HP poised to merge printer, PC divisions? HP's boss-for-six-months Meg Whitman is about to make her first big strategic move since she took the reins at that reeling company, merging its Imaging and Printing Group and Personal Systems Group. So says AllThingsD, citing the ever-loquacious "sources familiar with the matter", who also said that current PSG headman Todd …
Apart from the target customer base (=everyone that uses computers!), what is there in common between a PC and a printer? Nothing.
When you put a crappy product division together with an excellent product division, what do you usually get? Crap all over the formerly good products.
I fear I'm soon going to have to start looking for a replacement default printer manufacturer. Especially if the first thing that the PC division (Microsoft-indoctrinated? ) does is to interfere with the hplip open-source linux-driver project. That's the reason that right now I don't even look at the competition: their linux support is so dreadful in comparison.
HP, don't put the printers in the crapper. De-merge the printers division if you must!
Reading between the lines of the corporate-speak this is largely about reducing costs.
Despite the apparent lack of commonality they are both still bits of hardware which have to be designed, manufactured, sold and supported and there will be duplication which can be eliminated. Sadly this will involve getting rid of people; I expect layoffs in due course.
How many of the other makes have you got and do they fare any better? There's not a printer in the world that can survive certain types of (ab)user for long. They do to printers as the BOFH does to managers. I mean, how do you get *coffee grounds* inside a printer? Anyway, it's the cost per page including both consumables and replacement printers that matters.
I'd rate Officejets and Laserjets in the £60 - £300 range highly (about 40 of them, various models). The cheapest ones are bad value (ink too expensive) unless you realy don't ever print more than a few hundred pages. The big expensive ones I just don't have experience with. Unique(?) selling point: they work like a charm with Linux via hplip (open-source but HP-supported).
(OP here)
We are part of a very large multi-national. All our printers are from HP on a lease / service contract - mostly fully tricked-out CM8060 Color MFP models (i.e. big very expensive ones). The printers were installed new a couple of years or so ago, and when they work they are brilliant. However, the serviceability of those original printers became so bad that HP recently replaced the lot with refurbished units. Those replacements didn't last two weeks before they also started crapping out. Now when I want to print something I have to do a tour of the building / complex just to find an operational unit.
Previously we had OCE printers, which were bad enough, but still 10 times better than these HPs.
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