Have HP Printers gone down the drain?

S

st3ve

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I've been using HP printers for about 10 years, a few months ago a friend asked my advice on printers and I told him definitely go for HP. He bought one and it gave him sh*t. Then my HP photsmart P1000 was suddenly not recognised by my system (nor my laptop - yes I did use a new cable) so I went and bought an HP deskjet 6543, no bells and whistles just a good print speed of 30ppm in b&w, but anyway it's a piece of sh*t the paper jams, it pulls ten pages at a time, it refuses to print on DL envelopes telling me that I've selected the wrong size envelope. It's just crap and I'm most unimpressed. Anyone else becoming disillusioned with HP?
 
Dammit where've I been? I admit I should have been concerned when I saw what a memory hog the HP software was, but what's nice and solid these days? Most of the time I just want to print b&w nice and fast, but like the colour options for when I want to print prize photo's of my legally bought DVD/CD covers, etc. ;)
 
i have found that the general quality of all brands has gone down.
Notice as the prices of printers went down so did the build quality
 
Try Canon? As the old saying goes, 'goedkoop is duur koop'.. R499 for a printer sounds nice, but wait till the cost of maintenance and print cartridges jump in front of you.
 
HP Inkjets have had issues, I think the name was built on the old 500 inkjet. The 600 series was OK other than when they were going knock knock, which was easy enough to sort out, ohhh and not forgetting when the colour cart made the paper light flash. I rember phoning HP for a printer part and being told, ohhh no you have to get the whole printer we don't supply separate parts.

I have some issues with the newer inkjets as well, the lasers are OK, like anything something has to wear out at some point, but writing something off because you cannot get a heater unit is not on

Best bet these days, either Canon or Epson. The Epson should outlast the Canon, and if you really want to do some bulk printing get a continuous ink system for the Epson
 
I got a Canon, and I'd vouch for it any day, but I've been checking out the new Epson and they do look like the best buy these days. Especially the new R series. They're giving the iP series from Canon a run for they're money. I've also been hearing rumours that suppliers are battling to get stock from Canon SA.
 
Go for Canon !

Got myself an elcheapo Pixa IP1000 that I've so far printed about 1000 pages with, no hastles.

Generic ink catridges are cheap for it, because there's no print head in the cartridge itself.
I got a generic black for R50 - haven't had to replace the colour yet, but I believe it's R75

It's fairly noisy, doesn't have a tray to catch documents and is about as sexy as a grey brick, but for the price and the quality of print, I'm not complaining !

There's one small caveat - if the print heads go, you may as well chuck the printer away. This is why the catridges for it are so cheap.
 
The canon range has "user" replaceable print head the epson does not . So if you pick up a problem with the epson if you do not have the skills you will have to take it in for repairs as opposed to the canon - unclip the head and pop a new one in.
But at the price of printers these days - you just buy a new one and print like crazy in the guarrantee period using the generic cartridges and then upgrade. :D
 
hehe, but at the end of the day, it seems to make sense to go for laser atm... prices are falling for both b&w and color lasers, and they are a lot more relaible. there was recently a review of lasers on tomshardware... unfortunatly cant find the link now. but in my mind hp has become quite cr@p to say the least...
 
I recently bought an HP PSC and haven't had any problems.
 
mic_y said:
hehe, but at the end of the day, it seems to make sense to go for laser atm... prices are falling for both b&w and color lasers, and they are a lot more relaible. there was recently a review of lasers on tomshardware... unfortunatly cant find the link now. but in my mind hp has become quite cr@p to say the least...
Click to expand...
Hope they bring out one that can print directly on to cd 's
 
Our entire organization uses HP printers (and HP branded PCs for that matter) and we haven't had any issues...

Staff use LaserJet 1200/1300s and these handle the workload pretty damned well. Our lab printers need maintenance once every 300 000 pages and haven't failed us yet.
 
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