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[Flying Dice]

Eh, I don't really hate HP, I just am not going to waste any more money on their products. I'll admit that my Dell laptop isn't the greatest thing in the world, but it does most of what I need and doesn't randomly break down.

[Tellemurius]

Eh, I don't really hate HP, I just am not going to waste any more money on their products. I'll admit that my Dell laptop isn't the greatest thing in the world, but it does most of what I need and doesn't randomly break down.

I don't hate dell that much but their prices suck for their low end models, their inspirons are just plain crap and their XPS is no better now since they got alienware (don't even get me started on those). The Vostro.... just feels right in my hands, its like they actually put the time into these.

[nenjin]

I remember, when I was 10 years old, my dad would refer to HPs as "Hewlett Pukeards." Everything from their desktops to their printers were full of low-quality, troublesome hardware. That was 20 years ago.

To me, the BS with drivers and 3rd party software they do today is just the icing on the cake. I'd buy any brand, literally any brand, over an HP.

And now that they've gotten all hot in the pants for mobile devices, I expect most of their other hardware to suck even that much more since they're no longer the company's priority.

[Nadaka]

It's not just the bloat, it's the intrusiveness. And the underhanded way the opt-out is designed.

1. Most models will, by default, install an entire suite of shit that you'll never use (really, do I need a piece of software that will monitor my ink cartridge levels and remind me to order new ones?)
2. If you want just a stripped-down basic install of the drivers, you have to manually opt-out about 3 times during the install. In some cases, the opt-out is hidden under a couple of layers of inconspicuous menu choices.
3. For most models, if you're doing an install and have a network connection, the installer drops to a crawl as the software inspects your entire goddamn registry and communicates with the HP mothership.
4. Installs MUST be done with full administrator rights. In a managed environment, this is a pain in the ass. Not being able to do a "Run As" is just lame.
5. With some models, you can't even choose to do a stripped-down install. The printer literally won't work unless you install the whole damn bells and whistles.

I have come to the conclusion that its cheaper and faster to drive down to office depot with a thumb drive and pay them to print shit for me than to own an inkjet printer. Otherwise I end up having to buy a new printer twice a year when I find myself with a must print document and the ink cartridges have expired or exploded, or my ex would use up all the ink in 2 hours to print photo's of bands with black backgrounds. Of course, that isn't limited to HP inkjets.

Plus I can use the laser printers at work for the occasional 1 or 2 page print jobs without anyone caring.

I utterly despise HP and strongly recommend that no one ever buy from them. I practice a scorched earth policy for malicious customer support.

Every HP computer I have ever seen dies within 1 month after the warranty expiration.

When I had a problem with an HP computer that was under warranty. I sent it in for service and they lied to me about what happened. They claimed that I had poured soda into the machine in order to claim it wasn't covered by warranty, but they were willing to replace the motherboard for more than I had paid for the entire laptop brand new from a retail store less than 1 month prior. It was either in my room, my backpack or being used by me the entire month, there is literally no possible way that what they claimed was true.

[RedKing]

User: "Hi, when I logged in this morning, I got some weird message....Windows something something. Something about Windows....can you help?"

Me: ".........."

Seriously? I mean, WTF is this happy horseshit? Do other professions go through this?
Do doctors get patients that say "Yeah, I got some pain...somewhere. Sometimes. Do I have cancer?"
Do mechanics have people say "My car does this thing where it makes a noise. How much is it going to cost me?"
Do lawyers (I'm looking at you Truean, because gods know if they exist, you've probably gotten them) have clients that say "I have a court thingy about something and they need some kind of papers. Something about law. Can you help?"



EDIT: Although, I am reminded of a friend's story, when he was working a summer job at a book consignment. Basically, this company would buy up excess books when bookstores went out of business or publishers were looking to dump excess stock or whatever, then they'd rent out a large abandoned store or a warehouse, hire some temp workers and sell the books cheap. Because it was such a random variety of books, they were only very broadly organized.

So one day, a lady comes in and says "I need help finding a book. It was about this big (using her hands to indicate), and it was blue."

He waits for more info and doesn't get any. "....Can you be a little more specific?"

"I think it was about medicine."

"....I think it's over there." (pointing waaaaaay over on the other side of the store, far enough away that she'd be someone else's problem) 

[Nadaka]

People actually do say that to mechanics.

[GlyphGryph]

LogMeIn, RedKing. LogMeIn, restart, figure out - I think I'm pretty sure I just stopped listening to people at some point describing their computer problems. It's like "Okay, you got a problem? Click this link. Okay. Now click "Ok". Good. Now, I'm going to restart your computer - recreate the problem as best you can and tell me when you get it!"

(And yeah, mechanic thing is definitely true. The Doctor thing is more likely to be "I got like a pain in my arm or something. The internet said I might have Lupus! Do I have Lupus doctor!?". Course, that one has its own computer analogy "My computer said it needs to restart to install updates! Does that mean I have a virus!?!?!?")

[Scelly9]

http://xkcd.com/627/

Yeah.

[nenjin]

http://xkcd.com/627/

Yeah.

Sssshhhhhh, don't give away our seekrits. In my experience so far in CS, the belief the user has that you know what's going on is the only thing that prevents them from going ape shit on you. If most users knew that CS is just having basic troubleshooting skills and software comprehension (i.e. the ability to read a menu and go into sub-menus....) they'd have a hell of a lot less faith in the process.

[RedKing]

Most of our userbase think I'm a god. The remainder EXPECT me to be a god.
"What do you mean you can't retrieve my data even though I haven't run a network backup in 1.5 years? It's a computer, do your computer stuff and get it back NOW."

[kaenneth]

It's not just the bloat, it's the intrusiveness. And the underhanded way the opt-out is designed.

1. Most models will, by default, install an entire suite of shit that you'll never use (really, do I need a piece of software that will monitor my ink cartridge levels and remind me to order new ones?)
2. If you want just a stripped-down basic install of the drivers, you have to manually opt-out about 3 times during the install. In some cases, the opt-out is hidden under a couple of layers of inconspicuous menu choices.
3. For most models, if you're doing an install and have a network connection, the installer drops to a crawl as the software inspects your entire goddamn registry and communicates with the HP mothership.
4. Installs MUST be done with full administrator rights. In a managed environment, this is a pain in the ass. Not being able to do a "Run As" is just lame.
5. With some models, you can't even choose to do a stripped-down install. The printer literally won't work unless you install the whole damn bells and whistles.

It's the software companies who assume that their software is the most important software in the world to their end users; instead of the truth, which is that people want software to get out of their way so they can get their work done.

[miauw62]

Canon has that too.
SO MUCH GODDAMN USELESS IMAGE EDITING PROGRAMS, GAAAH!

Anyway, about our troubleshooting thing, here in belgium its usually the other way around. especially if youre calling the big telecom companies. They probably wont help you and just try to make you lose more money by letting you buy other things. There are known cases where even if you say no, a few days later you still get a letter where it says that you bought thing x where you explicitly said no to...

[nenjin]

Cameras are terrible about bloatware. I don't need your fucking image editing software to take images off my camera unless you fucking coded it that way. Infuriating how that shit works.

[GlyphGryph]

Why do people use Canon OR HP printers? Aren't those, like, THE worst two printer makers on the market? Shit, you're better if with a Brother, and those things aren't exactly super-awesome.

[Flying Dice]

HP printers can be okay if you average less than 1pg/week printed.