HP haven't always been this bad, but they are this bad now, and nobody should be giving them money.

Rule 1: don't buy an HP printer
Rule 2: don't buy an inkjet printer
Rule 3: don't buy a printer unless you absolutely need to.

15 years ago HP was among the best in the business. They made workhorse products that did millions of pages (and those old models continue to)

Today HP is a malware and telemetry company who won't let the average consumer use their printer without a logged-in HP account slurping telemetry about every aspect of their lives. Any consumer who buys a printer with the letter "e" in the model number is paying money to be spied on. Anyone who buys a non-"e" model is still doing so, but in a less VISUALLY obvious, and obnoxious way.

This is not random assumption. I'm a tech. Anyone who buys an HP Printer today and asks me to install them gets a fast education on why they shouldn't cut the packing tape on that box.

Buy Brother.

Yeah, HP are terrible now.

They weren't always this bad, I had a laserjet 4000 that was made around the turn of the century and it "just worked".

There’s always a post where someone’s asking if HP printers are really as bad as they seem.

Yes. Yes they are. Spread the word. Friends don’t let friends buy an HP printer.

Richard Stallman was radicalized into forming the Free Software Foundation after fighting with printer drivers.

For well over 20 years, yes.

HP practically invented the concept of "destroy the brand name of your high end professional equipment with the worst consumer garbage ever." Their inkjets are infamous

They were early pioneers in the art of enshittification.

HP doesn't stand for "Huge Pain". It stands for:

• H - Fuck
• P - You

That's the unofficial moto of the HP company - "Fuck you!".

Seriously, anyone who still buys HP products, they disrespect themselves.

Big printer companies need to be regulated better by the FTC. The whole cartridge issue is a waste of resources and costs a lot more than it costs to produce.

No, but they worked hard for it.

Once upon a time there was a company called Hewllet-Packard that made the best programmable calculators, vendors made the best demonstration: hitting the calc against the floor, picked up the pieces, assembled it and it worked again! (almost beat Texas Instrument). The same for printers, pcs, laptops, good mainframes (i learned fortran in a hp3000), almost any Hewlet-Packard electronic product was among the best. In 90s became HP, since then everything they made is a shame.

HP sucks donkey balls. Printer, computer, laptop, all-in-one, doesn't matter. Friends don't let friends by an HP.

That said, ET-2800 is an Epson brand printer, specifically the base-model "Eco-Tank" printer that uses bottles of ink instead of cartridges. HP makes a few under the "Super Tank" line. If that's the right model number, that might help explain driver issues if you have an Epson printer being controlled by HP drivers.

If you plan on keeping it, make sure to set a calendar reminder or set up a task to print at least one color page every month to keep the ink from drying out in the print head. If you decide to replace it, consider a brother laser, especially the black-and-white only models. They are tanks

OK, I know this post is pretty anti-HP which is totally fair, but honestly just stop buying the cheap inkjet printers. I discovered ink tank printers and they are a game changer.

In all seriousness, you might want to try out the HP Smart Tank printers. Almost exactly 2 years ago I bought a HP Smart Tank 7000. It is awesome, and not at all like you describe.

I wanted to be done with junk printers for good, so I set out to buy a laser jet. I can't remember how I found out about these ink tank printers, but they have pretty much the same benefits of laser printers. They print reliably and quickly, the ink lasts forever, and is not only cheap to replace, but you can use 3rd party ink (sold by the bottle. No cartridge means no chip!). My wife is a teacher and prints stuff all the time, including in color. 3 kids use it for homework assignments. I literally refilled the tanks 4 days ago for the very first time. (And only 2 of the 4 tanks at that--black and yellow were down to about a quarter tank.)

I use Linux exclusively and the printer works in Ubuntu and Pop OS out of the box, and without having to install additional drivers or some proprietary app that runs in the tray all the time.

Only downside for me is that sometimes it will go to sleep and my computers don't see it and I have to go over and turn it on/off again. It's pretty rare, and I don't know if it's actually a printer issue as much as a Linux issue.

I liked the printer so much, I bought one for my Mom this year in May. She's got Windows, and I told her I'd come over and help her set it up some time because she is not at all good with computers. Turns out I didn't need to because she set it up herself! (I did help her with the Android app though later on).

I can't help but gush about this thing. Kind of dumb, I know, since in 2023 you'd think all printers should be able to work like this at a minimum.

I will never buy a home printer at this point, especially not from HP. It's significantly cheaper and more convenient for me to go to a printing center next-door and get everything done for pennies.

If somehow I had to start printing things in mass quantities, the only option I would consider is something like the Epson EcoTank. You can clearly see how much ink is left, and you can refill it yourself too. They can't randomly just tell you that your cartridges are faulty, brick your device, or ship you a cartridge that has less than 5ml of liquid inside, but one that costs upwards of 50$ a piece

Honestly, pretty much, yes. Their home printers have basically always been this bad. But then inkjets are universally bad anyway.

HP's Business class printers for offices and schools are actually pretty good, they make a decent laser printer and they make a decent copier. But their $50 home models have always been garbage.

As someone who ran a computer lab for years, my advice is this: Always always always buy a laser printer. And personally I've had only mixed success with all the major manufacturers HP/Lexmark/Canon. I always recommend Brother because they mostly market to offices and corporations, and nobody wants to upset corporate partners, so they're incentivized to actually make a good product.

Just wait till you run into one of the HP printers that will not work until you sign up for the HP subscription service, and only use HP subscription ink cartridges, and only if it’s allowed to access the internet to report back that it’s printing. The subscription actually set the number of pages per month you are allowed to print, on the hardware you have them money for.

And it only works for a device with the HP app installed. Total garbage.

IT person here. Avoiding HP is a good idea. But a better idea is don't buy shitty cheap consumer level inkjet printers from any brand. Most of them have this sort of bullshit, although not usually as bad as HP does. Instead I suggest buy it for life. Get a nice color laser machine, spend a few hundred bucks, and you will have a printer that lasts until you die. I like the Canon MF743CDw, it's a little on the pricier side but it scans both sides of the paper in one pass. Also does color duplex printing.

If you don't want the extra size or weight of a color laser, get a black and white laser. How often do you really need color? And if you must get something cheaper, get one of the newer inkjet printers that use refillable ink bottles rather than cartridges, like there is an actual ink tank on the printer and you refill it with a squeeze bottle rather than replacing the cartridge.

I used to have an older HP LaserJet, which was really good. Their more recent printers just keep getting worse, and I feel like they're coasting on their reputation. Brother laser printers are what I've found to be the best modern printers.

ET-2800, By HP

Uhh, you sure that's an HP? Do you have the wrong model?

The ET series are EcoTanks by Epson, (Shaq's Printer) HP almost always uses 4 numbers and sometimes a letter at the end for models. Or Mxxx for Laser

Don't get me wrong, HP = Horse Piss, but the shade should be thrown at who deserves it.

🌎👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

It was fine before Carly Fiorina took over and brought in the 1980s MBA style of management (the same that killed or nearly killed quit a lot of household names).

Think of it as the first wave of enshittification, back in the 00s.

Ever since then, HP consumer-grade products have generally been pretty bad, especially (but not only) their printers.

Interestingly, the business-grade stuff was still pretty decent, but I'm not up to date on whether that is still the case.

They were actually taken to court over their machines breaking down and disabling functions that were ok. For example, your cartridge head is broken, but you can't use the scanner either because the software shuts down all functions.

It's pretty much always been this way with the HP ones. Years ago when wireless printers were not the standard, we used to connect a printer to the family Windows PC and then share it on the network. We got a new one set it up, and the printer refused to be shared. Turns out HP had explicitly blocked network sharing in their Windows software driver for that printer. Never purchased another one since. Brother isn't perfect, but I have multiple 8+ year old Brother laser printers still in service right now and they "Just Work."

HP printers have been anti-consumer garbage for at least 10 years. Anyone who's buying one these days just isn't doing any research into the brand. They are THE example that gets brought up when people talk about this kind of shit.