Home - Programming - HP Printers: Complete Crap

There was a time when I would tell my friends and family, "Buy HP. They last forever, they work great, I've never had a problem. The only time I upgrade is to get new features."

Boy, has that era passed.

My HP Officejet 6310 All-in-One has never been anything less than a headache. The top never lifted all the way up, making it difficult to change the cartridges. And it ran through ink cartridges at an alarming pace that didn't seem to have anything to do with the number of pages I printed. Where it was hiding the extra ink, I couldn't tell you. The scan quality left much to be desired, software for scanning was iffy, and would lock up periodically. Let's not even get into all the unwanted software that HP insists on installing on your machine when all you really needed were the drivers for the printer. On top of all that, it started screeching a couple of months after I got it. Not being one to complain, and since the noise wasn't accompanied by a noticeable degradation in performance, I ignored it, and it steadily got worse over the months.

I don't say years because this printer isn't very old. And I'm using the past tense because this damned thing has finally pissed me all the way off. It reported a paper jam that didn't exist, and when I lifted the top to peek underneath, one of the hinges broke.

Being just that kind of guy, I decided that evening it up would be viscerally satisfying. It was. So now both hinges are broken, but you know what? A) I can finally lift the top all the way up, and it doesn't think the mystery jam is there anymore. That's a win-win.

Not that it matters because, now that my daughter's four pages of homework have printed out, I'm throwing this piece of aggravating crap into the heap of electronics I pick parts off of for hardware projects. Printers tend to have really nice motors and sensors that are fun to work with on robotics projects, and don't you worry, Sally, I'm going to get my money's worth out of this piece of junk one way or the other.

And my next printer will NOT be an HP.


Todd Grigsby