Author Topic: Do NOT buy HP products  (Read 8851 times)

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Offline HighVoltage

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #25 on: May 17, 2021, 07:21:37 pm »
I was sooooo much fed up with HP computer products about 15 years ago that I made a deal with myself to never buy another HP product again. And so far I have avoided them like a plaque!

They went from best to worst !
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Offline Stray Electron

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #26 on: May 18, 2021, 12:01:06 am »
I love most HP products but their PC computers have always been an extreme disappointment.

As I mentioned earlier, look at the Vectra series from the late 90s, yes they're technologically irrelevant today but they were very good systems that performed well for their time and were reliable. There is a wide span between CP/M machines and the junk consumer PCs that currently get the HP badge slapped on them.

What I remember about the early Vectra DOS computers is that they were built mechanically to typical -hp- standards, which made them more expensive than the competition, which was uneconomical since the field was advancing quickly and they quickly went obsolete.

   I still have two working HP Vectras with Hyper Viper cards in them.  :-)  The Vectras were build more like HP instrument line and not their consumer (i.e. Junk) grade computers.
 

Online CatalinaWOW

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #27 on: May 18, 2021, 02:12:07 am »
I can't totally disagree, but have an HP-7615 printer still plugging away after close to twenty years of use.  The drivers have always had issues, but the printer itself is solid.  Third party scanner software has gotten around the lameness of the HP drivers.  The biggest issue now is that ink is getting hard to find.
 

Offline amyk

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #28 on: May 18, 2021, 02:47:35 am »
Their printers were OK, especially their lasers. Do not use the supplied driver installer though, that installs over 500MB of useless crap, some of which is set to autorun on startup. Either extract it yourself and find the tiny driver to install manually, or use generic HP PCL driver that  comes with the OS.
 

Offline HighVoltage

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #29 on: May 18, 2021, 12:21:08 pm »
I still have several old HP Laserjet Printers model 4100 and they are from the olden times. You don't even need a driver installed, because every Windows since XP does have the drivers already.

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Offline Stray Electron

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #30 on: May 18, 2021, 12:44:37 pm »
   I used to have an old HP color Laserjet printer that came from a large US government contractor and I checked the sheet count on it and it had printed over 524,000 pages before I got it. It wasn't working when they gave it me but I opened it up and I found it had four (or five?) brand-new large toner cartridges in it and someone hadn't installed one of them properly. After I corrected that it worked fine.  I used it for a while but I didn't really need a color printer and it was huge so I gave it to someone else. The Laserjet printers where always good printers IMO. I had one of the first low costs models, a 5L IIRC, and it worked fine.

   I don't trust any device that needs to call-home!! I have  Brother HP-5370DW currently and it was constantly connecting back to somewhere and eating into my CPU time. I finally found the responsible piece of software and replaced it with a fake that didn't dial home. I'm not very happy with this printer, it constantly jams paper when trying to feed it into the printer. I only bought this printer because I wanted a Black and White only printer and I wanted something small. I used to have a Canon color printer but I found that it was constantly using up the color inks even though I only printed black and white. But every time that I printed something it would waste color inks while starting up. I literally replaced the color cartridges about twice as often as the black cartridge even though I was only printing in B&W and when any of the color ink got low, it refused to print altogether.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2021, 12:46:11 pm by Stray Electron »
 
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Offline HighVoltage

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #31 on: May 18, 2021, 01:26:13 pm »
  ... it had printed over 524,000 pages before I got it.

The LaserJet series 4100 and similar models were designed and built for 50,000 pages per month. This goes back to the times of the end of the 90s I think it came on to the market in 97, when I bought my first one.

And still today, we can get parts for these old LaserJet's

If HP would have kept going on this quality level, they most likely would still be the king !
Sadly, many people in my circles complain about modern HP products.
So sad!

 
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Offline cdev

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #32 on: May 18, 2021, 02:32:07 pm »
I have a possible HP question. And maybe not. I think a computer I recently bought might be an HP product, but I dont know.

  ... it had printed over 524,000 pages before I got it.

The LaserJet series 4100 and similar models were designed and built for 50,000 pages per month. This goes back to the times of the end of the 90s I think it came on to the market in 97, when I bought my first one.

And still today, we can get parts for these old LaserJet's

If HP would have kept going on this quality level, they most likely would still be the king !
Sadly, many people in my circles complain about modern HP products.
So sad!

-----

I have a server w/motherboard  (photo of the same model -attached, but its not my unit, Ive had trouble getting a good photo of the whole thing at once. ) that I think may have been OEMed by HP.
I'm trying to find more out about it. It's a firewall appliance sold by Checkpoint. The T-180 (4800 model)

A lot of them have been EOLed and are in the used market. People install firewalls like pfsense and sell them as a firewall. I am trying to figure out how I can run the OS of my choice on them. I have not been able to access the BIOS to boot and install other OS images, as one is supposed to be able to do with the hardware..

If anybody wants one they are on sites like ebay, with the going price is around $100 They have 8 Intel gigabit NICs and an interesting "EZIO" graphics LCD with buttons made I think by Portwell. But without this critical info its a challenge to say the least to use them. Its got a very noisy fan. (probably amendable to software control)

My ultimate goal is to run FreeBSD or one of the firewalls that are based on FreeBSD (pfsense?) and kind of use it as a case for my Samsung GPSDO. with its 1PPS output serving NTP to my LAN segments each on a dedicated NIC. But I shouldn't and don't trust an install done by somebody else. .

I'd also like to run LadyHeather on it. It has a VGA output which I have a pinout for. And Intel G41 SVGA graphics.

It has an Intel Q9400 CPU at 2.6 GHz.

It has a console port but absolutely nothing is coming out of it currently, as far as I can tell. Maybe it is directing its output to the VGA and a console window that is currently not there?

Anyway, I was hoping that somebody knew more about HP computing hardware as I think the board may be a custom HP product. It came with a small HP SSD in it. (28 GB) The Checkpoint part number is CPAP-SG4800-NGTX-HPP-HA-LCM - I'd most like to get more information on the mother board.

It currently has 8GB of memory (the one in the photo seems to only have the original 4)

Are there any web sites that function as a sort of encyclopedia of obscure PC info? Or books?

Thank you in advance! I will probably figure it out, I am just trying to give a good home and use to this obviously high quality piece of network hardware


 -cdev


« Last Edit: May 18, 2021, 03:05:28 pm by cdev »
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Offline james_s

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #33 on: May 18, 2021, 05:19:30 pm »
  ... it had printed over 524,000 pages before I got it.

The LaserJet series 4100 and similar models were designed and built for 50,000 pages per month. This goes back to the times of the end of the 90s I think it came on to the market in 97, when I bought my first one.

And still today, we can get parts for these old LaserJet's

If HP would have kept going on this quality level, they most likely would still be the king !
Sadly, many people in my circles complain about modern HP products.
So sad!

Unfortunately the problem is price. People would balk at the price tag of a modern printer that was built like one of the old Laserjets. They were expensive back then too, but you couldn't buy a $250 color laser printer at the time, all laser printers were expensive.
 

Offline rdl

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #34 on: May 19, 2021, 10:09:53 am »
A place I once worked converted from mainframe+terminals to PCs around 1995-1996. The head office recommended printer was the HP Laserjet 4P and when our location went to buy the price was $999.
 

Offline BeBuLamar

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #35 on: May 19, 2021, 10:50:21 am »
I think the OP is right! I liked HP products although I couldn't really afford many of them. I have a bunch of HP calculators from the 25, 41,48 etc... and they are great. I had an HP deskjet plus in the 1990 and it works fine until I moved in 2011 and throw it away. My first HP PC was the Vectra XU 6/200 with dual Pentium Pro. It was a great PC. The next one was the XW6000 dual Xeon but since it was a rebrand Compaq it's not all that great. I still use HP Z workstation but not as happy as when I was using the Vectra.
 

Offline GlennSprigg

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #36 on: May 19, 2021, 11:45:32 am »
It has always left me 'Tongue-In-cheek' when people 'swear' by certain 'brands'...
When you look under the 'hood', there are a massive amount of suppliers for all the integral components, be there
various brands/styles of Memory-Boards, Hard-Drives, WiFi Hardware, CPU's/Gpu's etc etc.   The 'Mother-Board' seems
to be what it all gets down to...  It's like CARS!  The engines can come from many sources... The so-called 'options' can
vary astronomically including finer points like crash tests, and air-bag brands/efficiency...
The actual 'engineering' into the specific 'brand' as far as I'm concerned is making Flowers from dirt!!   :)
Diagonal of 1x1 square = Root-2. Ok.
Diagonal of 1x1x1 cube = Root-3 !!!  Beautiful !!
 

Offline rsjsouza

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #37 on: May 19, 2021, 11:56:05 am »
  ... it had printed over 524,000 pages before I got it.

The LaserJet series 4100 and similar models were designed and built for 50,000 pages per month. This goes back to the times of the end of the 90s I think it came on to the market in 97, when I bought my first one.
The HP4000 (and the HP4 before them) series of printers are built like tanks and awesome printers. Years ago I got a 4100dtn with about 150000 pages but I had to sell it due to space - I wish I still had it.
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Offline madires

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #38 on: May 19, 2021, 01:42:46 pm »
Products can change quite quickly when the management changes the company's direction. We've seen this over and over again. Meanwhile it's a challenge to find good, reliable and long lasting products.
 
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #39 on: May 20, 2021, 02:52:40 pm »

I have a couple of ~15 year old HP C5280 multifunction inkjet/scanners here, they work very well...  and even print on CDs, which is hard to find these days!

 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #40 on: June 05, 2021, 05:33:03 pm »
Sadly, this HP was once a good company. From the day Carly Fiorina took over, it has been downhill. If Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard were alive, they would be ashamed of what became of the once great company they founded. One thing that was good out of tonight's experience was an unfriendly reminder... NEVER, NEVER buy HP.

I think you're missing the big picture here:

First of all, HP's T&M division was a completely separate business unit from HP's computer business, all under separate management (and no, Carly Fiorina did not spin off HP's T&M division). Even within HP's computer business there are several separate business groups which all have their own management and performance targets. So just because the stuff produced by one division sucks doesn't necessarily mean everything else than comes out of that company sucks, too.

Most importantly, the majority of the people who complain about HP computers are consumers who bought (or helped someone who bought) one of HP's consumer line products, like the infamous Presario line. These products often suck because mostly they contain of cheap-ass parts that some assembler (who has a licensing agreement with HP for the HP brand) puts together to sell to brand-conscious consumers. And because it's normally either that assembler or another (cheap-ass) 3rd party service provider who performs warranty services and support for these products the overall experience is usually underwhelming.

However, as I already said because HP's consumer products are shit doesn't mean everything else is. HP's business products are nothing like the consumer crap that's sold under the HP brand, these systems are generally rock solid, durable and reliable. There is also nothing better in the workstation market than what HP offers. The same is true for servers (before they were spun off into HPE).

There's a saying in the IT industry: "Dell is business class, HP is enterprise grade". And that's for a reason. In many case, Dell is more than good enough, but they don't support their products as long as HP/HPE does. HP also did (and still does) a lot of stuff that Dell doesn't, such as HP Integrity under NonStop UNIX (which is used by many stock exchanges around the world) or it's HPC products.

So the headline should not be "Don't buy HP" but "Don't buy cheap consumer-grade shit no matter what name is on the label"
« Last Edit: June 05, 2021, 05:38:20 pm by Wuerstchenhund »
 
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Offline BrokenYugo

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #41 on: June 05, 2021, 07:27:54 pm »

So the headline should not be "Don't buy HP" but "Don't buy cheap consumer-grade shit no matter what name is on the label"

I agree with this overall, though I must say the worst POS consumer laptop I ever encountered was a HP bought around 5 years ago. Wifi driver issues nearly from new and build quality problems in under a year. Naturally this purchase happened after I told the buyer to pick up an off lease Thinkpad T/X series or comparable Dell/HP for the same money.
 

Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #42 on: June 06, 2021, 11:05:37 am »
I agree with this overall, though I must say the worst POS consumer laptop I ever encountered was a HP bought around 5 years ago. Wifi driver issues nearly from new and build quality problems in under a year. Naturally this purchase happened after I told the buyer to pick up an off lease Thinkpad T/X series or comparable Dell/HP for the same money.

I'm not surprised, I am still amazed on what crap HP puts its brand name on. But then this has been a well honored tradition by Compaq, which back in its days sold some of the worst ever consumer PCs there were (like with HP, Compaq's business kit was very good and solid). Why this has continued under HP, I don't know.

As as consumer, you're better off with Dell, which puts more efforts into its consumer products and provides a generally good service.

As far as Lenovo is concerned, I know many people praise Thinkpads but Lenovo (and IBM before them) has a long track record in designing in serious faults into many of them. Which is one reason we moved away from Thinkpads and use HP EliteBooks instead, which in our experience survive much better under abuse than Thinkpads.
 

Offline HighVoltage

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #43 on: June 06, 2021, 12:58:38 pm »

As far as Lenovo is concerned, I know many people praise Thinkpads but Lenovo (and IBM before them) has a long track record in designing in serious faults into many of them. Which is one reason we moved away from Thinkpads and use HP EliteBooks instead, which in our experience survive much better under abuse than Thinkpads.
I have heard this about Lenovo Thinkpads before as well. I have used only the professional "W" series Thinkpads and never had any problems at all. Maybe the EliteBooks are good but after so much bad experience with HP consumer products, I have not even trusted to buy an EliteBook.

... but I just bought an HP product:
The HP Calculator 11C what an amazing little calculator of the Hewlett-Packard Voyager series. 

Oh wait .... its from 1982.... the good old days!
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Offline Wuerstchenhund

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #44 on: June 06, 2021, 04:03:16 pm »

As far as Lenovo is concerned, I know many people praise Thinkpads but Lenovo (and IBM before them) has a long track record in designing in serious faults into many of them. Which is one reason we moved away from Thinkpads and use HP EliteBooks instead, which in our experience survive much better under abuse than Thinkpads.

I have heard this about Lenovo Thinkpads before as well. I have used only the professional "W" series Thinkpads and never had any problems at all.

As we no longer use Thinkpads I don't know much about the durability of the newer generation but back then we had everything from X-Series (subcompact and tablets/convertibles), T-Series and Tp-Series (mobile workstations), and most of them had severe faults like cracked/stuck hinges, board flex, cracked base frames, display issues, and (especially with the Tp-Series) constant overheating under load.

Another thing I found remarkable was that none of the original Thinkpad batteries lasted more than 3 years (they all started to quickly degrade after 12-15 months, and after 30 months were pretty much down to minutes), while the batteries in our EliteBooks and zBooks easily lasted 3+ years without any notable degradation (the batteries in some of the older EliteBooks which by then were more than 5 years old still retained more than 80% of their design capacity).

Quote
Maybe the EliteBooks are good but after so much bad experience with HP consumer products, I have not even trusted to buy an EliteBook

I don't know, Lenovo's consumer grade laptops always had a similar shoddy reputation (and deservedly so), and on top of that there were incidents like hiding malware in the BIOS for automatic installation by Windows  :-//

Quote
... but I just bought an HP product:
The HP Calculator 11C what an amazing little calculator of the Hewlett-Packard Voyager series. 

Oh wait .... its from 1982.... the good old days!

Indeed, even though HP still made them until the late '80s (and subsequently replaced by other models), and its counterpart for the financial market (12C) is still made  :)
« Last Edit: June 06, 2021, 04:05:48 pm by Wuerstchenhund »
 

Offline TimFox

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #45 on: June 06, 2021, 06:31:26 pm »
I do blame Carly for her neglect of the -hp- calculator line, one of the crowning achievements of American industry.
Luckily, Swiss Micros  https://www.swissmicros.com/  came through, updating the hardware and batteries while maintaining the functionality of the original.
 

Offline HighVoltage

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #46 on: June 06, 2021, 06:38:15 pm »
The swiss micro calculators are good (I have two of them) but they have not reached the hardware quality of a real HP 11C or 15C or similar. The buttons and case of the HP feel just so much better.

It is interesting indeed, that HP is still producing the 12C until now in the same quality.
I wish they would have continued the 11C 15C and 16C as well.




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Offline AnasMalas

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #47 on: June 06, 2021, 06:44:54 pm »
Ill just chime in with another angle, politics

HP has supported some seriously bad stuff, there's a whole boycott thing going on

I wont say why or what they have done, most people here dont like politics, but its yet another reason to avoid them

 

Offline TimFox

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #48 on: June 06, 2021, 08:36:25 pm »
The swiss micro calculators are good (I have two of them) but they have not reached the hardware quality of a real HP 11C or 15C or similar. The buttons and case of the HP feel just so much better.

It is interesting indeed, that HP is still producing the 12C until now in the same quality.
I wish they would have continued the 11C 15C and 16C as well.

The 11C and 12C use the same hardware, but the 12C's firmware is for financial types, and may still be required when taking certain qualification examinations.
The buttons on my first Swiss Micro unit were disappointing mechanically, but those on my most recent purchase (DM41X) are good.  I also like the display of the full RPN stack.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Do NOT buy HP products
« Reply #49 on: June 09, 2021, 08:54:15 pm »
I do blame Carly for her neglect of the -hp- calculator line, one of the crowning achievements of American industry.
Luckily, Swiss Micros  https://www.swissmicros.com/  came through, updating the hardware and batteries while maintaining the functionality of the original.

It's hard to blame them really, I don't think there is any money in calculators anymore outside of a small niche. I still have a few around the house but even so I rarely have one right in front of me and my phone is almost always in my pocket so 9 times out of 10 I pull that out and use the calculator app. For times when you need more than a basic calculator there are lots of calculator programs for computers. Many in the younger generations probably never used a real calculator unless a specific model was required for a class.
 


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