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Why Does HP Software Suck Sooooo Bad?
I have an HP Scanjet 4670 that I’ve owned for 3 years now. I haven’t used it for a year however, and a few months ago when I rebuilt my machine, I didn’t reinstall the HP drivers on purpose. This morning I needed to make a scan. I worked for an hour to try to figure out how to make it work without installing HP drivers (it’s hard to find good information on whether this is even possible) and no joy. I really didn’t want to install the drivers and all the other stuff HP would force on me, but I was stuck.
Reluctantly, I gave up, downloaded the 100Mb file and started the install, thinking maybe I could leave out the parts I didn’t want. The first thing it does is say “your computer will need to be restarted.” This is pretty annoying for a Mac person, but I said OK. The software immediately, with no warning, killed every running application and goes through the install. When the computer restarted, it on the initial grey screen without even showing the Apple logo. I tried restarting three times and was about to give up, but decided to try it with nothing plugged into the computer (note that the scanner was never plugged in). That did it and I finally got the thing to restart. Whew!
HP, of course, installs all kinds of crap in addition to the drivers and Photoshop plug-in I wanted, putting things on the Dock that I don’t want there and, in general, just being annoying.
Compare this experience to what Mac users are accustomed to when they open a new piece of gear and turn it on. It’s the stuff of legends—not to mention unboxing videos. Where Apple makes opening something new from them an almost religious experience, HP (and I think Windows-world stuff in general) treat it as a chore you’ve got to get through to get your work done. The two experiences are fundamentally different. Why?
This presentation from MX Week by Tim Brown of IDEO is instructive. Tim talks about how businesses approach innovation. Some approach it from the business standpoint: what will make money? Some approach it from the technology standpoint: what is viable? Some approach it from the design standpoint: what will people want? At some point every successful venture has to deal with all three of these questions, but different company cultures approach innovation from one primary standpoint or another.
With this backdrop, it’s easy to see that HP, as a company with a strong engineering culture approaches their projects form the technology angle. Apple approaches the same kind of activities from a design standpoint. Thus the difference between unboxing an HP product and unboxing an Apple product.
Still, I wish the HP experience didn’t suck so badly.
Posted by windley on June 7, 2007 1:17 PM
Comment from William at June 7, 2007 2:32 PM
(rant) I have the same problem with my HP scanner. I procrastinated researching what scanner was best and it was the day before my wife's birthday so I bought the best scanner money would buy hoping that would keep me out of the doghouse. Well HP the hardware company might have done its job, all the specs on resolution and everything look pretty nice. But with lousy software it has totally backfired. It was bundled with some software from Adobe which I also had some brand loyalty to before this. Well there was some sort of Adobe font manager software that came with it that didn't install correctly and now every Office application pops up with an error and takes an additional 10 seconds to get into because there is a font installed incorrectly that I can't figure out how to uninstall short of repaving the machine. Which I have also procrastinated doing. After searching around I finally did manage to find a driver download package that was just the driver. I think it is a lot more popular than their huge bundle of bloatware. I just want a scanner that stays in the background and can be used by other software. My HP laser printer does this just great, why can't my HP scanner? I know it is vindictive, irrational, and a lack of forgiveness in my heart but I am consciously avoiding every other HP product from now on after this really painful (both time and money) experience. More than once I have caught myself half seriously considering whether I should just spend a week or so writing my own driver software for the scanner, so I could actually use the buttons on it (like the one touch to print, one touch to scan it to a document, etc) like they were intended and my wife expected.
Comment from Brad at June 7, 2007 6:52 PM
I have an HP color laser printer that just can't get to work in my network. Perhaps it the Apple curse, but we're an Apple family and if I want to print color, I print from my wife's computer where the printer is attached via USB.
Comment from Jesse Harris at June 7, 2007 8:44 PM
I don't understand why so many device manufacturers design their driver packages as if you're going to do nothing but use their device. Printer manufacturers as a whole are abysmal at this, especially if it's a multi-function. Sure, you can get a stripped-down "corporate install" driver, but you give up things like print-to-fax and a lot of the scanning features.
Comment from Robert at June 7, 2007 9:31 PM
Ditto for my and HP. My printer gave me the same crap. Why doesn't HP hear this and change their act? We can't be the first to complain. I've had issues with them since Mac OS X 10.2
Comment from bilbo at June 7, 2007 10:10 PM
I've been waiting for so long for somebody to speak up about how terrible HP software is.
Rarely am I able to shutdown my winXP machine without having to use taskmanager to kill the HP software first.
It makes startup and shutdown unbearable. Crashes, weird system behavior.
I HATE HP SOFTWARE!
Comment from Jim Pick at June 8, 2007 6:44 AM
My 12 year old HP Scanjet 3C SCSI scanner still works great. And it needs zero additional drivers or programs beyond what's in Windows XP.
Comment from Dennis Shimer at June 8, 2007 8:46 AM
I don't see this as a Apple vs Windows issue. I use several HP devices in a Windows environment (These particular devices are incredible from a hardware point of view) and always spend the majority of my time trying to get around and away from the pile of garbage that comes on the CD. Most applications could use a big dose of the "simple tools for simple tasks" pragmatism that ruled when software had to be efficient. Fast computers, and cheap memory are no excuse for the crap that gets passed off these days, and while HP is one of the worst I've seen it is none to rare.
Comment from barb at June 8, 2007 9:53 AM
It's not a Windows/Mac issue at all. Anytime I have to install an HP printer to a mac (be it a laser printer or a simple inkjet), I have to restart the mac or it won't work. Period. I can install the same stuff to a Windows based machine and almost never have to reboot. It's an HP issue. I have a HP PCS combo at home and yeah I hate the extra crap HP insists you need to make it all work, but you just kind of live with it. Or just don't buy HP products.
Comment from Cid Dennis at June 11, 2007 10:06 AM
I not only hate their printers and printer drivers but their laptops suck also. We purchased one a few years ago for my wife and it has been nothing but problems. When I reinstalled XP on it I could not get the drivers as they did not included CD's with the dumb computer and they did not have them on their web site.
I will never get another HP product.
Comment from Dawn at July 9, 2007 5:05 PM
I just spent the last four hours trying to install two HP printers on my laptop (XP) and it was such a frustrating experience - you download the drivers, you follow the instructions, the printer gets installed - and yet your test print does not work. I finally got them both to work - but you know what? I really don't know exactly what I did to make it work - I just keep going through the print wizard and trying different things and eventually - four hours later - they are both working - is it HP or is it Windows? The best part is I get a survey from HP since I downloaded a bunch of drivers from their website and I made it pretty clear that their drivers SUCK. I read somewhere that plug and play is really plug and pray - and that is the truth when it comes to HP printers!
Comment from Kris at July 24, 2007 2:16 AM
Being the 'computer guy' for family, friends, etc...Most of people's computer problems stem from using crap HP software. Uninstall it and dump their POS hardware it will only cause huge amounts of pain.
Comment from Stephen at August 1, 2007 8:57 PM
I have had the scanjet 4850 since December 2006. This scanner's software demands 450MB of space to install itself which seems crazy and I resent having to go along with this. My installation of Dreamweaver 8 needs only 165MB and Flash 8 uses 216MB so why the 450MB for a scanner? I've also had experience installing software for hp printers on a friends computer which again was memory hungry and caused the computer to slow down significantly.
My second criticism is with the scanner's software dialog which uses 200dpi as the default resolution. Any graphics person, I would have thought, needs to scan with a minimum of 300dpi as this is the accepted industry standard print resolution. But there is no way of resetting this permanently eg as a user preference. No more HP products for me!
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