Opinions about HP products. Anyone else hate this company?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I have experience with a wide range of HP products, and they vary by division and generation.

  1. HP calculators have always been tops. I personally have no use for all of the features they provide, and my cheapie Sharp calculators have always been sufficient.

  2. HP home computers suck; they may not have always sucked, but every Pavilion I’ve ever seen has been a sack of poor architecture filled with pointless features.

  3. I’m not familiar with their laptop line. I believe they’re now selling Compaq laptops, which have a good reputation. I’ve always hated Compaq desktop units, though, almost as much as Packard-Bell.

  4. HP professional computers have stood up much better. The minicomputers mentioned by tpayne, as well as the Vectra line, have a well-deserved reputation for excellence.

  5. HP lab equipment is now made by the spun-off Agilent. Under both nameplates, equipment and service have been excellent. The Agilent instruments are still run by HP Vectra computers, using Windows NT 4 (someday they’ll switch to a newer implementation, but validation is a long and slow process, and I don’t blame them for dragging their feet).

  6. I’ve had mixed luck with printers. The laserjets, especially the 4 series, have been absolute workhorses. Their inkjet printers have left quite a bit to desire, though.

22

I’ve had 2 HP PCs and a laser printer, and have had good luck with them. I found their tech support to be excellent - I could call them 24 hours a day and get a live support person. I never used it after the warranty period was up, though, because then they charge for it. But are there any companies that offer free tech support forever? I did have a hard drive failure, but that’s really Toshiba’s fault - HP doesn’t make the drives.

23

I have two HP printers (LaserJet 6L, bought in 1998, and a color Deskjet 952c, bought in 2001). No problems with either, and the few contacts I’ve had with tech support have been very good. If either of them ever dies, I’ll gladly buy another HP. We recently discussed printer longevity on one of my professional mailing lists, and HPs seemed to be leading the pack.

On the other hand, the reviews I’ve read about HP computers have been pretty lukewarm.

Incidentally, Dell will never get another dime from me. I don’t care how cheap their deals are – their tech support sucks ass.

24

We have a Laserjet 4600 at work. I’ve had to call support so many times on that thing - streaky printing, freezing up - I’ve had to take the thing apart with the tech guy talking me through. Not to mention they’ve had a bad run of luck with the quality of their cartridges. (At least they replaced them free, but the printer is almost a year old and I wonder how much longer that’s gonna last.)

25

The calculators: nice. Good stuff. Even if I am a philistine who likes his “=” key so I tended to go TI more often.

Printers: Of lately not so much hate, as become concerned. I’ve noticed what I’ll call an overall “cheapening” of the HP printer experience, and I don’t mean just the price: I understand that if the printer is priced at less than 2 refills, it might as well be a disposable. But I just no longer get that vibe of reliability: used to be that if you knew it was an HP you knew you’d get your printout. Now I keep hearing of HP printer failures. And of course, there’s the Customer Support “experience”. The many bad reports are crossing the line from anecdote to data.

Computers: All my info has been that it’s so-so for the home, decent for business. Lord help us if their home-use line is fated to be more Presario-ized with time. Had to set up an HP 350n (or something like that) for my nephew back in Xmas. Dunno if they had this before the Compaq merger, but it was laden with a bunch of bundled “features” including desktop interfaces, that nobody more than halfway computer-literate needs, and that nobody less than halfway computer literate knows what they’re for. Plus for some absurd reason, once it was set up, it stopped completely cooperating with a legacy VGA display – as in, you could do the complete set-up, and even the registration, and even the system-restore, on-screen. But if you tried then to do a simple boot to just do everyday work… blank display, and the screen went into power-save. Good thing we had a late-model P-n-P monitor around. Not being compatible with a “dumb” display in regular use mode is kinda dumb itself, IMO.

26

Heheheh. HP. Where do I begin?

Laptop #1: This was a high school graduation present. Dorm rooms are small, so it made sense. I got an HP n5470.

Here’s some background reading on that particular model.

I received the laptop in June 2001. I started using it at the end of August. Towards (I believe) the end of October, it starts spontaneously shutting down. I’m fairly certain its overheating. I take it in to Best Buy, where I purchased it (along with a warranty). They send it to HP. HP replaces the A drive. Ooookay. But it works, so I’m not going to complain. At the end of April 2002, it starts doing it again (during finals!). I take it in after I come home for the summer. They send it out to HP. HP replaces the fan. In August, the screen starts fritzing out. It goes to Best Buy (the manuf. warranty ran out, but I still had 2 years on the Best Buy warranty). They can’t figure out what’s wrong, so they replace the entire screen, and that works. It works pretty well for about another year. In September 2003, it starts randomly overheating and shutting down again. I take it in, and get a replacement model which turns out to be an HP.

Laptop #2: Got ran over on I-90 in November 2003. Not HPs fault; I screwed up royally. I get a replacement that’s exactly the same.

Laptop #3: Works okay for a couple of months. Then the screen stops working in April 2004. I send it out to HP, it gets fixed.

Getting run over aside, my laptops live fairly uneventful lives. They sit on my desk. They’re regularly cleaned/cleared (including the fans). I leave the fan intake clear, even though that’s a pain since it’s on the BOTTOM OF THE FREAKING LAPTOP. They’re rarely transported; when they are, it’s in a case. I don’t use them on the road. And they still keep on breaking.

Also, the last time it broke, the screen didn’t work. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I still had to call HP tech support, though, to get a number for repair. They tell me to boot up in Safe Mode. I explain to them that I can’t see the screen, but manage to get it booted up (I could hear XP start). I figure maybe it’ll start up correctly or something if I do it that way. It doesn’t; still no screen. They then tell me to click on “My Computer.” Which I tell them I can’t see. Since my screen is blank. (Based on the way it stopped working, it was fairly obviously a hardware problem; this was confirmed, as they replaced a cable).

27

I have an HP Pavilion that I’m tippy-tappying on right now. It’s served me well for 6 years. I print on an HP 4L that has also served me well for 10 years.

My main complaint is that the damn things won’t break down so it’s nearly impossibly to convince Mr. Pundit that they need replaced.

While I highly recommend HP laser printers, I don’t recommend the inkjet printers simply because their mark up on the toner is too high. When we decided to buy an all-in-one device for the kids, I bought an Epson because it had individual cartridges (as opposed to evil tri-color ones) and replacements are $12, which I can live with.

Just bought hubby a sweet Compaq laptop, or notebook, if you will. So far, no complaints. I enjoyed watching movies on a recent plane ride.

28

I’ve got an HP PSC2100, one of those all-in-one printers. It does good work. A while ago, though, I reformatted one of my machines, and had to reinstall the drivers. I couldn’t find the original disc, so I went to their website to download the drivers file. It was over three hundred meg in size.

Three. Hundred. Meg. For a PRINTER. Granted, it does scan and copy as well, but three hundred flippin’ meg?

It also wants to reinstall the drivers every time I reboot- and whenever I access the CD drives (that one I don’t get at ALL- sure, I can somewhat understand it doing it when I reboot- but when I access a CD drive?).

Yeah, I think I’ll go with another all-in-one next time, maybe from Canon. Not HP.

29

Damn straight you will. I have an all in one, and it’s the bomb. It’s definetely also more aesthetically pleasing that a HP :wink: (because that’s what matters :wink: )
I can get both cartridges for $10AUS (not official Canon ones, but they work just as well) which is about $7 US. And it does brilliant quality.
We were going to buy a HP, till it occured to us to check the price of the cartridges. :eek: 50 mls of ink is soooo not worth 30 bucks.

30

May I also add that Canon’s come with their own software, (the normal shibang, that comes with all-in-ones) and OmniPage, which (I’ve never used to MS word version, but I hear there is one) recognises scanned printed words and letters and translates them to editable text. Of course, it’s about as reliable as voice recognition software, maybe a bit better. But it works.