So my mother recently bought an ET-2800, By HP we had an HP printer before and we got a new one because the old one would not work with my sister’s Windows 11 Laptop. So I had to set it up for my mother, the manual said you can use it without the app. But there was no way to physically do that. Anyway, I downloaded the app on my phone (android) and the app would not connect to the printer. So I used my mother’s iPhone and it would connect. The setup process was stupid proof. And after I got it all full of ink, it was very painless. However, this is where the H in HP should stand for HELL. Because a few months go by and my sister and my mother need some papers printed. No problem. I thought to myself, so my sister tried to print it wirelessly. Couldn’t find the printer, I said ok maybe it’s a dumb driver, USB didn’t work either. I asked my sister to send it to me, so I can print it on my w540 running rocky 9. Rocky picked up that I needed drivers and installed them. Wireless didn’t work but wired showed up, I thought sweet I can just print the paper and get back to what I was doing. However, when I clicked print, the printer would grab the paper and run it though but not put ink on the paper. My mother asks me to forward the email to her to try to print it on her phone. I send it, and it prints, and the paper come out how it should with ink and the paper is finally printed.
After this experience with this printer, it makes me rather aggravated at this purchase, and no longer want to buy from HP. I have looked at Brother printers and there are no Proprietary ink cartage, and or laser printers. I purely wanted to talk about my experience with HP printers and would like to know what others have for a printer for recommendations, for when eventually HP kills support and makes it a paper weight, I’ve read many negative experiences with HP printer, specially from Lois Ross man and their anti consumer products.
15 years ago HP was among the best in the business. They made workhorse products that did millions of pages (and those old models continue to)
Today HP is a malware and telemetry company who won’t let the average consumer use their printer without a logged-in HP account slurping telemetry about every aspect of their lives. Any consumer who buys a printer with the letter “e” in the model number is paying money to be spied on. Anyone who buys a non-“e” model is still doing so, but in a less VISUALLY obvious, and obnoxious way.
This is not random assumption. I’m a tech. Anyone who buys an HP Printer today and asks me to install them gets a fast education on why they shouldn’t cut the packing tape on that box.
Buy Brother.
15 years ago is almost 2009 now. I remember HP being shit back then already so maybe add another 10 years to that 15.
Maybe I’m misremembering when the old 4100 series dropped, but it was the last of the really great monsters they built.
What do you think of the Epson Ecotank?
I was looking to buy an ET. Then I learned about the sponge. While you’re free to refill the ink at little cost there’s also a sponge that cleans the heads or soaks up excess ink. I have forgotten the purpose, but it’s a 2 dollars sponge, you can easily get something like it and replace it. But the printer won’t reset the counter for the sponge. Unless you want to download sketchy stuff off of a Belarusian website, your only option is to ship the printer to Epson and pay them for the trouble.
That maneuver is about the same price as a new ecotank.
Since writing the above I did some late-night googling, and it seems that Epson US has caught enough flack for this, and now offers a one time key for a reset utility https://epson.com/support/epson-ink-pads-reset-utility-faqs.
If I buy a printer it’ll be a brother laser, or a professional inkjet… And I don’t see the latter happening.
I have an ecotank and I like it a lot. It setup quick and works wired and wireless. The only thing I don’t like is the print quality feels desaturated. Although I don’t print for any art purposes so it doesn’t matter too much.
They look like good machines if you are printing a lot and need an inkjet (like for photo printing)
If you are only using a printer occasionally for letters or shipping labels, laser printers are probably a better option. Sure, they need more space, but they cant dry out and dont require cleaning programs.
Have no experience with Epson outside of 1 complete trash-teir $50 inket, which was hot garbage which of course it was- sorry.
We have one A3 format in the office for 8 months and its been amazing
Yeah, I have a network attached brother black and white printer. It’s pretty great. It handles 98 percent of my printing workload, no fuss, I honestly don’t remember the last time I changed any toner. Has a scanner on top that works if I need it.
If I want something big/nice and in full color I can always go down to the print shop. But for your common printing it’s great.
I’m pretty sure brother does the same shit
They do not, at least at this moment in time. Not even close. Not even in the same solar system.
You shut your whore mouth about brother printers!!!
HP haven’t always been this bad, but they are this bad now, and nobody should be giving them money.
Richard Stallman was radicalized into forming the Free Software Foundation after fighting with printer drivers.
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[Citation Needed]
But sir, this is the internet.
Richard Stallman is a bad person but I don’t think we need to make stuff up to prove that. He’s said he’s fine with child pornography (as long as it’s consensual) and might have favorable views on pedophilia (that may have since been backtracked) but that doesn’t make himself a pedophile.
Just a misunderstood crazy person.
Consent can’t occur before adulthood.
Oh, of course. He’s fine with child abuse as long as it is consensual.
I made it pretty clear he’s a terrible person, just for many, many other reasons that are far easier to argue.
Defending pedophiles is not something you should do in public.
Defending a pedophile doesn’t make one a pedophile. That’s the stretch I’m arguing against.
I can’t believe I’m defending Stallman here. He’s got so many other reasons to be hated.
HP doesn’t stand for “Huge Pain”. It stands for:
- H - Fuck
- P - You
That’s the unofficial moto of the HP company - “Fuck you!”.
Seriously, anyone who still buys HP products, they disrespect themselves.
HP laptops were nice … somewhere in 2011.
And I have two HP mice and an HP keyboard (that one is PS/2, so not very relevant, I guess), which work fine.
Yeah. HP products were used to be great. Still have some decade old printers at some place by HP and they simply work.
However, HP printer purchased ~5 years ago simply suck ass. And I will never get back hours that I’ve spent fixing it. Or attempting to fix it. Go to hell HP… ☹️☹️☹️
HP used to make good printers… in the 90s
Nah, I’d say that’s the official motto.
HP use to be good and reliable. Then it all went to hell for some reason. These days just buy that one Brother laser printer everyone has and you are good to go.
That is some glorious DGAF reporting by The Verge there
Yup. And to be honest, I understand the sentiment.
They ain’t wrong though.
I went through OP’s pain about 3.5 years ago. My old, old printer from college (an HP, ironically) that was absolute bare bones (I think I actually got it for free as part of a bundle somewhere along the line) but also somehow (or maybe because of that) also a workhorse that never let me down for like 10 years…well I lost the damn proprietary cable in a move.
So I started shopping for it’s replacement. But before I could, I still needed my printing to be done ASAP, so I went to my parents house. There, we tried printing but their old HP just wasn’t having it. So we bought new ink and tried that. No dice. I tried everything I knew to try and nothing was working.
So I went to my girlfriend’s parents who also had an HP and we couldn’t get that one to work direct either. Had to eventually email the stuff to them to open on their computer and then with it’s hardwired connection, it finally printed for me.
Later that week my parents bought a new printer to replace the old one, and inexplicably, went with another HP. For them it was more “this is what was on sale at Sam’s Club” and less the result of careful review reading. But anyway, my mom, with all the tech literacy of a jug of milk, botched the setup. Called me like she always does, to solve her tech issues with only her horrible verbal translation of what’s going on, we can’t do it over the phone, so a few days later I go there and while it is fucked up, IDK how much of that was HP being shitty and how much of that would’ve worked if it hadn’t been attempted by my mom. Regardless, we finally get printer powered up and talking to the computer and it STILL won’t actually print stuff we’re sending it. Until the next day when my mom says she tried it again and it worked, no issues.
By that point I was fed up with HP, but I still needed a printer, needed color, and was totally against going inkjet yet again.
Ended up with a Brother color laser printer and it’s been the printer of my dreams from day one.
In my cramped apartment, it sits in another room from the rest of my computer stuff, quietly waiting on standby for the handful of times each year that I need it, at which point it quietly comes to life, prints perfectly, the first time, every time, and never causes any issues at all.
Once upon a time there was a company called Hewllet-Packard that made the best programmable calculators, vendors made the best demonstration: hitting the calc against the floor, picked up the pieces, assembled it and it worked again! (almost beat Texas Instrument). The same for printers, pcs, laptops, good mainframes (i learned fortran in a hp3000), almost any Hewlet-Packard electronic product was among the best. In 90s became HP, since then everything they made is a shame.
Those original HP lasers were absolute beasts. You could put it outside in the snow and if you even hovered over the print icon it’d start to get ready to serve. I bet there are still many in use today.
Regrettably that era of producing quality is mostly finished.
In recent years I’ve had a lot of good experiences with small Brother and Xerox branded MFP devices. There’s still issues here and there if you rely on wireless printing or huge duplexed jobs, but they mostly just crank away for years if you keep feeding them toner cartridges and occasionally a new drum kit.
hp-48 is 🔥
OK, I know this post is pretty anti-HP which is totally fair, but honestly just stop buying the cheap inkjet printers. I discovered ink tank printers and they are a game changer.
In all seriousness, you might want to try out the HP Smart Tank printers. Almost exactly 2 years ago I bought a HP Smart Tank 7000. It is awesome, and not at all like you describe.
I wanted to be done with junk printers for good, so I set out to buy a laser jet. I can’t remember how I found out about these ink tank printers, but they have pretty much the same benefits of laser printers. They print reliably and quickly, the ink lasts forever, and is not only cheap to replace, but you can use 3rd party ink (sold by the bottle. No cartridge means no chip!). My wife is a teacher and prints stuff all the time, including in color. 3 kids use it for homework assignments. I literally refilled the tanks 4 days ago for the very first time. (And only 2 of the 4 tanks at that–black and yellow were down to about a quarter tank.)
I use Linux exclusively and the printer works in Ubuntu and Pop OS out of the box, and without having to install additional drivers or some proprietary app that runs in the tray all the time.
Only downside for me is that sometimes it will go to sleep and my computers don’t see it and I have to go over and turn it on/off again. It’s pretty rare, and I don’t know if it’s actually a printer issue as much as a Linux issue.
I liked the printer so much, I bought one for my Mom this year in May. She’s got Windows, and I told her I’d come over and help her set it up some time because she is not at all good with computers. Turns out I didn’t need to because she set it up herself! (I did help her with the Android app though later on).
I can’t help but gush about this thing. Kind of dumb, I know, since in 2023 you’d think all printers should be able to work like this at a minimum.
OK, I know this post is pretty anti-HP which is totally fair, but honestly just stop buying the cheap inkjet printers.
^ THIS!! SOOOO MUCH THIS ^
Inktank or Laser is the way to go!
If you want something that will last forever get an inexpensive laser printer off of ebay.
Even if it’s only USB most routers/NAS offer some way of sharing it.
Hell, if you’re running a Linux NAS you can give it AirPrint via CUPS and then everything else will “just work” with it.
A Laser printer isn’t an automatic fix. My mom got an HP laserjet from her work and it requires the full suite of HP spyware to run. My girlfriend bought a different HP laserjet and it just randomly decided it doesn’t want to print anymore, and we suspect it’s software related.
I have a Ricoh laser printer and it’s amazing though. The driver from Windows Update just works.
A big issue is that we all learned that ink is super expensive. So rather than buy overpriced ink cartridges, you buy the super cheap printer on sale.
But ink is nowhere near as expensive as it used to be (I think? It could just as easily be a “batteries are really expensive so we have to remove them from your loud toy” scenario) and third party solutions work with the vast majority of printers. So you are stuck with a cheap printer with no protection to keep the cartridges from drying out and hate everything.
The latest “meta” is that everyone should buy a laser/toner printer. And those can be awesome and the toner brick will outlive you. But there are a LOT of air quality concerns with those and it still ignores the real issue:
How often do you print? A few documents a month? That is pretty much perfect for a mid-tier inkjet printer. You’ll keep it going often enough that the rollers don’t get dusty and the cartridges don’t dry out.
A few times a year? Just get a library card and a flash drive. It comes out a LOT cheaper.
Personally? I probably should go the library route, but I already have a room that is basically designated to cancer and microplastics with my 3d printer and so forth. And I am old enough that I like to have a paper checklist when I am grinding in a video game or whatever. So I love my laser printer and it always “just works”. But… I am still an idiot who should have just stuck to heading into town for some chicken nuggies and a dollar worth of printing at the library.
I have a very similar story, but I’m 6 months or so into having mine. I went to buy a laser printer, and the salesperson redirected me to the ecotank for upfront savings and similar performance. I hope mine continues to work as well as yours does for you.
I’ve also had numerous struggles with expensive HP products, both laptop ( no sound for intermittent months on end) and printers refusing to pair with certain devices. While signing a document requiring a pint of my blood type to proclaim that I will never buy HP again, is generally thought as stupid and a bad idea, it is something I think about.
Just wait till you run into one of the HP printers that will not work until you sign up for the HP subscription service, and only use HP subscription ink cartridges, and only if it’s allowed to access the internet to report back that it’s printing. The subscription actually set the number of pages per month you are allowed to print, on the hardware you have them money for.
And it only works for a device with the HP app installed. Total garbage.
I have one of those and it works perfectly from Linux using standard software. You can also go over the subscription, you just pay (still comparable to buying ink cartridges though, perhaps even a little cheaper if you’re printing photos). It also worked for 2 weeks with no internet connection, although it did complain about that lack of an internet connection after a week.
It has also proved to me that HP are conning everyone with non InstantInk cartridges. After 3 years we are still on the same cartridges, which I am sure it would have claimed were empty if it were not InstantInk.
Disclaimer: I got the printer for (effectively) free and use the free tier subscription which allows me 10(?) pages a month with no rollover. It has cost me about €2.50 in 3 years. I would never have paid for a modern HP printer.
Edit: I am not defending HP’s abhorrent business practices. However, in this case I found a loophole and was able to exploit it. It was also free because I had a awesome employer who gave out Fnac vouchers every year. I am also only able to exploit that loophole because I also have that little Brother laser that just works.
I didn’t have the chance to try on Linux. Good to hear it worked for you Since it was for my in-laws it had to work on Windows 10 laptop and a Chromebook. I learned a few years ago I cannot guide them onto a Linux install as much as I want to.
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You sound like a girl defending her boyfriend after he slapped her around and threatened to beat her ass again.
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Honestly, pretty much, yes. Their home printers have basically always been this bad. But then inkjets are universally bad anyway.
HP’s Business class printers for offices and schools are actually pretty good, they make a decent laser printer and they make a decent copier. But their $50 home models have always been garbage.
As someone who ran a computer lab for years, my advice is this: Always always always buy a laser printer. And personally I’ve had only mixed success with all the major manufacturers HP/Lexmark/Canon. I always recommend Brother because they mostly market to offices and corporations, and nobody wants to upset corporate partners, so they’re incentivized to actually make a good product.
Hijacking top comment to spread the word
IT person here. Avoiding HP is a good idea. But a better idea is don’t buy shitty cheap consumer level inkjet printers from any brand. Most of them have this sort of bullshit, although not usually as bad as HP does. Instead I suggest buy it for life. Get a nice color laser machine, spend a few hundred bucks, and you will have a printer that lasts until you die. I like the Canon MF743CDw, it’s a little on the pricier side but it scans both sides of the paper in one pass. Also does color duplex printing.
If you don’t want the extra size or weight of a color laser, get a black and white laser. How often do you really need color? And if you must get something cheaper, get one of the newer inkjet printers that use refillable ink bottles rather than cartridges, like there is an actual ink tank on the printer and you refill it with a squeeze bottle rather than replacing the cartridge.
My problem is I only need a printer maybe once or twice a year so it’s a bit difficult to justify spending hundreds of dollars for a device that will probably only pay for itself back in about a decade.
It may honestly just be worth the hassle I’m going to the library when I want to print something. Not they they don’t have crap printers as well.
Get a Laser then… Inkjets dry out if not regularly used, which on the cheaper printer often means ‘throw it away and buy a new one’ because they don’t have replaceable heads. A laser will happily sit for months idle then spring into life.
It’ll pay for itself the first time your shitty inkjet has one cartridge dry up from not being used in a while, so then the software won’t let you print anything at all until you replace all 4 of them with proprietary OEM replacement cartridges.
That’s one of the main reasons I decided to bite the bullet and spend a few hundred bucks on a color laser. I print so rarely that I wanted a system that wouldn’t dry out from infrequent use.
Then get yourself a basic black & white laser printer. Brother is usually pretty good for that. The cartridges don’t expire and it’ll be ready instantly when you need it, whether that’s tomorrow or next year.
ET-2800, By HP
Uhh, you sure that’s an HP? Do you have the wrong model?
The ET series are EcoTanks by Epson, (Shaq’s Printer) HP almost always uses 4 numbers and sometimes a letter at the end for models. Or Mxxx for Laser
Don’t get me wrong, HP = Horse Piss, but the shade should be thrown at who deserves it.
My bad its a hp 8200 not a 2800 dislexia activate lol
HP printers have been anti-consumer garbage for at least 10 years. Anyone who’s buying one these days just isn’t doing any research into the brand. They are THE example that gets brought up when people talk about this kind of shit.
They were actually taken to court over their machines breaking down and disabling functions that were ok. For example, your cartridge head is broken, but you can’t use the scanner either because the software shuts down all functions.
Simple answer, ages ago there was a time when HP made okay printers. In the past decade or more, they have not. Stay away.
The bloatware and software stack is just abysmally bad.
Laserjets up until generation 5 were amazing. There are laserjet 4s still trucking away churning out pages. I personally had a LaserJet 4MP that I sold when I got married due to its extremely low wife acceptance factor (it was huge, loud and ugly. We both regret that decision because 20 years later it would probably still be working.
Basically, what Brother lasers are now is what HP laserjets used to be up until ~2004. We can debate the exact switchover year ad nauseum, but you get the idea.
When you said 20 years later I genuinely thought you meant like early 90s
On a related note my Brother 2270DW has been working flawlessly since 2012. It survived two moves just fine. Toners are cheap and widely available
I have it hooked up to my wifi and any new pc or mac connected to the wifi can print effortlessly
