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Oh yes, it appears HP is pulling as big boners as Microsoft. So, Saturday, my wife's OfficeJet died. It was a faithful servant for over 10+ years, so we got our money's worth. Daughter needs to print homework, and I find out my faithful Samsung wireless printer (10+ years) has died as well. Hmmm.
FWIW, now is not a good time for one to need a printer. Most of the shelves are empty, and I think what is left is questionable. The first replacement HP turned on, flashed all of it's lights like crazy, turned off and that was it - dead.
The next HP came from Amazon. It's paper tray was incorrectly assembled - it won't take 8.5x11 paper. Good QC HP. That's going back as soon as we get the return label printed.
Third printer I find at a local office supply. And here begins my rant. HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers. It's all up in the cloud somewhere. This is before they will allow me to install drivers or do anything else.
Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life? 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Solution - don't take the recommended selections.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Then I hope my current HP printer lasts a lot longer.
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Cancel the order, get a Laser.
You plug it in, you print, you turn it off. It just works, unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months.
And the toner may be expensive, but ... a full set of compatible toners (CMYK) lasts ~1500 pages and the last set cost me £50.48 from Amazon. Which is a load less than I used to pay for inkjets once I figure in the full-but-dried-up cartridges I threw away! 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I agree, but this is for SHMBO. 
I have my eye on a laser for my office. We don't do that much heavy printing.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Nor do I - that's why I got a laser.
I may have six months of no printing, maybe a year. Or a week - it's at Herself's demand (she's something of a Luddite).
And every damn time I turned on the injket, it would need a cartridge, or a clean, or a nozzle check, or ... Every. Damn. Time.
And that wastes my time, my paper, my ink.
The laser? It sits in a corner with a cover over it (to keep the cat out more than anything) and I plug it in, print, and unplug it. It's really that easy. The toner that came with it lasted me a year or two, and that's with printing the Christmas cards two Decembers!
Just remember: inkjet - and laser - printers are there to sell consumables. With HP, you get what? 120 sheets per cartridge? And that's £13 or so each. Lasers may seem more expensive, but they save money in the long run!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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OriginalGriff wrote: it would need a cartridge, or a clean, or a nozzle check, or ... Every. Damn. Time.
Exactly my experience as well. I bought a Brother laser printer last year, and it just works, every damn time. For the number of prints I do, the cartridge that came with the machine should last a good long time.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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Amen.
I recently bought a Brother colour laser printer to replace another Brother colour laser printer that broke down after 8 years.
It may not reorder supplies over the net, but it does everything else (it prints, in colour, double-sided). It's also not going to stop printing if/when Brother in their infinite wisdom decide its time for an upgrade...
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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About three years ago I got an old HP 2600n colour laser for free (discarded by my office when they upgraded to giant printers for the entire office). I had to buy a couple of new cartridges (it takes four, black plus CYM) which cost $26 each and I got a spare yellow and magenta cartridge from my office (for free again as they were discarded with the "obsolete" printer) for when they run out (they are at 50%).
This thing sits in the corner and prints pretty much instantly and perfectly any time I or Herself needs it. Sometimes it goes months without any printing then happily wakes up, prints and goes back to sleep - basically no maintenance at all!
On my shelf I have three old inkjets. A wide-carriage Canon I thought I might need for printing maps - used twice; not used again for over eight years now; probably never will be. Also a couple of HPs which always were a problem, needing new cartridges/print head combos every time I needed them. Haven't used either of them for over three years now.
Laser Printers Rule!!!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Here here, well said! I have an HP Color Laserjet Pro MFP M477fdw which cost around £300 5 years ago, it prints, copies, scans (would fax too I think) and using 3rd party cartridges it costs peanuts to run. As Griff says, no more scrapped ink cartridges because you haven't printed for a few weeks. Honestly, over 5 years (and it's still working perfectly) it's cost way less than previous ink jet printers and much less hassle.
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charlieg wrote: I have my eye on a laser for my office.
Just be sure not to look into the laser with your remaining eye!
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Exactly why I bought a little Brother monochrome laser printer a week ago  I have a Canon multifunction that has a pretty nice scanner, but the printing part has frustrated me. I tried refill ink, but that didn't work out.
I had my eye on another cheaper laser printer, but the toners are almost twice the printer's price. The Brother's toner are more affordable and there are generics available as well for half the price.
The 1 toner=1000 pages is a bit of a marketing ploy - it's usually at 5% coverage, which isn't a lot.
Ink tank printers seem to be more affordable to run than traditional inkjets if you print frequently and need colour.
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OriginalGriff wrote: unlike inkjets that dry up and have to be "persuaded" to print if you leave them for a couple of months.
Ahhh, it's not just me then. I very seldom print anything, but when I do need to: Nope! New cartridges needed. Very annoying - and, yes, it works out being very expensive at two ink cartridges for every 2-3 A4 sheets that I print.
Are there no "tricks of the trade" to bring dried up ink cartridges back to life?
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What really got my back up was when I wanted to scan a document ... and it wouldn't scan because it didn't like an ink cartridge ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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How large can I print my photographs with one?
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Mine goes up to A4 - but you can get A3 (and possibly larger) if you don't mind paying a lot more for it.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I do mind. My current ink jet does A3 and I'm using it for 11"x17" prints.
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The printers of yore: my LaserJet 6MP keeps printing, and printing, and printing. Slow but steady. It's 24 years young and by a long stretch the oldest piece of technology I still use everyday.
In those days HP was a legend not a laughing stock.
Mircea
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I still use(sparingly) a LaserJet 5. It's a tank, but I keep it around because it works without fuss.
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I have a LaserJet 4350 or some-such of that vintage...drivers will work under Windows 10, and it's not showing any sign of slowing down. Not that I print much; cartridges in a bubblejet typically would have plenty of time to completely dry out between print jobs.
I've been at my current job for 14 years now, and I "salvaged" this printer when the company I previously worked for folded...and the printer was already at least 5 years old when that happened.
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HP is on my list of former customers who were so horrible to work with I now refuse to buy any of their products. Not only that, there was an HP plant where I used to live and they treated people terribly. Anyway, I have a couple of Canon printers that work really well for me. They go through ink fairly quickly but third-party ink is very, very cheap. I bought five sets of cartridges for twenty bucks not long ago instead of fifty bucks for one set as Canon wants to charge.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I ran into the same issue when trying to set up my current HP for scanning. When it dies I'll be looking for other solutions for scanning and printing.
Don't get me started on the idiocy of HP's setup program. If you have a mixed environment (wired and wireless), HP's setup program can't handle installing the printer. It assumes the printer and computer are both either wired or both wireless.
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charlieg wrote: Whatever happened to just installing the drivers and moving on with life?
Nowadays you have all of these completely unnecessary extras...
Just last weekend, a friend of a friend brought me a laptop that's not all that old, but for the last few months had now become unbearably slow.
Event Viewer showed the culprit - a component of the printer software (that monitors ink levels, from what I've been able to infer from the logs) was crashing 3 times in a row, giving up, restarting after a one minute pause, and crashing again 3 times in a row...essentially, Windows was being kept busy, in an infinite loop, generating error reports.
Found the file that auto-started on every boot, renamed it, then from that point forward, Event Viewer showed everything going quiet. The owner hasn't complained about anything now being different when trying to print, so whatever that thing was doing turned out to be no loss at all.
Whenever I get a new printer for myself, the first thing I try is to locate the folder from the installer that contains an .inf file, a .sys file, and maybe some .dlls...point Windows's printer installer to that folder, and skip everything else. You don't get fancy frontends, but I've never found one that offered anything I couldn't do without.
And for those installers that don't lend themselves to going directly for the .inf/.sys driver...the printer software gets installed in a VM, which is left powered off until I actually need to print. No need to waste resources 24/7 when I only print once a month...
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charlieg wrote: HP now requires an online account associated with the specific printer so that they can help me monitor my printers.
Yup, my friend returned her printer because of this level of invasion. She didn't want her ink cartridges monitored (and god knows what else) and new ones automatically sent to her, along with whatever other invasion of the corporate computer snatchers is going on.
This trend is really pathetic. And on top of it, what if I don't have an Internet connection? What if I want to print my version of Walden's Pond from my solar run computer system in the middle of the woods that is air gapped by a good 50 miles from any connection and no SkyNet satellite dish? Eh?
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Marc Clifton wrote: What if I want to print my version of Walden's Pond from my solar run computer system in the middle of the woods that is air gapped by a good 50 miles from any connection and no SkyNet satellite dish?
What are you, some kind of Luddite?  
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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