Is Hewlett-Packard Dying?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on Fri 23rd Nov 2012 14:03 UTC
In the News Hard to believe, but articles are popping up at business websites claiming that venerable Hewlett-Packard may fail. In their most recent fiasco, HP wrote off a loss of $8.8 of their $11.1 US billion acquisition of Autonomy and have alleged fraud in the deal. Revenue is down 7% from a year ago and the stock has hit a 10-year low. The company is laying off 27K employees but that may not be enough. Some speculate HP might be broken up into parts with buy-outs involved. This article from last May offers a good in-depth analysis of how all these problems came to pass.
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StephenBeDoper
Member since:
2005-07-06

"Wifi printers have the same appeal as wifi itself: no need to be physically connected with a cable.

You might not want to forget to plug in your power cord, or you'll have a hell of a time getting that "wireless" printer to work... how's that for wireless, eh? "

Last I checked, a wired printer isn't going to work without power either. So what WAS your point?

"Obviously that's possible without having the printer itself connected via wifi (network printer, printer shared over the network using a PC that can be accessed via the wifi network). The issues are that: many people only have a laptop these days & aren't interested in getting a desktop just to share a printer over the network. And there are many consumer-grade printers available now that have wifi support, but lack a physical ethernet jack, because most printer makers seem to consider that a business-class option (AKA they can charge an artificial premium for it).


Does anyone actually read through any of the posts before they post themselves? "

Yes, that's right - just because I quoted and referred to the post that I replied to, why would you think I actually read it?

I'll just mention one last time: USB and USB-capable routers. No need for a dedicated host computer to be turned on with the printer; no need for a Wi-Fi printer for the printer to be available wirelessly over the network. The end.


That is an option, yes - but is by no means ubiquitous, IME it's only been in the past year that cheap routers have started including USB ports as standard options. And obviously that's going to limit where the printer can be located, since it needs to be near the router.

I think I'm done here


Yeah.... that's probably a good idea.

Reply Parent Score: 5

darknexus Member since:
2008-07-15

And obviously that's going to limit where the printer can be located, since it needs to be near the router.

Not necessarily. A small Wi-Fi router that can connect to an existing network would do the job as well, and could be located wherever you want the printer to be. Obviously doing it this way isn't for everyone, but it's the route I'd take because when problems come up (and with Wi-Fi they inevitably will at some point) a second router is easier to diagnose than a printer that sometimes can't even display its error logs to you without a 500 mb HP driver loaded with bloatware.

Reply Parent Score: 4

StephenBeDoper Member since:
2005-07-06

" And obviously that's going to limit where the printer can be located, since it needs to be near the router.

Not necessarily. A small Wi-Fi router that can connect to an existing network would do the job as well, and could be located wherever you want the printer to be.

Obviously doing it this way isn't for everyone, but it's the route I'd take
"

Yeah, that's basically the same setup I use as well. Though I don't usually recommend it for non-techies because if you have desktops or other computers connected to the wired network, they're not going to be able to connect to the printer (unless you setup the wireless router to act as a bridge instead of a gateway).

because when problems come up (and with Wi-Fi they inevitably will at some point) a second router is easier to diagnose than a printer that sometimes can't even display its error logs to you without a 500 mb HP driver loaded with bloatware.


Agreed. IME, a lot of the problems have to wifi routers trying to do too many things (AP, gateway, switch). It seems a bit silly to have a physically separate router, switch, and AP for just my small setup, but I've had exponentially fewer problems with that setup than when trying to use a single device for everything.

Reply Parent Score: 2

UltraZelda64 Member since:
2006-12-05

Last I checked, a wired printer isn't going to work without power either. So what WAS your point?

I knew someone would bring this up. Just to clarify:

My point was that with a "wireless" printer you will *need* a wire anyway, so--unless you absolutely must have your router and printer two or three large rooms apart from each other (ie. opposite sides of the house), or your router on one floor of the building and the printer on another, a "wireless" printer just doesn't make much sense. Specifically when you consider the reliability benefits of a wired connection and the potential drawbacks to Wi-Fi relating to drivers and overall reliability. You know... the things I've been going about from pretty much the beginning.

And with that clarification made... that is all.

Edited 2012-11-24 19:29 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3

lucas_maximus Member since:
2009-08-18

Obviously we live in the land where people don't own laptops or tablets and would never want to print anything from those types or portable devices ...
</sarcasm>

Reply Parent Score: 2

Read more of this thread... >
RE[6]: Poor Support or Product
by zima on Fri 30th Nov 2012 23:59 in reply to "RE[5]: Poor Support or Product"
zima Member since:
2005-07-06

Mains power sockets are much more plentiful in a typical apartment than Ethernet jacks... meanwhile, a longish loose cable between where the router is (near phone jack), and a printer, might be not seen as desired.

I mean, we don't live in idealised world. USB-capable router might be more expensive than almost-freebie somebody gets with DSL. And wired Ethernet on printers seems be treated lately by manufacturers as more of a "premium" feature than wifi. And quite many people only have a laptop and such.

Yeah, wifi printers can be more problematic - well, in that case we should primarily expect improvement from the manufacturers.

Edited 2012-12-01 00:02 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 2