HP Sucks

I’ve always said “avoid computer products with ‘pack’ in the name, like “Compaq” or “Packard-Bell”. I didn’t follow my own rule this weekend, though, when I got a Hewlett-PACKard Scanjet 3500C.

The box advertised it as being OSX-compatible. The Compusa sales droid assured me it was OSX-compatible. However, when I got the scanner home, installed the software from the included CD, and connected it to my iBook, nothing happened. After a few more gyrations, I decided to download the newest updated driver. Holy crap! At 200MB, this ‘driver update’ weighed in like a Microsoft service pack!

An hour later, I installed the new drivers, rebooted, and hey, the scanner worked! Except.. the iBook was running at 100% CPU utilization. And said utilization continued after I closed the scanner application. Hmm. I unplugged the power adapter from the scanner, and the iBook froze. Woops! I plugged the power back in, and the iBook was happy again, except for the 100% utilization. I unplugged the USB connector from the scanner, and BLAM! the iBook had a kernel panic and had to be turned off. Eventually I discovered that the only way to use the HP Scanjet 3500C without crashing my iBook was to manually ‘kill -9’ the HP driver process from the terminal. This, to me, indicated that HP really blows ponies.

After testing and getting the same results on my G4, I packed the HP Scanjet 3500C [C is for crappy, it’s good enough for me] into its box and lugged it back to Compusa. I did have to use my evil death stare on the manager-droid, but she eventually grudgingly refunded my money. For the same price, I purchased the Canon LiDE 30, which required a 170KB driver install, no reboot, and worked on the first try.