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HP Printers

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Garth Bock:
HP printers used to be the best but slowly have lost ground to other companies. In the past they have waged a campaign to lock down their printers. Nevermind the high cost of ink, they have blocked the user from saving some money by using generic or even refilled ink cartridges. That has been fought in court. Now a judge has refused to throw out a class action lawsuit against HP for another trick, low ink lockout. In that instance newer models of AIO printer will not allow scanning or even faxing (yeah yeah I know faxing is old school) if the printer is low or out of ink. You can't scan if you are low or out of ink ? Also at issue is the fact a user can't use their scanner unless they create an HP account and login just to use their scanner. HP has defended that because of their ink/printing monitoring system and promote their scan/print to their cloud. So your personal scans are sent to their cloud. So you may own the printer but HP calls the shots.

Vasco:

--- Quote from: Garth Bock on August 12, 2023, 01:43:36 PM ---So you may own the printer but HP calls the shots.

--- End quote ---

'Twas ever thus - and I think other firms are heading that way, too.

But my problems with HP printers are tied up with µ$ decisions. I had a perfectly good HP LaserJet 1010 (USB, mono) that worked in Win7 but not Win10. So I bought a LaserJet P1102 (USB, mono) which hasn't worked on Win 10 since a July or August update last year. . . HP did put out a half-hearted fix but that didn't work.

And because my ethernet Dell 1320 colour laser developed a problem that can't be cured I bought a wireless Xerox C230. . . We'll see how that goes.

Garth Bock:
I have managed to extend the life of older HP printers by using either XP drivers or using drivers from comparable, newer models. As for the Dell printer, they are made by Lexmark and are junk. One department at our university got a bunch of them when they bought some desktops and servers. Thought it was a great deal. A year later they were scrapped because of the high failure rate.

davidmc36:
Have a Samsung colour laser and a Brother B&W Scanner/Printer for her home office.

Never had any of the quoted issues. Use all generic toner  and drums for both. All level indicators work normally too.

Garth Bock:
I switched to Epson years ago when HP started the first round of DRM'ing their cartridges and also Epson and others were out performing HP. I also have a Brother QL1050 label printer.

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