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HP printer app is installing on PCs whether they have HP printers or not
- greatgib 3y agoWhat is the most shocking is that HP softwares are usually the crappiest crap that we can give on a computer. So it is really bad to see that forced on so many computers of people that might have avoided it in theory.
- citrin_ru 3y agoPrinter software tends to be below average quality bloatware for most popular brands. Don't know why this happens. Back in the days when I used Windows I avoided running setup.exe supplied by the printer vendor and tried to install only necessary drivers using Windows UI to driver update/reinstall.
- baz00 3y agoThis is why I like macOS. Just buy something with AirPrint and you never get infested with shite. Even my HP laser is bearable!
- bzzzt 3y agoYeah, but when I last installed an HP printer with AirPrint support it wouldn't print unless I set it up, preferably with an app that somehow was very interested in my contact information and GPS location...
- baz00 3y agoMine didn’t. LaserJet Pro M148dw. If it did it would have been sent back.
- timrichard 3y agoMine didn't either. LaserJet 402dne. I connected it via Ethernet (no WiFi on that model). No drivers or other software needed to be installed for MacOS, and I also print from iOS and Android without issues.
- YakBizzarro 3y agoThe M148dw is a semiprofessional printer,so it doesn't have all the typical hp crap. You can even allow 3rd party toner and disallow firmware upgrades
- loloquwowndueo 3y agoHP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw here and I didn’t get any of that crap either. I don’t even know or remember if there was a driver disc with the printer (not that I’d be able to use it, I no longer have any computers with a working optical drive) - just plugged it in, set networking up, and every device in the house (iOS and Linux) can see and print to it. Linux did require specifying the driver (came with CUPS).
- CamperBob2 3y agoThe LaserJet Pros are actually still really nice printers. Expensive relative to the rest of the market, but my M479fdw seems to lack all the latest user-hostile features. It doesn't require an app for AirPrint, or anything other than drivers for Windows. Not looking forward to the $800 or so in toner cartridges it will require when the starter cartridges are exhausted. They will basically double the cost of the printer. But if the quality is there -- and it definitely is -- I'm not one to complain, especially since the $800 is (supposed to be) good for 6000 pages. It should be several years before I have to buy another set.
- 360MustangScope 3y agoMine is the same across MacOS and Linux. Something people can do is setup a Linux server with an AirPrint printer setup and then share the printer over samba to Windows
- shmoogy 3y agoI setup CUPS on one of my servers and all of my printers support AirPrint now :-)
- Sharlin 3y ago(User-facing) software made by hardware manufacturers is almost always subpar. And printers are some of the most notoriously user-hostile hardware that exists, so naturally printer software is even worse than hardware-bundled applications in general.
- forinti 3y agoIt's outsourced two or three times. Some subsidiary in a cheaper country gets the job, outsources it to some local bodyshop that outsources it further to smaller firms or individual contractors.
- amelius 3y agoAt this point I wish we didn't have the concept of drivers at all. Let them just fix it in hardware/firmware.
- baz00 3y agoCan we have 1998 HP back please, you know the engineering company, not the crap shifter.
- m-ee 3y agoOld HP was something special, people here might not be aware that they were a leading test equipment company back then not just a PC maker. That business was spun off as Agilent then spun off again as Keysight. At a previous job we purchased a 3458a multimeter for some precision measurements. Its use cases are more limited now than in 1989 when it was introduced, but for high precision it's still the standard and the design is practically unchanged. They published a very in depth article on its ADC design at the time. https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1989-04.pdf https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1989-04.pdf
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI cut my programming teeth, designing ATE (Automated Test and Evaluation) systems, composed, chiefly, of HP (or Tektronix) devices. HP kit was eye-wateringly expensive (and worth it), back then.
- brutopia 3y agoWow, nobody’s certainly doing that anymore
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoBecause 1989 China didn't have the knowhow and industrial capability to reverse engineer, copy and manufacture your cutting edge HW designs and then undercut you, so there was no risk in publishing your know-how out in the open. It's no coincidence the rise of Huawei coincided with the fall of Nortel. I recently saw a tech youtuber from my home country review a bootleg iPhone 15 Pro Max, and it was very difficult to tell them apart HW wise unless you really knew what to look for. Same with bootleg AirPods Pros, they even automatically connect to your genuine iPhone when you flip open their case, and only with a recent iOS update does the iPhone warn you they are not genuine AirPods Pros. Insane.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI'm glad I disabled and don't use the Windows store at all.
- demondemidi 3y agoFTFY: I’m glad I disabled and don’t use windows … at all. This is like reason 9.832 not to use windows.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoI'll probably always need Windows for some reason or other, even if it's in a VM. It would be nice not to need it at all though.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoSounds like some kind of cancer. You're currently in remission, but you want to be completely cured.
- hyperman1 3y agoYou'd be surprised. I accidentally pushed myself out of Windows around XP because I loathed to wait out its startup and patch installation times. The longer you stay in Linux, the worse Windows punishes you when you come back, so you do just this one thing more in Linux. Then one day you wonder why Windows is so miserably user unfriendly for anything, and notice your brain flipped from Windows defaults to Linux defaults somewhere in the recent past. Turns out they are both equally brain damaged, and the brain damage from the most used one becomes invisible. Now Apple, for some reason, never clicked with me.
- PrimeMcFly 3y agoApple never clicked with me either, it's a clunky-crippled interface with a manufacturer that wants to lock you into their ecosystem worse than Microsoft does. I've been using Linux since 97 or so though, so I'm pretty comfortable with it. But there are some things Windows is just necessary. Games are a good example, there are some games that just won't work under Proton at all. There is other stuff as well. I took the LSAT last year, and they require software to monitor the computer I use while I take the test, and only Mac or Windows is supported.
- Qem 3y agoNext step is it bricking a non-HP printer it sees because the latter uses a non-HP ink cartridge.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoPlease don't give them ideas.
- ginko 3y agoSurely 2D printing is pretty much a solved problem by now. How come there is no company making cheap, no-fuss printers that accept standard USB&network printing driver protocols. You'd expect them to eat everyone's lunch. Arguably there should even be open source printers by now.
- tonyedgecombe 3y agoIt's a race to the bottom where decent manufacturers get eaten for lunch.
- Teandw 3y agoThe profit is in the ink rather than the printer. There are two issues with someone coming into the market with a cheap printer/ink. 1) It's hard for any business to keep selling a product at 10% profit margin when you know you can sell it for 200% profit margin with the price increase not affecting sales. 2) In the rare situation that a business would accept low margins 'just to be nice to the customer' - they'll just get bought out. It's hard to not accept 10 years of profit for a business when it's being offered to you.
- franga2000 3y agoCounterintuitively, 2D printers are substantially more complex than 3D printers. Everything inside them needs very tight tolerances and many thousands of custom components. The only companies that have the tooling to make printer-specific parts are printer manufacturers and they sure aren't going to sell you parts so you can directly compete with them.
- interpol_p 3y agoBrother might be closest to this? See https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-laser-wi-fi-its-fine https://www.theverge.com/23642073/best-printer-2023-brother-... I have a black-and-white laser Brother printer from over 15 years ago. Never changed the toner, comes out once every few months for the rare occasion I need to print something. I love it
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
- Eumenes 3y agoCan Broadcom just buy HP and kill it already?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoI vote for getting Musk to buy it - maybe some tie up with "formerly known as Twitter" so that it prints out the promoted tweets/Xs of the day.
- MSFT_Edging 3y agoHaving "the jewish question" occasionally spit out of your printer and the worst nerds on the internet call it innovative would surely be interesting.
- ehvatum 3y agoCriticism of the ADL’s politics is no holocaust.
- tempodox 3y agoSo HP wants to piss off everyone, not just their own users.
- iAMkenough 3y agoAnd Microsoft is happily giving them the means to do so.
- jakub_g 3y agoTL;DR fault is not on HP side but on Windows side. 90% of commenters didn't read the article. (Yes I hate HP too. Use Brother.) > It's likely that whatever bug is causing the problem made these PCs believe they had an HP printer connected, and then Windows worked the way it's designed to work and downloaded the HP printer app as a result. The questions are: What caused this bug? (..)
- heelix 3y agoInteresting. With Windows 10, I rarely use the start menu button. One of my boxes had the HP Print software. I did not see it add/remove programs, nor do I have any HP computer equipment. Looks like it wanted permissions when it started up for the first time and had what appears to be a working uninstall. If it shows up on another computer - will track down how they installed it. Not cool.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]