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HP printers used to be among the best. I had a HP Deskjet 500 that ran perfectly for 15 years across multiple PCs. Now I would never buy or recommend HP print

HP printers used to be among the best. I had a HP Deskjet 500 that ran perfectly for 15 years across multiple PCs. Now I would never buy or recommend HP printers to anyone. They have been fully enshittified to boost HP's profits.

hypercube33 3y ago
My dad purchased a HP LaserJet 4 in 1986 - the year I came into this world. It was still working well into 2018 when I decided it wasn't worth moving with me as it made the lights in the house dim when it powered on, but it still printed just fine. Thing weighed a zillion pounds, and toner was like $15 - part of me still feels awful for disposing of it. Thing printed reams of paper off for documentation and software development stuff.
- neilv 3y ago
  My LaserJet 5 (which I found on the curb when it was already old, and used for around a decade longer) also did the light-dimming pulse on each power-up. Other than that, the only things I didn't like about it were: (1) didn't seem to have an idle mode, so I had to turn on the power switch every time I wanted to use it, and manually turn it off after; (2) I like my electronics black. When a fan (which seemed hard to replace) failed completely, I decided to part out the LJ 5. I netted money on eBay for some of the easy-to-ship parts, so at least it lived on. I wonder whether the lights-dimming was original behavior. I don't know power circuits, but naively wondering whether some component had gone out of spec (resulting in, say, it charging a capacitor more quickly than it was supposed to), and so the unit was drawing more than it should've from the wall for an instant.
- microtherion 3y ago
  I think HP laser printers are still OK, it's only the inkjet models which have been affected.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
Yeah me neither. Brother printers seem to be the least shitty ones these days. I wonder how long that's going to last. Corporations just can't resist.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  New Brother printers are enshittified now too.
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    Nooooo! Say it ain't so. I have an old B&W MFC that I was thinking of maybe upgrading but to be honest I have to real reason to other than to get colour and maybe document feeding for scanning but I print so rarely that I probably won't now as Brother was going to be my one and only port of call for this. When did this happen?! Can we get older versions still maybe?
  - imposterr 3y ago
    Could you expand? The last Brother product I have is from 5 years ago and it didn't seem to have started its enshittification yet.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      As mentioned by @Lightbody in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    > New Brother printers are encraptified now too. No, new Brothers are fine. A while back where were a very few models that got a questionable firmware release. As I recall, they weren't common retail models. The firmware might have been a beta. Brother got some crap for it, people circulated the IPs of their update servers (for blocking) and that was the end of it. I regularly buy new Brothers for customers. They're fully fine.
bitwize 3y ago
HP gear used to wear like iron because back when HP was Hewlett-Packard, they were primarily a scientific instrument company, and they built their computer peripherals like they built their instruments. During and after Carly's tenure, they made some dumb M&A moves, like spinning off their scientific instruments division, acquiring Compaq, and going all in on consumer electronics. Thus began their slow, but steady, enshittification.

hypercube33 3y ago

My dad purchased a HP LaserJet 4 in 1986 - the year I came into this world. It was still working well into 2018 when I decided it wasn't worth moving with me as it made the lights in the house dim when it powered on, but it still printed just fine. Thing weighed a zillion pounds, and toner was like $15 - part of me still feels awful for disposing of it. Thing printed reams of paper off for documentation and software development stuff.

neilv 3y ago
My LaserJet 5 (which I found on the curb when it was already old, and used for around a decade longer) also did the light-dimming pulse on each power-up. Other than that, the only things I didn't like about it were: (1) didn't seem to have an idle mode, so I had to turn on the power switch every time I wanted to use it, and manually turn it off after; (2) I like my electronics black. When a fan (which seemed hard to replace) failed completely, I decided to part out the LJ 5. I netted money on eBay for some of the easy-to-ship parts, so at least it lived on. I wonder whether the lights-dimming was original behavior. I don't know power circuits, but naively wondering whether some component had gone out of spec (resulting in, say, it charging a capacitor more quickly than it was supposed to), and so the unit was drawing more than it should've from the wall for an instant.
microtherion 3y ago
I think HP laser printers are still OK, it's only the inkjet models which have been affected.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

Yeah me neither. Brother printers seem to be the least shitty ones these days. I wonder how long that's going to last. Corporations just can't resist.

crooked-v 3y ago
New Brother printers are enshittified now too.
- jamiek88 3y ago
  Nooooo! Say it ain't so. I have an old B&W MFC that I was thinking of maybe upgrading but to be honest I have to real reason to other than to get colour and maybe document feeding for scanning but I print so rarely that I probably won't now as Brother was going to be my one and only port of call for this. When did this happen?! Can we get older versions still maybe?
- imposterr 3y ago
  Could you expand? The last Brother product I have is from 5 years ago and it didn't seem to have started its enshittification yet.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    As mentioned by @Lightbody in a sibling comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > New Brother printers are encraptified now too. No, new Brothers are fine. A while back where were a very few models that got a questionable firmware release. As I recall, they weren't common retail models. The firmware might have been a beta. Brother got some crap for it, people circulated the IPs of their update servers (for blocking) and that was the end of it. I regularly buy new Brothers for customers. They're fully fine.

bitwize 3y ago

HP gear used to wear like iron because back when HP was Hewlett-Packard, they were primarily a scientific instrument company, and they built their computer peripherals like they built their instruments. During and after Carly's tenure, they made some dumb M&A moves, like spinning off their scientific instruments division, acquiring Compaq, and going all in on consumer electronics. Thus began their slow, but steady, enshittification.