Gripes about HP 880c DeskJet Printer

The 880c is an inkjet printer similar to the 882c except for the included software.

February 25, 2000.

Installed the printer directly connected (no network) to a pc running Windows NT 4 workstation.

The first thing I noticed was the printer cartridge boxes (it comes with a black and a color cartridge). They both said "economy cartridge" and "For occasional printing". The black cartridge is 51645G, the color C1823G. It turns out these are starter cartridges, so to speak. They only contain half as much ink as others. The black 51645A cartridge has 42ml of ink vs. the 21ml in the "economy" cartridge. Likewise the color C1823D has 30ml of ink while the "economy" version has only 15.

The printer does not come with either a parallel port cable or a USB cable (it can use either). I knew this and it does mention this on the outside of the box. However, the User Guide for Windows (mine is from September 1998) offers no advice in the first chapter (which discusses setting up the printer) about the various types of parallel port printer cables. To the best of my limited knowledge, there are unidirectional cables, bi-directional cables and IEE1284 compliant cables. God forbid you already have an older printer cable, there is no way to tell what type of cable it is (as far as I know).

Considering that this is such a mainstream product, I was surprised that I had so many installation problems.

The User Guide has instructions for installing the driver from the CD-ROM included with the printer and from floppy disks. There are no instructions for installing it after downloading the latest driver from the Internet.

I went to the HP web site for the latest printer driver and they have two versions for NT4 which is confusing. One has no description and the other is for corporate users. I clicked on each one. The one with no description is for home users. However, it does not compare and contrast itself with the corporate version of the driver. The description of the corporate version (v11.1) mentions all the features that are disabled. I chose the home version (v11.1.4, released October 20, 1999).

Below are the installation instructions from the HP web site. They are as of July 12, 2000 and for version 11.1.4 of the NT driver (released October 20, 1999).

Save this file to your hard disk and run it. The driver setup program will start automatically when all the files are finished loading. Follow the directions on the screen.
The directory DJ880 and sub-directories like \DISK1, \DISK2, etc. are created when you run the file. If you need to set up the driver at a later time, look in the \DISK1 sub-directory and run SETUP.EXE.

As per these instructions, after downloading the EXE file for v11.1.4 of the the printer driver, I ran it.

It could not locate the printer on port LPT1 and asked me where it was. It was on LPT1. That's where the old printer was (this printer replaced an older HP DeskJet). As per the printer instructions, the printer was all set up and turned on. I asked the installation program to look again on LPT1, no dice. There was an option to forge ahead with the software installation anyway and that's what I did.

I wrote to HP about this problem on March 6, 2000 by filling in a form on their web site.
They never responded.
The HP support web page where you enter your problem says this at the top:
    We are dedicated to providing quality responses to your e-mail in a timely manner.
    Occasionally the volume of e-mail we receive exceeds our ability to respond quickly.
How about responding at all. As of this writing it has been four months. In fairness to HP, I later found this problem mentioned in the User Guide (printed 12/98) in the section on installation problems on page 22.

This same problem occurred when the printer was directly attached to a computer running Windows 98 (June 9,2000). The printer driver installation software issued a warning that no printer was found on LPT1. As with the NT machine, I preceded with the driver installation anyway. After the required reboot, it automatically runs a test of two way communication between the computer and the printer. All was well, making it appear to be a bug in the printer driver installation software.

A second install of the printer driver software on another NT4 machine did not have this problem.

Having fully read the instructions for installing the printer driver on the HP web site, I knew that it would create directories called DISK1, DISK2 and DISK3. The instructions had said that if you need to install the printer driver again, later, to run SETUP.EXE in the DISK1 directory. I looked in the folder from which I was running the downloaded EXE file and there was now a sub-directory called DJ880 in it that wasn't there before. Under DJ880 were the DISK1, DISK2 and DISK2 directories. Apparently when you run the downloaded EXE file, it unpacks itself into the current directory. Of course none of this helped me with the error message above. I had no choice but to abort the software installation.

My next guess was to take HP's advice and run SETUP.EXE from the DISK1 directory. This failed too, with the same error as before.

Choosing to switch rather than fight, I copied the DISK1, DISK2 and DISK3 directories from their current location to the root directory of my C disk. It wanted a C:\DISK1 directory, so I gave it one. Again, I ran SETUP.EXE from the DISK1 directory and this time it worked.

HP made a few mistakes here. The driver unpacks itself into whatever directory it is run from and does not tell the user this. The installation process requires that the files be in the root directory of the C drive and, again, the user is not informed of this.

I wrote to HP about this problem on February 29, 2000 by filling in a form on their web site. As with the other problem noted above, HP never responded to this issue either.

A second installation of the print driver on another NT4 machine did not have this problem. Perhaps because the second time the downloaded EXE (from the HP web site) was run from the C disk; the first installation ran it from the D disk. Then again, the second installation was months later (July 12, 2000) and HP might have upgraded the software (although the printer driver version did not change between the first and second NT4 installations). The second installation was run on an NT4 machine at SP6a whereas the first was run on an SP3 machine. As before, it unpacked itself into the directory it was run from without informing me.

According to the NT printer test page, the driver name is HPFkm12.dll and the version is 4.01. This is the second version number for the printer driver. The web site had said it was version 11.1.4.

There is no registration card in the box. If you get the printer driver from the web site, rather than the included CD-ROM, you just have to know that you can register at the HP web site. I only knew this because of another HP printer that I bought. The User Guide for Windows does not mention it.

The registration process on the web site is simple, but not secure. The web page where you type in all your personal information (name, address, phone number, etc) is not a secure page. Just before this, the HP web site says they will keep all your personal information confidential, but then they immediately violate this by asking you to enter it on an insecure web page.

One of the questions in the registration process on the HP web site is "May HP contact you?" How do they expect someone to answer this question when they don't explain why or what about?

The printed paper sometimes falls out of the printer onto the floor. After four months of ownership this has not happened very often, but it always seems on the verge of happening. A sneeze would certainly dislodge the paper. The older HP DeskJet printer that this one replaced (a model 600), never did this in the three years I owned it.

Appendix B on page 81 of the User Guide has the horsepower requirements for using the printer from each supported operating system (cpu, ram, hard disk space). For each operating system it gives instructions on how to determine the ram and hard disk space available. Nowhere, however, does it tell the reader how to determine what cpu their computer has.

This printer comes with a one year warranty, which I wanted to extend. The retailer where I purchased it does not offer this service. The manual for the printer says that you can call HP to extend the warranty at (800) 446-0522.
March 3, 2000. I called twice (morning and afternoon) and was put on hold for over 10 minutes each time before just hanging up.
March 6, 2000. I called at 2pm EST and waited on hold for over 20 minutes before giving up.

Most people print in Portrait mode most of the time, myself included, which is why this problem did not show up until the printer was over four months old. Up to now, the only time I had tried to print in Landscape mode was from Internet Explorer version 5 and it worked fine. Today however, I tried to print in Landscape mode from Word 97 (at service level SR2). It printed in Portrait mode. I tried printing from two different documents, one that already existed and one that I just created as a test. Neither worked. I verified that the printer driver is configured for Landscape, nonetheless, it insists on printing in Portrait mode with no warning or error messages. Print preview in Word is also using Portrait mode. I printed a saved web page from IE5 again and, as before, IE5 prints in Landscape mode just fine. The host operating system in NT4 at SP3.

I'll put in a tech support request on the HP web site, but two prior attempts at this for other problems were totally ignored.

The web page at contact.external.hp.com/support/static/dj880c.html is the HP DeskJet 800 Series Printer E-Mail Support page and this is where I entered the details of this problem on July 9, 2000. This page does not ask for confirmation of your email address, so it is susceptible to typing mistakes. For Windows NT, it does not ask or allow the entry of the service pack level of the operating system. It also does not provide an incident number or ticket number making it easy for requests to fall through the cracks as has already happened to me twice.

When I filled out their tech support web page, my description of the problem was:
      The printer prints in Landscape mode from Internet Explorer version 5, but not from Word 97 at SR-2.
      From Word, it always prints in Portrait mode.
HP responded to this with:
     I understand you can not print in landscape when printing from the Internet or from Word.
    Provided below are steps to take to try and resolve your issue.

This is not true, as I can print in Landscape mode from IE and said that clearly. I did some further debugging and tried to print in Landscape from WordPad, Netscape Communicator v4.6 (both Navigator and Messenger) and Visio v5 - they all worked fine. The problem seems to be limited to Word 97.

The list of known incompatibilities with the HP driver software does not mention this problem with Word97. I went to the HP web page for this printer and looked at the list of 58 known issues with the printer. There was nothing there that seemed relevant to this problem.

The HP response included the mandatory refrain: uninstall and reinstall the printer driver and instructions for doing so. The instructions for installing the printer driver were confusing. They started out with:

To meet the special needs of both our corporate and home users, the HP DeskJet 880C series printer includes two self-contained printer drivers SETUP.EXE and Add Printer. This document describes the features of the Add Printer driver as well as instructions for installation. A summary of the features of the ADD Printer driver is shown in the table below.

Toolbox is disabled.
No Installer shell.
Bi-directional communication is OFF by default.
Desktop shortcuts are not installed.
Printer wizard. This requires a .INF file (located in the appropriate language folder) in a Microsoft (R) specified format. The Add Printer wizard can be used to install the driver for a local printer.
No built-in Uninstaller.

Confident that the problem was not a corrupted printer driver (since it prints Landscape from other software) I hooked up the printer to another NT4 machine. From scratch, I downloaded the printer driver from the HP web site and installed it. As on the first NT4 computer, other applications can print in Landscape mode. Word97 SR-2 can not, it prints in Portrait mode only. Re-installing the printer driver would not fix the problem.

After making it clear to HP that the problem was only with Word 97, they knew what the problem was. Below is an excerpt from their email response:

If MS Word 97 is the only application that you are having the issue with, it could be due to how the document is being setup. Make sure that you are going to File and then Page Setup once you have opened the Word document and select the Landscape orientation from the Paper Size tab. The printer does not have to be set for landscape if you make the change in the page setup window.

Sure enough, telling Word 97 to print in Landscape mode resulted in Landscape printing - even though the printer options in the printer driver were set to Portrait mode. Yet another case of poor documentation. With the other applications, setting the printer driver to Landscape worked just fine. Only Word ignores this and insists on its own printing options as being paramount.

Perhaps the gripe here is with Word97, not with HP, the printer or the printer driver. However, considering how brutally popular Word97 is, HP should have documented this anomaly with it and Landscape mode. I could not have been the first person to experience this. HP seems to do a good job of documenting issues with the printer, as noted above, there are 58 on the tech support web site. This should be one of them.

A relative of mine owns an HP 810 printer which is similar to the 880c. She said that one day when she printed from Windows 98 by mistake, the printer turned itself on. I, of course, did not believe it and guessed the printer was never turned off in the first place. Then it happened to me.

A few days later, I too inadvertently caused the computer hooked up to the HP 880c printer to print something. My printer also turned itself on. I still did not believe it, so I turned off the printer, opened up Wordpad, started a new document and typed a few random characters. Sure enough, when I told Wordpad to print the document, the printer turned itself on. This time the operating system was Windows NT4.

Could this be normal behavior? I looked thru the printer manual but it says nothing about the printer turning itself on. I wonder if it turns itself off too?

Next I checked the HP web site for the printer but could find nothing on this subject. So I emailed them about it. A couple days later, HP responded with:

This is a normal function of the printer. If it is connected and off and you tell it to print, it will turn on and print the item. Excessive use of that function is not recommended.

This is as much an FYI as a gripe. However, one gripe here is that HP does not document this feature. Another problem with it is when the computer is being used by a small child who wants to print things that adults consider a waste of ink and paper. The adults can't turn off the printer. Likewise, very small children can unwittingly cause the printing of material.

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HP 880c Printer

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