HP printers & FreeBSD?

Chris Dillon cdillon at wolves.k12.mo.us
Tue Oct 5 16:31:13 BST 1999


On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, K. Gunderson wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 04:43:48PM +0100, Scott Mitchell wrote:
> > Having given in to my SO's nagging and decided to buy a new printer, my
> > next task is to make sure it works with our favourite OS before handing
> > over the cash... The printer in question will probably be from HP simply
> > because I've never owned/used one that gave me any trouble, whereas the
> > same cannot be said for certain others :-(  Anyway, looking through the
> > specs for the current crop of Deskjets, many of them apparently use
> > something called 'Printing Performance Architecture' -- these also seem to
> > be the models that don't even offer Mac support, so I assume the 'Printing
> > Performance Architecture' is some kind of poxy WinPrinter thing that is
> > best avoided.  The rest of the range talks PCL Level 3 which I believe is
> > fine for tools such as GhostScript et. al.
> > 
> > Any confirmation that these are valid assumptions would be appreciated.
> > Please cc: to me as I'm not subscribed to -questions these days.
> 
> I have a Deskjet 660c that I bought several years back for a Windoze box
> and based upon my experience with both it and HP, I will never buy another HP
> product as long as I live.  
> 
> First off, the drivers for this puppy have
> always been sketchy and HP was slow to offer a working WIn95 solution
> resulting in frequent PITA's.  There were also a couple warranty issues
> that HP refused to honor.  The printer came with a 3 year warranty.  I
> called HP to get it sent in for service and they refered me to some
> outfit in San Diego, despite the fact that I can walk to their Boise
> offices from here in 5 minutes.  The San Diego outfit gave me the run
> around, and after a bunch more effort with HP phone menus, I was told to
> take it to the local CompUSA.  So I drive it down there and they inform
> me that the unit only has a 1 year warranty, despite me showing them the
> side of the box where it clearly denoted 3.  The CompUSA manager
> calls HP to verify, and is informed that the unit only has a 1 year
> warranty.  Go figure. By this time I had no desire to spend a few more
> hours trying to get a live human at HP and gave up.
> 
> So hey, screw me once shame on you, but screw me twice shame on me.  My
> advice to anyone who asks is to stay away from HP since once they get
> your money in hand it's the last service you'll ever get out of them.

My experience, though not with their printer support division, is
exactly the opposite.  I bought a new HP ProCurve 4000M switch (which
I am quite impressed with, by the way) that had a capacitor on the
backplane blow up after a couple days of use.  The unit still worked,
but regardless I was going to have them replace it.  I called the
support number, was referred to one other number, and the people there
were the best support crew I've ever talked to in a long time, and
they were NICE.  They offered no questions asked to send me a
replacement unit (but requiring a CC or PO for collateral, of course,
since I was getting the replacement before I shipped back the old
unit). I got it the next day(!), and they even included an airbill in
the box with the replacement so I didn't have to pay shipping to send
the other one back.  Now THAT is service.  And for the price I paid
for the switch, far below what anyone else is selling switches for
that have these features, I'm entirely surprised I managed to get that
kind of service.  In comparison, I can pay outrageously inflated
prices for other products, and have to wait on hold on a phone for an
hour and get transferred 10 times to talk to some flippant tech
support person that I'd like to reach across the phone and strangle.

If it makes you feel any better, though, I've never been thoroughly
impressed with HP's lower-end printers, either.  But their mid- to
high-end printers have never disappointed me.  And if the box really
did mention a 3-year warranty, but they claim it only has 1-year
regardless of what the box said, just scream bloody legal action and
I'm sure they'll instantly be much nicer and gladly send you a new
printer.

> -- 
> Ciao--Ken
> http://www.y2know.org/safari
> 
> Failure is not an option, it comes bundled with your Microsoft product.



-- Chris Dillon - cdillon at wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon at inter-linc.net
   FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet.
   For Intel x86 and Alpha architectures (SPARC under development).
   ( http://www.freebsd.org )

   "One should admire Windows users.  It takes a great deal of
    courage to trust Windows with your data."






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