So my mother recently bought an ET-2800, By HP we had an HP printer before and we got a new one because the old one would not work with my sister’s Windows 11 Laptop. So I had to set it up for my mother, the manual said you can use it without the app. But there was no way to physically do that. Anyway, I downloaded the app on my phone (android) and the app would not connect to the printer. So I used my mother’s iPhone and it would connect. The setup process was stupid proof. And after I got it all full of ink, it was very painless. However, this is where the H in HP should stand for HELL. Because a few months go by and my sister and my mother need some papers printed. No problem. I thought to myself, so my sister tried to print it wirelessly. Couldn’t find the printer, I said ok maybe it’s a dumb driver, USB didn’t work either. I asked my sister to send it to me, so I can print it on my w540 running rocky 9. Rocky picked up that I needed drivers and installed them. Wireless didn’t work but wired showed up, I thought sweet I can just print the paper and get back to what I was doing. However, when I clicked print, the printer would grab the paper and run it though but not put ink on the paper. My mother asks me to forward the email to her to try to print it on her phone. I send it, and it prints, and the paper come out how it should with ink and the paper is finally printed.
After this experience with this printer, it makes me rather aggravated at this purchase, and no longer want to buy from HP. I have looked at Brother printers and there are no Proprietary ink cartage, and or laser printers. I purely wanted to talk about my experience with HP printers and would like to know what others have for a printer for recommendations, for when eventually HP kills support and makes it a paper weight, I’ve read many negative experiences with HP printer, specially from Lois Ross man and their anti consumer products.
HP inkjets are horrendous. I absolutely refuse to buy them because they are absolute junk. They have always worked, and I could connect to them with no problems with Android atleast. Windows finally could connect once I had assigned it a permanent local IP through the router. Though Linux had problems…
But the build quality of HP inkjets are absolute horrendous and I probably can only get 6 months out of them and probably spent more on ink cartridges in a year before the stupid printers suffer a complete hardware failure and need to be replaced.
The HP mfp 183fw colour LaserJet printer however… It is my second forray into HP laserjets since my dad’s original black and white Hewlett Packard LaserJet beast from the early 90’s.
But I feel like I got incredibly lucky after doing some research into it (plus only thing I could get locally at the time since I needed a new printer immediately.) It cost more than any of the inkjets I have owned in the past. The toner carts definitely cost more… But it is still going strong a year and a half after purchasing it and I have only had to replace the black toner cart only a week or two ago. Have not had to replace the colour toner carts yet. It also just works on Linux which I am happy about.
Like I said, I may have just gotten incredibly lucky though, I mean getting a year and a half out of it is still more than I expected and the money I saved because toner lasts much longer than ink.
When and if this printer gives up, I will probably get an Epson laserjet.