I am BOYCOTTING HP

I'm boycotting all HP products. Right now. All of them. I'm certain you find yourself asking why. Hp has the reputation of making the worlds best laser and print systems. I suppose they make decent computers and, of course, gave us the robust HP-UX system. But the reason I am boycotting them is that product support, by and large, is abysmal.

I began running Windows XP-64 since 2004. I love it. Its just like xp but MORE stable in my opinion. Of course, I knew there would be driver issues in the beginning. And some of the issues I had with drivers were very bad, such as the drivers for the sound blaster audigy, which caused all sorts of lockups and reboots. But even that, as much as I HATE to give creative labs credit, was resolved in a later update. I was given an HP Laserjet 1012 printer for christmas the year before. I loved the way it printed. Really. Then I upgraded to XP-64. And of course, there was no driver for Windows XP-64. That was okay, I had thought. EVENTUALLY they would HAVE to come out with 64-bit printer drivers for this printer. I mean its HP -- how could they not support a recent Microsoft OS?

It is now November 10th, 2008. XP-64 has been out for FOUR YEARS and now there is Vista64. No driver. Not a beta driver, not a preliminary driver, nada. There was some crap on the driver site about how 64-bit windows would not be supported by HP. Their answer, I kid you not, was that you can use a driver for a completely different printer. Ok, I thought, that must be it. What they failed to mention, was when you use the wrong driver not everything works. In fact, every time I tried to print anything with ANY formatting at all, the printer would spit out sheets that say "Unknown PCL Mode". Thats no mapquest maps, no pdf's, and bearly any word documents. And when it did print, the borders were completely screwed up.

In an attempt to track down the answers to WHY my printer was acting that way, I was told that the 1010 series (including mine) were "host-mode" printers, and that they had incomplete PCL code in the printer. All of that is supposed to get formatted from the drivers. And since I was not using drivers designed for my printer, I was always going to have this problem. That means that HP's great printer solution of using other drivers has NO HOPE OF EVER working with my printer under XP-64. So I figured, its just temporary. EVENTUALLY HP will get the message and relase some sort of 64-bit driver.

I still look at the internet about this issue from time to time. I hooked up the printer to my BSD server using cups and Samba, and all of my 32 bit windows and Linux machines automatically install the driver and print GREAT. My 64-bit machine? Nothing. Oh and not only that? There is a generic windows postscript driver just for printing to cups machines. It works great on my XP laptop. But guess what??? It only has 32-bit drivers as well.

Still, no driver. So I got a bug in my brain to search the internet about my problem, like I have every now and then for the last 4 years. I happened to find this post here.

Not only did the person trying to answer the question give him the SAME answer that was given 4 years ago, he thought it was VISTA. The post clearly states XP-64. So it looks like HP support reps don't know the difference between XP-64 and Vista, they STILL HAVE NOT WRITTEN A 64bit driver. It has been 4 years. And HP, supposedly one of the most technologicaly advanced IT companies there is, is apparently INCAPABLE of writing a 64-bit driver for this printer. Its not like someone wanting a driver for BeOS or Solaris or something. Its Windows XP-64 by MICROSOFT. Its got a bigger install base than FreeBSD. And yet it appears that HP just can't be bothered at all. Oh you can sell me that old line "well it doesn't say that its compatible with 64-bit, so they have no obligation to make drivers for that platform." Give me a fucking break. I expected better of a company like HP. There are no Vista drivers for this printer either apparently, and HP has no plans on writing supported drivers for this entire line of printers.

So I suppose according to HP, I'm just supposed to throw this printer away. I know that it is a "valu line", meaning I didn't have to take out a mortgage to buy it. And because of that, I suppose, HP would love for me to just throw my printer away. But here is the BEST part. Almost NONE of their printers have xp-64 drivers. True they have some, but most of those are just half assed drivers just so Windows would see the printer forget having full functions. And Apparently, their beautiful answer to how to get these printers to "work" in Vista is to install a completely different driver, that is CLOSE to the actual printer. The same crappy answer all over.

I had to buy a usb IR port for some testing. I was worried when I bought it because it was cheap, obviously chinese, and it was difficult to actually identify the manufacturer. To its credit, I put the driver cd in and right there was an XP-64 driver. Fully supported. If Joe-bob-chin chinese company can write 64 bit drivers, I fully expect HP to be capable. But clearly they just don't care enough about their customers.

I work in support and If I were to give these answers to my customers, my job would become a complaint department VERY quickly. And my customers would not accept the "use the driver closest to your printer" crap for a second.

Hewlett-Packard, your lack of drivers and support for your products to be used in modern, 64-bit environments, is INEXCUSABLE. And from this moment forward I vow NEVER to purchase any HP products again. Ever. This is the last straw. You have had 4 years and you can't even support Vista 32, much less any of the 64-bit OS's. Perhaps if I bought a professional line printer from you, I wouldn't have this problem. But clearly you don't give a crap about the little guy who cannot afford a thousand dollar laser printer. My father bought a laptop from you on my reccomendation. No more. I will never reccomend any HP products to anyone ever again. I honestly hope you go bankrupt and lose every customer that you have. Oh I know I'm just one pissed off techie, but there are plenty more of me.

If you happen to be running Vista or XP-64 and you have a Laserjet 1012 printer. Give up now. No amount of searching the internet will EVER give you a work around that works completely. You might be satisfied with limited printer support but I am not.