Update: HP still sucks

Hewlett-Packard used to be great.  In 1998 my uncle gave me an HP laser printer and that puppy lasted for ten years and something like 6,000 pages.  (And it only needed four toner cartridges that whole time.)  Beautifully designed, and reliable.

But for the last several years, HP has sucked.  Everything they do sucks.  Their new printers suck.  Even their laptops suck.  (Once I told their tech support that i was going to throw my HP laptop through the window of their corporate headquarters in Palo Alto.  It was an 8 lb. laptop, I figured if I got it going fast enough . . .)  Even their mergers suck: they bought Compaq, and even suckier company.  Because 1 sucky company + 1 sucky company must equal something great, right?

So it was with great trepidation that I agreed to get a new HP printer with Yelena's new laptop.  The thing that convinced me was that it was free.  (Well ok, we had to pay $10 so it would connect to our wireless network.)  But it connects to our wireless network, it does scans and copies, and it's a lot smaller than our old printer.  And we needed a new printer anyway.  And it was free.

My first impressions were positive.  It's easy to load the ink cartridges, it's fast and high quality, the wireless networking is great, and they even have drivers for Linux.  (Connecting my linux computer to the printer was actually easier and faster than doing it in Mac OS or Windows.)

And then I decided to load the Windows software.  Big mistake.

I've dealt with HP software before and I know that it's like a fat stripper: big, bloated, just gets in the way, and you don't really want it.  If you just want to print, usually you can just print using Windows built-in drivers without installing anything.  But in order to scan something I needed the software.  Ok fine, but I installed the minimum necessary to actually scan; none of their "makes photos easier" crap.  The result: a tiny icon in my system tray and the ability to scan.  So far, so good.

But now, every time I start up my computer, it gives me a fucking ad.  That's right; HP is using the product I purchased as a springboard for putting advertising on my fucking computer.  This is bona fide adware.

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