- cross-posted to:
- shittyadmin@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- shittyadmin@lemmy.zip
I can’t blame the customer here. Ya, that’s the USB in the Ethernet port.
In my years of IT, I saw a few customers do this. I always put the printers on WiFi so they could move the printer to wherever they wanted it.
I read about this. They make the printer WITH a perfectly good USB port and then stick a “no USB” label over it and attempt to force you to use their wireless setup.
holy fuck.
And if they do have USB printing, the firmware might still get in the way. Don’t buy HP printers if you just want to print and be done.
trying to force the app, force the networking… get the printer online and sending data back, trick an account signup too… because, hey. user data nom nom nom.
and of course, also trick you into enabling automatic firmware updates–the first of which will be waiting for you and ramps-up blocking of third-party consumables.
Don’t forget all the ads to buy their ink every month and other bullshit
When I put the old HP printer on the network, I put it into a “Restricted Internet Access” group on the router. Indended for limiting the kids’ internet access times, but you can set it to locked perpetually.
A lot of HP consumer printers will stop working if they can’t phone home for a week or so
This worked fine for a number of years until it started wasting ink like mad (had to deep-clean it after 3-4 pages with color images (not full-sized images, just some graphics on the page).
This is a fairly recent development. Maybe 3-4 years old.
Our last HP was definitively older. I have to admit it lasted long, and worked rather good until about a year ago.
Can confirm, sister in law had one of these and it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure it out.
PC Load Letter? What the f**k does THAT mean?
Why does the USB port say no USB?