4 ms·
Can you point to some HP products that are still great? As a student of computing history this is interesting to me.
by dman 7y ago
Can you point to some HP products that are still great? As a student of computing history this is interesting to me.
- neilv 7y agoThe one in my field of view right now is an HP LaserJet Pro 400 series. My previous LaserJet, a 5N, I found set out for the trash on the curb late one night, in a sprinkling of rain. So I hauled it home, plugged it in, and proceeded to run it for over a decade, very infrequently putting new toner in it (never even had to replace the rollers). Eventually, the LaserJet 5N's fan started to fail (all the mechanics and fuser and everything still working fine), which presumably was a replaceable muffin fan, but I also wanted a sleep mode (and preferably to not dim the lights at warmup), so I parted it out (too heavy to ship, but the parts were still marketable), and bought a contemporary LaserJet. The new LaserJet is not as bulletproof-looking, but is sturdy and has worked like a champ for a few years, for letter and envelopes, and it still respects the toner. My only complaints are that I wish they wouldn't play setup convenience tricks with USB, and that I'm unwilling to give its huge firmware direct network access. (For CUPS drivers, instead of using `hplip`, I now use the simpler "HP LaserJet Series PCL 6 CUPS".)
- thrower123 7y agoThose old LaserJets are absolutely bulletproof. My parents are still using the one we bought with our very first 486 clone in the mid 90s. I had to mod it a little to swap the serial port for USB a decade or more ago, but it is still cranking along.
- kaitai 7y agoYep, I'm still using an old HP LaserJet too. Got it from a university discard, I believe, and it's over 14 years old and still cranking. Love it.
- jacquesm 7y ago> serial Laser printers with a serial port? Maybe Centronics?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- NikkiA 7y agoNo, they did used to have serial ports, especially if PS printers (since you could then use the postscript interpreter interactively).
- thrower123 7y agoWhoops, parallel port not serial. Looking at pictures, this must have been a 4L.
- neilv 7y agoI usually used Ethernet-connected ones, but I'd think RS232 serial at a doable bit rate was viable for most purposes. Both HP-PCL and PostScript (I wrote code to generate both) can be sufficiently compact. (And you had the trusty built-in fonts, plus sometimes additional fonts in cartridges/cards, so fonts didn't necessarily have to be sent with the print job.) What could be a problem for connection via RS232 is large images, or an unfortunate setup that rasterizes the whole page off-printer at high dots-per-inch.
- mrpippy 7y ago> Laser printers with a serial port? Maybe Centronics? Probably not what OP means, but Mac printers all connected over serial
- sokoloff 7y agoNot as old, but I’m still running an HP3600n color printer going on 13 or 14 years now. Just toner changes every couple of years.
- herpes 7y agoTheir LaserJet printers are still top-tier. I've got several around twenty years old that are still chugging along only needing the occasional roller replacement.
- ndesaulniers 7y agoMy HP z840 workstation I feel was well engineered. HP Chromebook 13 also great, IMO. (Both machines a few years old at this point).
- abawany 7y agoI have 2 different HP MF 1212nf (multi-function laserjet) that have run rock solid for 8+ years. The HP laptops designed for business use (e.g. HP Elite X2, my current HP Elitebook 360) have been great as well, slim, and user upgradable (drive, battery). Even a consumer laptop (Compaq) has been solid-ish apart from a prematurely failing cooling fan, which I admit was a pain to replace.
- mruts 7y agoThe HP 50g RPN graphing calculator is the best calculator ever made. Unfortunately they moved on to make the HP Prime, which is vastly inferior.