Milo Minderbinder

Ancient
which HP model is it?
Microsoft were aware of HP playing silly games with the Windows 7 drivers and actually wrote of number of generic drivers for older HP kit themselves.
Windows update can often find a driver even if HP says it doesn't exist...

Ancient Observer

Milo,
thanks. It's an old HP PSC 1355. Everything works other than the scanner, so my plan is to leave it alone until my ink stocks have run out, and then to buy something new.
Daughter has a Canon MG which seems to meet my needs. I don't know how they shrank the 1800cc engine to fit in to it , though. Changing the ink cartridges on the MG is more difficult than lowering the soft top.

obgraham

VueScan software works well with an HP all-in-one that I decided to usea bit longer. Much better than the HP bloatware.

Otherwise, HP inkjet systems are complete shyte. A cheap Canon from Wal-Mart has worked well for me out of the box, never a glitch.

Milo Minderbinder

Ancient

yep, thats one that HP didn't bother writing Windows 7 drivers for

The basic driver than downloads through windows update gives you basic printing and scanning, but none of the buttons on the printer will work. You have to scan using a third party utility e.g windows picture editor or similar

see The Driver for Your Product Is Included in the Windows 7 Operating System HP PSC 1355 All-in-One Printer - HP Customer Care (United States - English)

Sunnyjohn

I've just bought my third Canon. The first, a Pixma, was retired because the quality was going due to me using cheap ink cartridges. The second, an iP5200 worked superbly for five years until the motherboard went. I could fix it but it's not worth the cost. Just bought a Canon MG5350 - superb colour, really quiet, excellent all-round and all for £119. I expect it to last me another five years - I'll let you know!

Ancient Observer

Milo,
thanks.
That worked. It'll certainly do until I have run down my print stocks. I've never used Windows scan before. Maybe it was new for 7? It was quicker than the HP software.

The HP is not so much an MG. More a broken down 105E.

peterh337

I don't think there is a single outstanding printer manufacturer.

I've had Epsons, Lexmarks, Canons, HP.

I've just had two Canon i850s stop working. The LED just flashes 7? times. Spent an hour or two on google on ways of resetting it but nothing works. One got binned and some parts from it were used to fix the other one (printhead replaced). They go for a lot of money on Ebay in working condition (more than the new cost) and one can see why: any printer which can run the old 3e cartridges is much sought after. That's why almost every new inkjet generation uses different cartridges

At home we have an HP duplexing colour l@ser; cost £450 to buy and the refills cost £250 There is no doubt that a duplexing inkjet will cost less to run and will deliver reasonable colours. I use £90 fake Ebay refills for the l@ser but they don't last very long and fail randomly.

Printing is a very expensive game - unless you want just B&W in which case an old HP Laserjet from c. 15 years ago will last almost for ever

mixture

Erm, exactly how much printing are you doing peterh337 ?

The point is that yes, toner cartridges for l@sers are more expensive. But they last a lot longer than inkjet cartridges and the cost per page is substantially better !

For example in the below, yeah the toners are not cheap if you look at the capex, but the opex is substantially better than any inkjet I've ever used at home.

BigEndBob

I'm sure most of the electrical stuff today has some form of doomsday chip ticking away inside.
My HP c4480 printer software is 200mb, when you untick all the bloatware you end up with a 5mb file that actually drives the printer.
The best printer i had was an early Hp were you pulled the memory battery and used the cartridges to you hearts content. Then one day the doomsday chip kicked in and no matter what i did, it wouldn't work. Didn't even have the satisfaction of seeing it smash into pieces when i threw it on the floor, it just bounced

My wireless headset just stopped working for no reason again when i opened up the base station full of chips, who knows whats going on inside those.