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.
MeanEYE@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yup. And to be honest, I understand the sentiment.