technology Technology going backwards in the name of PROFITS....

[RememberWhen77]

Good day to all of you.  I'm hoping this post leads to a full on video by linus so please show your interest and draw some attention.

 

I have been in the IT industry since 1993.  I've seen some amazing growth in power and efficiency of pcs, servers, displays, video game systems, and the list goes on.  But one product that amazes me in its continuous push toward irrelevance is the Printer.  Its that technology that everyone needs and continues to need but gets shoved in the back corner like a basturd step child.  

 

Recently I had the misfortune of having to install and configure a small HP printer.  Specifically the HP LaserJet Pro 4001dwe.  Full disclosuer, some of this is my own fault for not properly researching the product.  That being said let me explain what is happening in the industry - or at least at HP from what myself and several other associates are seeing.

 

Lets take a trip back in time.  The year is 1999.  I'm currently a part of an IT department at a large printing firm.  Responsible for deployment of PCs, printers, monitors, and servers.  A pentium II 266 is all the rage with windows 98.  Printer manufacturer of choice was HP LaserJets and Epson dot matrix (long live three part forms!).  I could deploy a new HP Laserjet 4050tn in about 3 - 5 minutes with 2 minutes of that being the unboxing time. 

Steps required:

1.  Unbox

2.  Pull protective shipping seal from fresh laser cartridge and insert into printer.

3.  Powerup Printer

4.  Set IP address

5.  Setup printer share in windows NT 4 or Novell 3.12

6. Done

 

That was it.  Simple and elegant.  Those printers were repairable and built like a tank.  Ran for years usually needing nothing more than pickup rollers and an occasional fuser. Almost every HP printer regardless of size had these same simple steps.  Printing in 5 -10 minutes after opening the box.

 

Fast forward to today. I purchased the HP LaserJet Pro 4001dwe as a small desktop printer for check printing in an accounting clerks office. 

 

Here are the steps to get this top of the line - nearly 25 years newer technology working.

1.  Unbox

2.  Install next to PC on Desk

3.  Connect USB Cable as there is only 1 network line in this old office that is connected tot he PC

4.  Install software.  Failed because I didn't read the manual and know that the printer needed its own network connection in order to function.

5.  Steel network cable from PC to Printer.  Power up printer.  Wait 45 minutes for printer to download and install firmware updates on printer.  WTF!!!  PCL 6 has been around and working flawlessly for 25 years!!  Why doesn't this just work.

6.  Put in small switch so I can connect the PC as well as the printer as the printer will not work unless it is connected to the internet

7.  Finish setting up the Printer on the pc

8.  Required creating an account at HP so they can sell me over prices cartridges of toner for the rest of the short 2 year anticipated life of these piece of crap landfill filling printers. (15-20 more minutes)

 

I have never nor would I have ever dreamed that a printer would require the internet to setup its basic printing functionality.  In the push to secure as much money as possible from its customers HP has taken the approach of Lock it down so they have no option but to buy from us.  Linus just reviewed the xeon processors from intel that are doing the same thing.  Pay us again and we will let you use the product at its full potential even though you already payed for the hardware that drives those features.  Where is the line in the sand for these subscription service product deployments.  There are some products that just need to work without an outstretched hand like oliver saying ....  "More Please".  Especially when the useful life of the product is 2-3 years.  A message needs to be sent to intel, HP, Apple, and any other tech company that these practices are not OK for every product to go to market.  Shareholders love this but consumers HATE this.  They shouldn't even be legal.  If the feature is in the hardware, and I paid for the hardware, why should I pay more to use what I already bought.  Its a sunk cost.  A printer that I paid for shouldn't be required to go to the internet just so mom and dad can make sure I only put moms cartridge in the printer.  Not to mention the added complexity to setup a printer and wasted time.  And its marketed as A PRO product.  We need to do better with technology products.  HP will die as quickly as it grew if these practices don't stop. I for one have switched to brother and will try almost any other brand to avoid the experience that HP is trying to establish as the new norm.

 

Comments and Discussion please!!  Linus, please do a comprehensive review on the difference in experience between a 20 year old printer and todays.  You can include a comparison in print quality and serviceability as well.  Aside from wireless I fail to see where there is any innovation at a company that was a leader.

[SignatureSigner]

Ive always found printers to kinda suck. setup and day to day use.

[Middcore]

8 minutes ago, RememberWhen77 said:

Comments and Discussion please!!  Linus, please do a comprehensive review on the difference in experience between a 20 year old printer and todays.  

 

Yeah that'll do bonkers view numbers, why isn't LTT filling the niche of printer content that tech enthusiast audiences crave? 

 

My family had printers back in the late 90's (back when we actually printed stuff). They sucked. 

[RememberWhen77]

Your missing the point.  The point isn't the printer.  Its the god damn subscription model for everything mentality that is taking over the tech industry.  What happens when nvidia says buy my high end video card for $1600.  Oh you want to get 120 FPS but are only seeing 60.  Pay me another $120 a year and I can unlock that for you.  The hardware does it already you just need a code and I need more cash.

 

Its coming.  The signs are all there.   

[cmndr]

Too lazy to read through the wall of text but the (potentially outdated) wisdom I got was to get a brother laser jet (black only) printer and to ensure that your third party knock off brand ink worked with it. 

And yeah, avoid HP. That was another one. They're the oracle of printers. 

 

Quote

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!' ...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle."

 

 

And yeah, subscriptions are happening. I'll survive with Google Docs, Linux and an ANCIENT version of photoshop.

If I need the full suite I can pay $10 or whatever it is for one month. 

[Forbidden Wafer]

HP printers have been trash since ever, not sure why people still bother.

Lexmark used to have good printers, not sure what happened to them.

I know I still use a Samsung laser printer I got years ago and it works beautifully (HP purchased their division).

Nowadays I would have gotten a Brother one, which seems to work just fine too.

[emosun]

[emosun]

33 minutes ago, RememberWhen77 said:

 Linus, please do a comprehensive review on the difference in experience between a 20 year old printer and todays. 

btw they already said on the wan show that topics like VR and printers are just totally uninteresting low viewership content

[mariushm]

Yeah... you failed at two points : 

1. You bought a HP printer 

2. You bought a CHEAP HP printer 

 

Higher end models / workstation models tend to not be so crippled with subscriptions, or with various protection schemes like page counter chips in toners so that you can't refill the toner. Other brands are also not as bad as HP ... for example I prefer Brother and have Brother laser printers. 

[Holmes108]

2 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah... you failed at two points : 

1. You bought a HP printer 

2. You bought a CHEAP HP printer 

 

Higher end models / workstation models tend to not be so crippled with subscriptions, or with various protection schemes like page counter chips in toners so that you can't refill the toner. Other brands are also not as bad as HP ... for example I prefer Brother and have Brother laser printers. 

 

Yeah, I'm a fan of Brother. They still have some frustrating issues, like not letting you print in black when you're low on Cyan, etc (RAGE), but I feel I've had the least amount of issues with them.

[Radium_Angel]

41 minutes ago, RememberWhen77 said:

I have been in the IT industry since 1993

n00b 

41 minutes ago, RememberWhen77 said:

HP LaserJet Pro 4001dwe.  Full disclosuer, some of this is my own fault for not properly researching the product

Anything from HP with an "e" at the end is full-on shit. 

 

And if you've been in the field since 93, then you would KNOW HP have gone from being good to absolute shit. No one in their right mind buys HP anymore except the non-IT person who is told to, or still thinks of HP in terms of "oh! I know them! They must be good!"

 

Printers are shit because they were the one thing that couldn't be monetized or forced into obsolescence. So they changed the model so they could be.

[da na]

33 minutes ago, RememberWhen77 said:

Your missing the point.  The point isn't the printer.  Its the god damn subscription model for everything mentality that is taking over the tech industry.  What happens when nvidia says buy my high end video card for $1600.  Oh you want to get 120 FPS but are only seeing 60.  Pay me another $120 a year and I can unlock that for you.  The hardware does it already you just need a code and I need more cash.

 

Its coming.  The signs are all there.   

I agree with the points you're making here, there's been a general regression in tech lately.

All the hardware I use is pretty old to avoid this. My personal printer connects to my Windows XP print server over a parallel port. 

6 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

n00b 

Anything from HP with an "e" at the end is full-on shit. 

 

And if you've been in the field since 93, then you would KNOW HP have gone from being good to absolute shit. No one in their right mind buys HP anymore except the non-IT person who is told to, or still thinks of HP in terms of "oh! I know them! They must be good!"

 

Printers are shit because they were the one thing that couldn't be monetized or forced into obsolescence. So they changed the model so they could be.

True that. HP and Dell's only things worth buying anymore are servers and high end workstations, quality of everything else has fallen dramatically. (Hence why the newest laptop I own has a 3rd gen i7, and the newest desktop I own is LGA 2011 v4 Xeon.)

[RememberWhen77]

Quote

True that. HP and Dell's only things worth buying anymore are servers and high end workstations, quality of everything else has fallen dramatically. (Hence why the newest laptop I own has a 3rd gen i7, and the newest desktop I own is LGA 2011 v4 Xeon.)

Only now they are going after the servers to with the new Xeon codes that Linus reviewed last week.  I still buy used cisco 3850s because I refuse to pay for a meraki subscription.

[Radium_Angel]

1 minute ago, da na said:

HP and Dell's only things worth buying anymore are servers and high end workstations, quality of everything else has fallen dramatically. (Hence why the newest laptop I own has a 3rd gen i7, and the newest desktop I own is LGA 2011 v4 Xeon.)

Speak the truth! I love 2011-3 v4 Xeons. Long live the Xeon.

But back on topic, the race to the bottom that occurred in the Vista-era (or thereabouts, those who were in the field, saw the signs as early as WIn2k and WinME) where all the major players (and quite a few minor ones...remember eMachines?) tossed quality out the window the grand race to get the cheapest system out there to capture the most market share, consequences be damned.

 

And those big names never recovered from that misguided approach. They only spread that misguided ideology to everything they made in the consumer-space.

[RememberWhen77]

19 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Yeah... you failed at two points : 

1. You bought a HP printer 

2. You bought a CHEAP HP printer 

 

Higher end models / workstation models tend to not be so crippled with subscriptions, or with various protection schemes like page counter chips in toners so that you can't refill the toner. Other brands are also not as bad as HP ... for example I prefer Brother and have Brother laser printers. 

Show me a highend desktop printer for an office and I'll buy it.  Especially when they shove us in 7 ft cubes.  But, in my defense, I do use brothers almost exclusively.  This was an end user request because its what they were used to.

[RememberWhen77]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Speak the truth! I love 2011-3 v4 Xeons. Long live the Xeon.

But back on topic, the race to the bottom that occurred in the Vista-era (or thereabouts, those who were in the field, saw the signs as early as WIn2k and WinME) where all the major players (and quite a few minor ones...remember eMachines?) tossed quality out the window the grand race to get the cheapest system out there to capture the most market share, consequences be damned.

 

And those big names never recovered from that misguided approach. They only spread that misguided ideology to everything they made in the consumer-space.

Totally agree.  My brand of choice has been Lenovo as of late.  But they to have had some quality issues with covid.  There support has been outstanding though when an issue does arise.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Speak the truth! I love 2011-3 v4 Xeons. Long live the Xeon.

But back on topic, the race to the bottom that occurred in the Vista-era (or thereabouts, those who were in the field, saw the signs as early as WIn2k and WinME) where all the major players (and quite a few minor ones...remember eMachines?) tossed quality out the window the grand race to get the cheapest system out there to capture the most market share, consequences be damned.

 

And those big names never recovered from that misguided approach. They only spread that misguided ideology to everything they made in the consumer-space.

True that. That still goes on today with Chromebooks. I get laughed at and questioned for using high end old laptops, but the benchmarks back up that a 2ghz Core 2 Duo is twice as fast as your standard Chromebook (and not to mention a mid 2000s laptop will have a far superior keyboard, much better upgradability, etc.) 

My school's IT department that I am close with still has Elitebook 8470s deployed across most of campus because they just work. Solid old laptops that are still capable of everything faculty needs to do, and more importantly for us, incredibly easy to repair. Literal toolless case removal, it's one latch and the whole back is off. Can do RAM upgrades, SSD swaps, PCIe card installation, all that stuff in under a minute. Won't find that ease on today's thin and light cheap plastic laptops.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, RememberWhen77 said:

Totally agree.  My brand of choice has been Lenovo as of late.  But they to have had some quality issues with covid.  There support has been outstanding though when an issue does arise.

Lenovo's higher end is awesome, but I still have nightmares about their AMD APU laptops. And their locked BIOSes are... a choice.

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, da na said:

Lenovo's higher end is awesome, but I still have nightmares about their AMD APU laptops. And their locked BIOSes are... a choice.

Superfish anyone?

But to be fair on Lenovo...AMD APUs sucked all around, no matter the vendor.

 

[da na]

1 minute ago, Radium_Angel said:

Superfish anyone?

But to be fair on Lenovo...AMD APUs sucked all around, no matter the vendor.

 

I meant in terms of how they were to work on. So many hidden screws, batteries that looked like they're removable from the outside but not...

[seanondemand]

20 seconds of googling led me to rtings top SMB printers. 

[RollyShed]

5 hours ago, RememberWhen77 said:

Show me a highend desktop printer for an office and I'll buy it..... This was an end user request because its what they were used to.

The "if it is expensive it must be good" thinking.

 

We only use donated, free, "chuck-it" computers and printers and they work. Toner cartridges refilled from a "not-linked to a manufacturer" place.

Obviously all the software is FREE as well.

 

This means everything is reliable and works and keeps on working.

 

Experiences -

Pay for it software - unreliable and doesn't always work.

Free software - reliable and works.

[IkeaGnome]

6 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

Anything from HP with an "e" at the end is full-on shit. 

Tag me in about 6 hours. I'm grabbing pictures of my HP printer here on my desk. Some of them are stout and well built. This one has been underground for ~5 years now and just wont die. Scanner doesn't work, for obvious reasons, and it's never been hooked up to the internet. Just USB to my work computer. I'll grab some pictures. 

 

5 hours ago, RememberWhen77 said:

Show me a highend desktop printer for an office and I'll buy it.  Especially when they shove us in 7 ft cubes.  But, in my defense, I do use brothers almost exclusively.  This was an end user request because its what they were used to.

https://www.amazon.com/HP-LaserJet-M426fdn-Double-Sided-Replenishment/dp/B013SKICJ4

It's built like a tank. We've sent stacks of paper stapled together through. At about 10 it jams and you have to unjam it. We've printed on cardboard by stapling that to a piece of paper and forcing it through. It would not eat a cookie in a ziploc bag though. The LCD screen on mine only about 1/4 works anymore. If you know where to push you can still copy, but I don't know why you would since this particular one just copies a black bar across anything. We've jammed nuts and bots in with the ink cartridges. Turns out there's extra space in there where the paper can still move and print without getting jammed. "extra" parts removed. 

[Uttamattamakin]

7 hours ago, RememberWhen77 said:

Good day to all of you.  I'm hoping this post leads to a full on video by linus so please show your interest and draw some attention.

......

SNIP I agree with this but for one thing.  

I've at least dual booted Linux since 1997.  Setting up a Printer in Linux has always been easy as long as it was a post script printer.  Which affordable desktop printers never EVER were.  In fact back then a printer was likely to be a Windows only printer with little to no internal brains of its own a so called Winprinter.  (Winmodems were also an issue).  There were work arounds to get the drivers to work with Linux.  Now for good professional grade printers you were probably right.  Unbox, put em on the network, and most any computer would print to them by some method or means or the other.  Such printers always had their own "brains" so to speak and could understand post script or PCL or some other open standard. 

I see you are a fellow Brother user.  I've used various networked brother color laser printers where I live and they have worked with whatever the heck device needed to print.  Even my phone.  No need for an account just to print.  Next thing you'll buy a color but to use color will be a monthly charge of $2.95

 

6 hours ago, emosun said:

btw they already said on the wan show that topics like VR and printers are just totally uninteresting low viewership content

Really?  It might not be of interest to them but A quick search brings up a lot of vidoes about printer reviews.  One from the Youtube channel of the Wall Street Journal.  (4.1 million subs) has 917k views.  I mean If you have the right subscriber base a topic that gets about 1/4 of that base of people to watch sounds pretty interesting.   There are two sides to the group that watches here and Linus himself noted this in a live stream.  His channel started out being about gaming and fun fun mods of GPU"s and RGB's and all of that.  Now lately he notices a lot of business types watch his stuff.  Well they grew up, he grew up.  Sometimes people need to print stuff.  

That said, I'd not be surprised that they think that.  When I was around their age I didn't realize how much I'd grown up until I spied actual grey hair for the first time in my life. 

SOme interesting ideas. 
Do you really need a laser printer? 

Do you really need a color printer? 
Top 5 best printers / What printers does LTT use? 
Printing as a form of backup for key documents.  This is an important one. 
Top 5 best multi fucntion devices.  Or maybe just a video or two about what to look for in a good printer/ multi function device. Sometimes you do have to use your computer for work and in the end that means printing something.    

Personally I don't feel like a paper I'm writing is real until I print it out.  I feel like I can read it a lot better that way.   
 

[RollyShed]

8 hours ago, RememberWhen77 said:

3.  Connect USB Cable as there is only 1 network line in this old office that is connected tot he PC

4.  Install software.  Failed because I didn't read the manual and know that the printer needed its own network connection in order to function.

5.  Steel network cable from PC to Printer. 

If you were in IT and computing you'd know that a "chuck-it" modem/router can be told to work as a switch or buy a switch, 4 - 6 outputs for ~$10.

If you leave its WiFi on and then you can print from a laptop.

 

As for laser versus inkjet, cheaper off-the-shelf for inkjet and maybe a100 pages printed per cartridge. Cost twice as much(?) for a laser and 1000+ printed per cartridge and no blocked jets if not used for a month or so. We only use laser printers.

Old inkjets are handy to have for use as scanners - free.