Guess time between cups and hplip

I bang on and on about HP and hplip being a bit shit, hplip says both the genuine hp inks [colour aand black] are ‘good’. And a last its an meme.

With best before ink, suicide bombers in ink cartridges which one is it. Alas it appears that HP want not to tell us.  Thats ok with us as it means less usage of the printer which also hurts HP as less ink is used while the printer is not working for a good week* or so.

Print something and cups says otherwise…..

* these are special order, dont expect to walk into a retailer and find them to take away,

The obsolete sd card reader, and hp photosmart printer

In about 2003 the zoo purchased an card reader for digital camera transfers.  It did not get a heavy workload and is good to have, i have a cf card with an very low 4mb of storage that also works in it.  Recenlty the zoo obtained a newer sd card that the reader could not id, so it was time to buy a new one which was 10% of the price it was in 2003.

That brings me to the photosmart 7550 printer (a castoff using non hp and drm free 56,57 and 58 cartridges) that is also a bit of antique which has a camera usb port and card reader, which i did not test as it has no ink in it, i imagine that too is obsolete and the usb port would need an adapter to connect to the 2012 camera.

IT stuff is amazing – its sometimes like a fashion show and this stuff which you assume should work then does not.  We dont need a more modern printer in the case of the photosmart 7550 since it works via a print server  as a printer and does a fairly decent print job with ink in means it wont be replaced.

However a good chunk of its internal workings are now junk through micro usb connectors and a card reader that’s also obsolete.

a toner cartridge, ebay, a wait screen too many and an ecommerce abort

Printing should be black not a light grey, i decide to look around for toner, or dump the printer which i hate (my blog) prices range fro £ 50 to £ 10 on ebay for an item that fits.

I decide to investigate the item on ebay and see if questions like does it have the suicide bomber chip in it as well as the toner ? – i need to log in to find that out in ebay – so since i dont like ebay i dig out an account i never used from four years ago.

Then ebay wants to update my details and up comes many screens and wait graphics, then it wants to phone up the monkey house – i am getting pissed off now and abort the purchase and sign off ebay.  I can live with light grey.

I dont object to giving details, but assuming i will hit vbv screens  as well later well that’s a sale ebay and the person flogging those boxes wont be getting any money.

 

Amazon over Microsoft – and the desirability of the non arm processor tablet.

There are a number of tablets out there, so here is an order of perceived ‘desirability’ here from the monkey house.

Simply put i like Linux. Who ever the genius at arm decided that only microsoft can write code for arm devices must have lots of microsoft shares.

1. linux
2. andriod
3. samsung – some crapware issues
4. a B&N e-reader
5. amazon
6. apple
7. microsoft – win8*

So you are probably wondering why i might buy an amazon thing over a mircosoft thing. Despite hating the amazon drm and lack of choice.  Well while not perfect amazon are motivated, apple got there first but the one shop (i-tunes and lack of access to it make that a bad choice and im not that stupid.

It is also interesting to not that the larger the press-able interface screen the higher the cost, which is a barrier for ms.  I note too that the software for it is heavy at 16gb or half of a 32gb device on sale, bad design as reports of broken tablets begins and non other os support by firms like hp also put a large downer on hp products.

Mind you when The Steve Balmers of this world do not like there partners and insist on doing there own hardware perhaps its no surprise that 3 month old laptops cant support there new product.

I see no point in ms following apple so it dangles on the bottom of the list.

An interesting issue with tablets is with the software updates.  Clearly buying a newer thing is best for the hardware makers, but if the update creates a bug rendering an ‘app’ the app gets the criticism not the update that broke the app..  Somehow the tablet and win8 has a few issues for all.

.* reminds us of lego toy bricks Erik Steinmann is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

I hate new hp printers

This is for you meg whitman

Bananas the next time you buy a printer make sure you dont buy hp.  Be it the drm ink that the printer then decides is not, and then the freak out messages about previous used ink messages, and the blow up ink sensors in the cartridges.  Lest you ever forget the downtime of hplip.

So can anybody recommend a printer not from hp that works like a charm on cups [linux], has no drm, weird blowing up sensors on ink and toner cartridges,  and can override the monthly lets waste some of the users ink because the printer thinks the genuine ink from hp is not.

Fuck you Meg Whitman

Love and hugs bananas from the past.

drm on the hp printer fun

Squeeze knows usb, shame about hp runtime

We have a rather crap hp laser printer, it never worked well with lenny, and in squeeze (which are debian distros) it seems to have got over some of the more weird usb messages it previously generated by the device,

The printer got its reputation as a madam as it could only work only with a reboot of the computer (thats with  a newer hplip complied by scratch) seems to have been fixed in Squeeze.

Squeeze came to be installed and the printer also needed redoing after a disastrous upgrade, it told us that i needed to use hp-setup (like i did not know) and so did.  I was informed i needed runtime from hp (drm) as expected again to get madam to work.  So hp-setup -i is started and ….

The site with the driver on is down.  Printer is a useless box again – the crowd roars with laughter at the comic antics,  Thanks HP.  Its not the software (hplip) but a .run file.  Clearly buying any new hp printer with drm to start with is clearly useless at present (hp shareholders be aware that ink\toner sales are down).

Perhaps the ex sap ceo of hp was right when he suggested they become a government software house, You know printers that cant work, and Microsoft windows product pimpage only is no way to make a profit*.

After a month of sitting on desk doing bugger all, i look again in detail, yes theres the drm crap is available elsewhere but its the wrong version we have 3.6, there version is 3.10, yes that means it don’t work and one has to recompile hplip.  Come on its humorous now.

I decide to do it, and download the 3.10  with the compatible runtime, and start the complier which then complains i dont have gcc installed, (i do have it) and i guess another month of this rather crap printer doing nothing and i decide to give it rest.  Fortunately its not our only printer and i think our last hp laser printer, so if anybody in hp is reading this perhaps completing with sap is the best course.

To upgrade to the next version of hplip might mean no run files, so its a zero sum game.

The danger for hp shareholders is that the reputation of the tools and the hardware goes down in everybodies estimation.  I might serve windows users with this driver too.  This also affects ink /toner sales, no usage no refills and no money for hp or its shareholders this year.

Its becoming funny, and when things like printers and large businesses become jokes then things become dangerous for them.

In november after a months holiday/vacation on the desk (a printer stayation?) the drm driver finally works, only locally since i then have to adjust a client elsewhere on our network to use the foomatic print device.. More of make work thing than convenient.

To finish that joke: what is a4 sized and does not work ? a hp laser printer.

Sally offers Apple computer freaks help after a deity leaves.

Lee527xx

Do you love apple products like Lee5279xx did ? Yes/No and don’t be ashamed to tell asl Sally an ape of the mind is offer all you Mac freaks a chance to face your grief that the deity of apple has left.  Some of you apple users will no doubt be grief stricken by this news, will you ever be cool again?.  In fact some zoo guests have been looking at iphones and saying its not working as well since saint jobs left.

So if your suicidal about your i-shit not being upgraded, or not expensive enough, or have extreme queue stupidity complex* then help from Sally is available.  Come to zoo and the monkey house and Sally will get you the help you need. You have a mental disease, it needs treating.

Sally ape of the mind who is hugging the tv celeb now helps apple users

Its been an interesting week, HP is becoming a microsoft based governmental software house as thats what the new boss knows about from his last job and steve jobs has gone to heaven.  If you do come please form an orderly queue and Sally will see you at some point, bring a sleeping bag.**

* thats where you pray outside the apple store ** see *

Printers with the unused ethernet connection

Bananas was looking at yet another usb printer that proudly advertised it as a Ethernet printer but it was only used as a usb printer.  Why do people  waste money on stuff they dont need?

Humans

Suicide hp ink jet cartridges – ethical?

Have you played the overpriced ink game?

Actually it went bang twice. The first was when we emptied a newer design (eg still hard to buy in a shop) hp inkjet cartridge from new as supplied by hp with a new printer.  Apparently a fuse goes which tries to prevent refills by nuking the ink level monitor.

The second bang is when the metal connector bits died two months after refilling the same empty cartridge for the first time.

So we bought hp original as [we had not much choice in the matter] and on the same day the ceo of hp resigned over ethics issues [nsfw]. The prices differed though from  sterling 15 – to 30.  I don’t usually get the opportunity to buy hp stuff since the refills usually work and i gave up buying new some years ago when hp put a wrong sized but same shape as a 45 inkjet refill in the box that said 45 and found it did not fit and the printer did not like the ‘right’ component.

Both the retailer and hp have suffered for ten years for that buying mistake by us not buying from them .  Perhaps it is time to look at non hp printers with decent cups support next time if this is what is to be expected.

iWoz, Gina Smith,Steve Wozniak

isbn: 0755314069, is one of the apple founders (the one with brains) autobiography and makes some interesting commentary on how some names made it and others went nowhere.

Reads as a very nice guy.

3/5 bananas