The Omen laptops are pretty good as well. Even the fan blades are made of aluminum. But I would avoid their desktop PCs because they use proprietary components.

Like any other company, some products they make are junk but others are decent.

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Thanks for this, good to know. I’ve had nothing but problems with my HP and had many a day of wanting to schwing it out the window.

Any particular brand out there that’s still known for decent build quality? I feel wary of them all now.

We are also an HP/HPE shop.
Like you said. Not the cheap shit. And definitely not the cheap printer shit!
ProDesk or EliteDesk (maybe even used?)

Or just use linux with CUPS and you never have to let hp install spyware on your computer.

Best trick is to not buy HP.

I just learned how to manually install PCL5 from the “Professionals ONLY!” Section of their driver download page.

HP is doomed, sadly. All our parents who slaved and sweated blood to build their wonderful tech, wasted, their lives pointlessly ruined. All thanks to the horrible directors and management of HP. If you know anybody who works for HP today, make sure to victimise, ostracise, belittle, denigrade and castigate and bully their entire families into submission. No mercy for these fuckers and destroyers of all that is decent.

Hell yeah, brother

FUCK YEAH, I got one last month. Best printer I’ve ever had. No, I’m not being paid to say this. Fuck HP!

Bought a laser printer in early 2020 and am still on my first toner cartridge lol

Don’t worry. Some MBA types are working on it.

i need things to be in physical form so that i can write on it. it’s the only way that i can organize information and learn.

I humbly think the reasons other people have to print something is none of your business. And your personal story is no one else’s. Many people, myself included, need to print stuff on a regular basis, for work, school or whatever. The post is not about that, but the scummy practices of a shitty company.

Print prices are so high in London, that it’s cheaper to buy a new printer every 30 pages or so.

College students still need to print stuff, some more than others. Especially if you’re like me and the only way you can retain information is to take handwritten notes, physically highlight, and write in the margins. I don’t know why, but ebooks and PDFs just don’t stick in my brain. There’s a printer in my department, but not that convenient when you don’t live on campus, and the library charges you like you’re at a Kinkos.

I’m amazed that these printer companies feel they can pull this kind of shit though. You’d think they’d be doing everything they can to keep the 10 people who still need home printers and scanners.

This is what I do. On the rare occasions I need to print something, I just pop down the street to the library and do it there.

i do fairly often. just because you personally don’t need to print stuff doesn’t mean no one has to.

I sell stuff on eBay enough that having a printer is worth it so I can buy and print shipping labels at home, that way I can use USPS package pickup to ship stuff from my front door without needing to leave the house.

I just got like 2 mi to the local fedex office and print from there. That said in the last decade the most common thing I print off is D&D sheets for a con I go to

I print stuff all the time, I also send people personal letters to their mailbox so maybe I’m just old.

I have a laser printer because I need to print documents and reference material, changes in policy etc I need a physical copy to reference.

I’m in medicine, and paper is still extremely important, mainly from a legal standpoint. You want hard copies of a lot of charts and papers.

It’s easier to read for understanding off of paper. Easier to mark up text and make notes. Easier to learn off of. The use and flexibility for learners and knowledge workers is still unchallenged.

Need to show proof of residency? Bring a copy of a utility bill (which is now paperless so I have to print it.) Make a change on my car or health insurance? Sure, I can wait a week for them to mail me a copy, or I can print a copy right now (because a family member lost theirs or needs to submit a copy for employment purposes.) “For faster service, please fill the documents out and bring them with to your appointment.” Not a requirement, but saves everyone time.

I used my printer weekly when my kids were in school, but now that they’re in their 20s I still find myself needing to print something every month or two. Sure, the 10 minute drive to the library is an option assuming I have the time to make the trip during their hours, and hoping it’s not the opposite direction of where I’m headed. The last printer I bought was a basic Brother color printer that I spent $30 for on sale. It does a solidly adequate job 6 years later.

When I need to sign something that isn’t DocuSign. Which, is more often than I’d like.

Swore off HP many years ago when my laptop began overheating in minutes. Opened it up, looked at the video card heatsink and duct and saw LIGHT in between. Ended up bending the duct ever so slightly and ground a pre1983 penny down to act as a heatsink and fill the gap. Yeah, a penny filled the gap. This after I owned a 1990s desktop where they cooled the processor by using a case fan and plastic ducts to remove the heat. No heatsink whatsoever. They will cut every corner they can.

I have never bought a new, consumer HP printer. Ancient business HP printers though, I have on several occasions. Those are pretty good actually, they work when you need them to, (third party) toners are plentiful, and they’re cheap. Much better value than a new one.

🤣

I would hate and love if this were true.

Yeah, but we can’t be angry about that.

You are absolutely correct.

It’s not very expensive not to populate the USB receptacle on the the PCB.

Sealing the hole in the case would be easy. You could have an removable insert in the case’s injection mold so there’s the option not to have the hole.

If they thought two case parts were too logistically complicated, or they already made the mold and don’t want to mill it out to make space for the insert, they could insert plastic plugs with permanent snaps.

If they really didn’t care, they could even just put they sticker over the hole in front of an unpopulated port.

They stopped making them in the 90s and early 2000s when they quit making calculators. They made the absolute best RPN calculators that have ever been made, but shut down their calculator division. I prefer RPN, but I guess TI has a stranglehold on the market selling calculators without innovation for years and years. Ah well.

Well back in 90 the dot matrix printer my family had was an awesome workhorse of a printer. WE got rid of it not because it broke but they stopped making new drivers it around windows 95.

The open source community would tell you to get an ancient LaserJet 4 (or, more likely at this point, a Brother printer) instead.

Aside from that, there’s a worrying increasing trend in the amount of stuff that ought to be getting jailbroken, but isn’t for some reason. Smart TVs, for example. I think that the community of people with the skills and willingness to do that sort of thing is too small, and is getting spread too thin to keep up with the fire hose of Tivoized products coming out these days.

If you want a solution for this nonsense, call your congressman and ask for consumer protection legislation, 'cause I don’t think the hackers are going to be able to save us from the prevailing trend of the entire consumer electronics industry.

There printers more than 2 decades now. There’s no printers jailbreak trend whatsoever. What makes you think it can happen in the future?

Printers are almost useless these days. I mean who uses a printers today anyway? Everywhere and everyone, including government accepting mail today. If I need to print something which happens once a year at best I either go to a photo store or print at work