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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Have you used an HP printer lately? I have and I don't think they are awful in every regard. The printers I've used work just fine. The output is clean and the paper handling is good.

My current printer at home is a Canon and it's good as well.

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I bought a small HP laser printer a couple of years ago, not realizing that the “e” in the model number meant it’d require an HP account and an always on internet connection.

I did the initial setup and declined to create an account, after which it successfully printed 20 pages before refusing to print anything other than a sheet of paper telling me I needed to create an HP account and finish setting it up with the app.

There was absolutely no way it would print without an HP account, and, even if I’d made one, it’d actually refuse to print if it ever didn’t have an internet connection (even over USB). Naturally it’d taken me three weeks or so to print the twenty pages and it was outside the return window, but it made me so upset that I just put it away and bought a new printer from a manufacturer that’s not overtly hostile.

HP lost me as a customer for life with that thing, and actually made me a vocal critic.

The print quality wasn’t as good as I’d hoped for a laser printer, either.

I think in most European jurisdictions you would have been able to return the printer for a refund on the grounds that it didn't work, that it was not of merchantable quality, was misleadingly advertised, etc.

Agreed, I have a nearly decade old HP now and it's been working fine. It's a multi-function, with duplex printing, color, scanning and Postscript. I'm a Postscript fan because it has tended to work much better with Linux than the brand-specific PCLs. We vary in printing, I average probably a couple pages per month, over the years, with kids, we've varied between no printing and lots of printing. I think we're on our third set of cartridges. I would have bought the HP carts, but they were ridiculously priced, I think $450 for a full set of replacements. So I went with an aftermarket for $100 and they've worked fine.

I think this is an interesting issue -- I also have a multi-year old multi-function HP laser printer. Before that, I had another one that lasted multiple years until a cross-country move broke the scanner. I don't really have any issues with HP or their printers. They've been expensive to replace toner, but aside from that, they've worked fine. I don't print much, but when I do, it's more than adequate.

However, my experience doesn't necessarily mean that I'd by an HP printer now. So much has changed with HP over the time I've had this printer that I'm not sure how much of my experience with older products maps to current products. I'm more inclined to listen to people with more recent experience vs. my own personal experience with a company that I'm pretty sure doesn't exist anymore.

If had two Canon lasers and like their output and reliability, but don’t care for their drivers. AirPrint is unreliable unless the printer is awake. I gave up getting CUPS set up in FreeBSD (less necessary with AirPrint, but locked down school Chromebooks need the most generic printer interface possible).

The printers are fine but this post reminded me to cancel my ink subscription as I haven't printed anything in 6 months.

After my subscription date ends in March, they are charging me one final fee of $6.99 for the privilege of cancelling -- first time I have ever seen something like that.

> I have and I don't think they are awful in every regard.

I have too. And the printer insisting that I create an account in some "Smart" website and log into it even before I can print anything with it is beyond annoying.

I got around the problem by finding some old drivers that I had a backup of. But I suspect most people don't give old drivers around and are forced to go through this "Smart" sign up nonsense!

I helped an elderly relative install a brand new all-in-one HP printer over christmas. It was a ridiculous shit show of an experience. The printing quality is OK, but that's the only positive thing I'll say about it. It ships with a bunch of crapware, which nags her about ink subscriptions. It's all quite unpleasant.

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