Skip navigation

Leibson's Law

Steve LeibsonLeibson's Law: It takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to become pervasive in the design community. This blog is about the disruptive technologies that either have or will win over electronic engineers, some that won't, and why. Written by Steve Leibson, Tensilica's Technology Evangelist. See my history site at www.hp9825.com. You can email me by taking the first letter of my first name, appending that to my last name, then the magic email symbol, followed by the name of the company I work for, and then a dot followed by com.

View Steve Leibson's profile on LinkedIn

Profile

RSS Feed

  • Add this blog to your RSS newsreader!

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Most Commented On

Archives

By Category

Blog

Monday, June 11, 2007

Engineering your brand towards oblivion: The sad story of the HP 3820 inkjet printer

Jun 11 2007 10:50AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (6) |
Blog This! using:  Blogger.com | LiveJournal |
Digg This | Slashdot This | add to Del.icio.us


A few years ago, I needed to buy my daughter a printer for her notebook PC. Something simple and easy to care for. I turned to an HP inkjet because I’d already had an HP 932C inkjet printer running for a while and it was a rock. Unfortunately, the printer I selected was a $50 HP 3820. Before I tell you why that’s an unfortunate choice, let me say that I’m a former HP employee (well, that was 27 years ago), I’ve owned several HP inkjet and laser printers, and the 3820 is the only HP printer I’ve felt to be an unfortunate purchase.

That said, the HP 3820 is crap. Its mechanical design is poor and subject to premature failure. The culprits are a pair of overloaded plastic gears that raise and lower a big, clumsy platform called the “service station” that wipes the print-cartridge nozzles and provides ink spittoons during cartridge cleaning. This platform is too heavy for the plastic gears to move and if anything gums up the works (like dried ink), the gears will break and the printer will be rendered inert. This sort of thing happens a lot. Here are some associated links:
There’s a point to this story and a reason for this blog entry and it’s not to take a swipe at HP. It’s to warn you how easy it is to damage or lose your company’s good reputation through a design error. It only takes one flawed product to leave the impression that your company cuts design corners. Don’t let it happen to you.

Reader Comments


at 6/11/2007 1:04:25 PM, Tom in Silicon Valley said:
Well, I would be suspicious of any printer costing only $50. The ink cartridges cost more than that.

at 6/12/2007 5:45:42 PM, Steve Leibson said:
Lots of people apparently paid $100 and up for this printer. HP replaced them when they broke, until the end of 2005. I guess mine just didn't break soon enough.

at 6/19/2007 8:20:39 AM, David PL said:
At $50 per printer, why buy ink cartridges? How long does the printer have to last before you have your moneys worth?

at 6/19/2007 1:36:19 PM, Steve Leibson said:
Consider this: The printer "runs out of ink." You buy and install new cartridges and the printer immediately breaks down. Did you get your money's worth?

at 6/23/2007 10:34:13 PM, Paul Rako said:
Sad to say I gave up on HP printers after my 4M laserjet. It was a very low usage machine and the feed rollers screwed up like on a lot of laserjets-- some models they offered a free kit to fix it. How about just using good rubber? After that I was turned off by the constant driver problems with HP printers in all the companies I consulted for. I went from the frying pan to the fire when I bought a Tektronix Xerox Phaser 850n. A total piece of junk and a very expensive piece of junk-- all the light blue plastic parts in the printer break, and this is in a print system that does not generate ozone (hot wax). Oh, I forgot to mention the Lexmark laser junk machine I got after the HP 4m. That one made more squeaks, groans and noises when it fed paper than a colony of baboons on amphetamines. It would not feed paper well and the print quality sucked-- and I always used factory cartridges. I was trying to buy American since I am a Harley-driving guy. Stupid. Hondas are better engineered than a Harley and my latest Brother multifunction center is just a delight. I got it refurb for 269 at Amazon. It is the MFC-8820D model-- it is a real duplex printer. I spent 30 bucks to max out its memory and another 110 on eBay to get the network card. It warms up in seconds and works flawlessly. The servomotors in it make is sound more like a million dollar semiconductor machine than a 500 dollar printer. Brother, a company that knew there was no future in sewing machines, has my vote. Next up will be a tabloid size Epson ink-jet photo-quality color printer. I always thought that ink-jets were junk because the ink ran when it got wet. Then my buddy Dave explained that is only because dear old HP used water soluble ink-- the Epson ink is far more stable. As went the US auto business so goes the office machinery business, just play the same video over and over again.

at 6/24/2007 7:40:57 PM, Steve Leibson said:
Wow Paul, you sure wrote a mouthful! I wouldn't be so quick to dis all HP printers. My HP 932C was/is a great printer. It always delivered nice images. The trick was to limit the amount of software that the HP install disk places on your computer. HP printing software (what's beyond the drivers) wants to take over, viewing inkjet printers as gateways into your computer and as delivery channels for a wide range of HP products and services. But I bought my HP 2200 laser printer used on eBay and it's still doing well. On the other hand, I bought a Japanese Juki daisy wheel printer back in the 1980s. Juki was also a Japanese sewing machine company that went into printers. The Juki printer used a linear stepper motor (!) that served as the printer carriage and track. It was junk. Not mechanically rugged enough to stand up to even light use. On yet the third hand, my Canon MP530 multifunction printer is a dream. It prints, copies (in color or black and white), faxes, and has a really reasonable front panel. It's well designed, well built, and takes inexpensive OEM ink cartridges. A truly great machine.

Post a comment


Display Name

Before submitting this form, please type the characters displayed above:

ADVERTISEMENT

About Us   |   Contact Us   |   Free Email Newsletters   |   Free Magazine Subscription  |   Advertising   |   RSSRSS   

©1997-2008 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Use of this Web site is subject to its Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Please visit these other Reed Business sites