Late this afternoon I unpacked an HP Officejet Pro L7580. After the interminable removal of plastic wrap, shipping tape, ink caps (four ink cartridges and two print heads), movement blockers, and warning labels (e.g. “do NOT insert paper until prompted to do so”), I was ready to power it on.
The quick setup guide said initialization should take 12 (!) minutes. After a series of squeaks, hums, and grumbles, and a continually scrolling warning (“do NOT turn the printer off while initializing”) the printer finally spit out a sheet that said it would take 20 (!!) minutes to initialize.
(… break to do other things than watch a printer initialize …)
The initialization apparently went ok. I turned off the printer, plugged in the network cable, powered it on … scrolling message (“checking device; this will take several minutes (!!!); do NOT turn printer off; do NOT open or close any panels …”)
Wow. I can’t wait until I begin the software installation. If it’s anything like the ‘7310 software, it will be several hundred megabytes of annoying, cloying, intruding, resourse-consuming HP-borgware that I don’t want, but will have to install because the “minimum” (only a few dozen megabytes (!)) installation will bork with a memory access violation every time it tries to update itself (and yes, HP “support” said the fix was to do the full installation). At least I can take small comfort that this isn’t going on my system.
Sorry — had to get that off my chest.
The thing that triggered this post — Genuine HP Advantage — was the small print I happened to notice on an ink cartridge wapper: “Intended for single use only. Not licensed for modification.” Not licensed? Not licensed? Just WTF did we pay for? Does this mean we don’t even own the cartridge? Yeah, yeah, I know stuff like this has been ranted about on the ‘Net for years, and I suspect (in a generous moment) that this is more like the “do not remove under penalty of law” furniture tags that aren’t meant for the final consumer, but I needed to vent just a bit (and to meet my ad hoc posting goals, of course).
