans, though.
And I've certainly heard good things about their Laserjets back in the day :)
The current budget consumer inkjets seem to be pretty awful; though I wonder how much that's the fault/state of entire category - I notice that whenever we talk about HP Inkjets being awful, the counter-recommendation is not e.g. Epson or Canon budget Inkjet, but a laser printer. Specifically, almost exclusively, a Brother laser :). Which is a different category.
There are professional photographers who are happy with Epson & Canon fancy Inkjets; but the loss-leader el-cheapo printers do indeed seem to be generating ill-will.
Pretty much everything that people hate about them comes from this business model.
I personally print very rarely, but I found laser printers are much better for rare printing. When I had an Inkjet the Ink was always dried up when I tried to use it occasionally, so when I actually needed it it didn't work. So now I buy the cheapest laser printer that can do duplex, and that works when I need it.
Probably the only reason to have an Inkjet is if you need color printing
Windows 10 managed to break itself so that the tablet wouldn't boot within a couple of weeks of getting it and HP reinstalled it under warranty.