What is it with these guys?

[Piyono]

My mother, God bless her innocent soul, bought an HP 4070 scanner a little while ago. Having recently formatted its host machine, I was faced with the task of reinstalling its drivers.
I hopped on over to HP's site to get the latest release but all I could find was a single 300MB file, description for which read "Drivers and Software". I scrolled up and down the page a few times looking for the standalone driver. Nada.
I figured it must have been some sort of oversight on HP's part so I initiated a chat session with HP Live Support - or whatever the hell they call it - and asked the Mystery Support Agent where the standalone file was and how I could obtain it.
(paraphrased)
"Sorry, that's it"
"Whaddaya mean, 'that's it'"
"That's it. That's what you get"
"That's ABSURD! I have to download 295MB of bloat to get 5MB worth of bloated driver?"
"I'm sorry, but that's HP policy"
"I'm starting to develop my own policies regarding HP!"

Ok. No choice. Downloaded the goddamned thing. It's a self-extracting ZIP file. Extracted it to a new folder. Opened the folder. No setup. That's OK... setup file was 2 levels down in a cryptically named directory. How very thoughful of HP to make the installer easy to use for the majority of their client base. Launced the installer. Agree. Next. Next. Install... hey! Where the hell are my install options? No options. Shite! Where the hell is the cancel button? No cancel button.

All I could do sit through 4-minute install and stare in wonder at the screen as a bazillion DLLs and registry entris flew by in the progress dialog.

I hate big, stupid companies.


Piyono

 

[Piyono]

^"All I could do was sit through a..."

 

[Bozo]

Preuming you were running Windows.......

Next time let windows install the drives (Add/Remove hardware or Device Mangler) Choose to install manually and point it to the driver folder. Usually Windows will only install the drivers and not the crap. That's how I install HP printers without all the BS.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Piyono]

I tried that after the fact but Windows couldn't find any useable driver files.

Piyono

 

[Tannin]

We have not had a single problem with an HP product these last several years. Nope, not one problem. This is an outstanding record for a major manufacturer.

(Though, to be fair, it probably has something to do with the fact that, in the wake of a series of stupidities rather like that one you just hit Piyono, we now refuse point-blank to sell anything made by Hewlett-Packard. You want to connect an HP product to one of our systems? Go right ahead, sir. Don't bother phoning us when it doesn't work though, 'cause we ain't touchin' the damn thing. Call HP. When you get tired of wasting all day on the phone and not getting anywhere, buy something that probably works most of the time, like an Epson or a Canon or a Xerox or a Kyocera, or ... )

 

[Buck]

Yes, those HP driver installs can be difficult. The worst scenario is when the end user hooks up the device to the computer, Windows semi-detects the device and then the user runs the driver install. It never works. Follow the instructions dear customer, install drivers before connecting device.

Tony, have you ever tried Samsung laser printers?

 

[Tannin]

I remember being offered a really good deal on them by a sales guy who didn't want to give up on me, back a few years ago. Hard sell, but he was a decent guy, even so, and used to help us out with a lot of other stuff. In the end ... did we buy one? No, I don't think we did, we just thought about it for a while, and ended up staying with ... er HP? No, that was probably after we went cold on HP but before we totally spat the dummy out. Brother? Maybe it was Brother. they were OK, but just OK. Didn't stay with Brother for too long.

Wound up going to Xerox — that 3-year warranty that Xerox had on all their products was hard to beat, pity they restrict it to their higher-end stuff now. Been pretty happy with Xerox laser printers for the last ... oh ... five years or so.

Also Kyocera. I think it was Time who put me onto Kyocera printers. If so, thankyou Time: we have nothing but nice things to say about the Kyoceras.

And these days, Canon too. I'll buy anything with a Canon label on it and feel confident. And, if the price is OK and the model fits the task description, there is always Epson. I never worry about buying Epson. Indeed, if there is a company with a better record for consistent quality in just about all things for a very long time, I can't think of it. One of the very best.

But for lasers, Buck, we mainly use Kyocera, Xerox, and Canon. I'd happily try a Samsung though: Merc seems to think that they are OK, and Samsung get (nearly) everything they do right. (Their low-end monitors are crap. I'm afraid to try the high-end ones in case they are the same.)

 

[Buck]

I've been aiming to try Kyrocera, but they're difficult to get, even through they have a branch office 25 minutes from my house. It doesn't help that I dont' sell that many printers in general.

 

[Fushigi]

Follow the instructions dear customer, install drivers before connecting device.

Ah yes, plug and play. Maybe that should be revised to read load bloatware, drivers, reboot, plug, pray, fiddle, reboot, unplug, fiddle, regedit, reboot, plug, pray, play, wait 3 weeks, hardware failure, start over.

 

[Tea]

Ahh, you mean the old Plug'n'LBDRPPFRUFRRPPW3WHFSO. Pretty basic stuff, really, any fool should be able to figure out a simple Plug'n'LBDRPPFRUFRRPPW3WHFSO. I mean, it's not like we are asking them to do anything complicated. The average user should be able to complete it with no more than five or six asprin, and perhaps about 75 words that Tannin thinks I don't know yet.

 

[Mercutio]

As I tell my students: A good computer technician should be able to swear continuously for two minutes without repeating himself.

 

[sechs]

No built-in WIA driver?

 

[i]

As I tell my students: A good computer technician should be able to swear continuously for two minutes without repeating himself.

I prefer Coug's version: A good computer technician should be able to smash non-cooperative hardware into consecutively smaller pieces for at least two minutes.

 

[Santilli]

Wow. Guess I'll stick with the older 4000 series printers, and an Epson 3170 Scanner....

s

 

[MaxBurn]

I smile every time I set up my Color Laserjet 5 on a computer, no drivers at all, and it's on the network. It's an old tank the just won't die.

 

[Fushigi]

They keep threatening to replacing our workgroup 5Si with some fancy crapola Xerox thingamabob. Luckily, the Xerox dohickies are large and the space we have isn't. Also, the HP just refuses to die despite a few hundred thousand pages being printed and being 6+ years old. We haven't even serviced it beyond 1 cleaning and the requisite toner cartridges.

I've had better luck with HP inkjets than Canon & Epson, so I've been sticking with them for home use. My wife's PC has a DeskJet 990 and I've an all-in-one OfficeJet 5510. Not bad devices for what they are.