HP's Strange Obsession With WebOS For Printers

ryzvonusef writes "VentureBeat's (typically unnamed) sources identifies Intel and Qualcomm as being involved in talks for acquiring the Palm asset portfolio. However, citing sources intimate with HP's negotiations, it reports that the company wants to be able to license webOS back for use in printers; it wants it so much, in fact, that the issue has become 'a crucial part' of discussions. Maybe there's something about webOS and printers that HP knows and the rest of the world doesn't."

Comments

We B OS

[alphatel]

Maybe they finally realized that the "HP Universal Print Driver" is neither Universal nor a Print Driver.
Discuss...

Re:We B OS

[VIPERsssss]

I remember when an inkjet driver fit on a fucking 3.5 floppy, had pretty much the same print quality, and didn't install a goddamn update service, system tray, and a "helper" app.

Yes, I am angry about this.

Re:We B OS

[alphatel]

webLos wobble but they don't fall down?

Re:We B OS

[jbolden]

Buy ethernet printers rather than sharing USB printers and you won't have that problem. Buy stuff designed for how you want to use it.

Re:We B OS

[alphatel]

The HP Universal is the default for all Ethernet HP printers. Try finding a different driver for anything built after 2009, even the $10,000 color laserjets.

Re:We B OS

[sarhjinian]

This.

The cheaper printers are just that: cheap. They offload most of the rasterization onto the host PC, have no job control features and are generally awful. Ethernet-capable printers usually, but don't always, help, because printer makers are shovelling out some awful crap.

You can still get small print drivers for HP's modern printers. The problem is that those printers are expensive, but then again, so were the "Good ol' days" printers they replaced.

Here's a tip: check to see if the printer supports PJL (not just PCL) and/or PostScript (or a compatible derivative, like Kyocera's KPDL). If it supports PJL and/or PS, you can be guaranteed a) that the drivers will be small, b) that the printer will work pretty well, and c) that you'll pay for the privilege of A and B.

Re:We B OS

[gbjbaanb]

just because there's an update service in Windows doesn't mean its readily available to HP. I've only seen a few drivers in there - realtek mainly for my system.

How much does it cost to add your binaries to Windows Update? The Linux system is still far superior, partly because its free to add your code to it, and partly because even if you didn't want that, you can include your own update repository to it.

Re:We B OS

[517714]

Windows Update will update generic printer drivers, but if you want the drivers that allow duplex printing, multiple page reduction, high resolution, economy settings, etc. and support the other features available in a typical laser printer then you must install the drivers yourself, and Windows Update does not apply.

Re:We B OS

[geekboybt]

"Try Linux if you want sensible printer drivers"

My oh my, how far we've come.

palm?

[galaad2]

*facePALM*

It could be a leverage point

[Chrisq]

Looking at the picture of the printer I can imagine that if HP wanted to get back in to tablets they could just have a cheap printer with a detachable control unit...

Re:It could be a leverage point

[Xest]

There's more to it than this, I have one of these printers and don't use it very often, however last night I was sat playing BF3 and notice something out the corner of my eye. The thing had switched itself on and it's front end on the tablet thing was staring at me with the blue light on the printer flashing, as if it was trying to communicate with me, as if it felt the need to make me acknowledge it's presence.

I suspect HP does know something we don't know about WebOS, and that's that it is sentient. HP understands that if it doesn't retain a close relationship now, that when these things start to learn to do other things, like walk, and weild machine guns, then it risks suffering the same kind of enslavement as the rest of us. Me? I'm not too worried, I said "there there" to my printer in a calm voice, fed it some paper, and said "time to sleep" before gently turning it off. I hope this will be enough, that if I'm kind to it now, it will spare me when the day comes.

Re:It could be a leverage point

[nedlohs]

This is the most rational explanation for HPs behaviour I've heard. Well that and LSD in the water in the board room.

Re:It could be a leverage point

[Chrisq]

This is the most rational explanation for HPs behaviour I've heard. Well that and LSD in the water in the board room.

Surely the poster must be the next HP CEO.

Re:It could be a leverage point

[Xest]

That's a bit harsh, I've never had an inappropriate relationship or been accused of sexual harassment in my life!

Products in the pipeline?

[JStyle]

Maybe HP already has printers with WebOS in the pipeline, a lot of them. Losing WebOS licenses at this point could be a major loss for their development group.

Well, they already have this -

[certain death]

A Printer with an Android tablet built in. http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/12/hp-photosmart-estation-c510-printer-android-tablet-now-on-sale/ Maybe they want to change from Android to WebOS, or maybe they are just at step 3. - $$$ Profit

Well...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the bright side, absolutely anything would be better than the utter shit that passes for firmware in their present models.

I had the delightful experience just the other day of encountering an HP wireless laser printer(a comparatively low-volume one; but a full 'Hi, I'm a networked device on the network' sort of thing) that would simply hang and drop off the network until power-cycled if you attempted to print to it using the HP 'Universal' print driver...

So, not only was this thing such a piece of shit that it wasn't compatible with HP's own, supposedly, 'universal' driver(PCL motherfucker, do you speak it?); but HP's own UPD could be used as an attack toolkit for a DOS that could only be recovered by a hard power cycle.

Now, if HP actually believes that there is some kind of "People who want a non-ipad with a shittastic inkjet attached, for reasons unknown to normal humans" market, I'd be delighted to sell them a bridge. If their doomed effort to build WebOS printers at least means that their network-attached printers will be running a linux kernel that doesn't fall over and die at the first sign of malformed network input, I'll be a lot happier...

Eh....

[King_TJ]

Sounds to me like HP is simply misled, once again. They've probably been developing a lot of fancy stuff for their Deskjet printers on the webOS platform and don't want to throw all of their work away. Unfortunately, HP doesn't seem to get that most of us are moving AWAY from the idea of printing on paper, wherever possible.

Sure, there are times when it's convenient or even necessary to print something out - but ANY respectable printer attached to your computer can do that. HP has been trying to sell printers with built-in LCD displays that connect directly to the Internet and allow all sorts of interaction with websites without any host system even being attached first. When you get over the initial "cool factor" that your printer can, say, print up your airline flight schedule right from its front panel? You realize this is just a gimmick to encourage you to use as much HP ink as possible. (If you looked the same thing up on your computer, you might simply read it on the screen, or even print only a selected part that didn't use as much paper or ink.)

Honestly, the one thing I'd like to see HP do with their "all in one" line of printers is create more reliable, less bloated drivers for them! If webOS somehow helps them accomplish that task, it would be worth it (but I'm really not thinking that's the goal for it). Just the other day, my boss spent hours on the phone with tech support at HP, all because of their drivers making a confused mess out of things when you own several of their products and move your laptop between them regularly. (He had an older 7600 at his house which became his wife's main printer downstairs. Then he bought a new 8500 Pro model to use upstairs via their wireless network. He bought a second 8500 Pro for his vacation home. Practically every time he travels between his vacation home and regular house, something winds up getting screwed up so the "HP Director" software decides he can only select his 7600 for scanning, or one/both of the 8500's decide to stop taking any print jobs, or ??)

Re:Eh....

[Chrisq]

Unfortunately, HP doesn't seem to get that most of us are moving AWAY from the idea of printing on paper, wherever possible.

Please tell my bosses! One has a secretary print out emails for him to read. Another looked at me as though I was mad when I suggested having an intranet application for expenses claims instead of a paper form. And they both come into work carrying a real newspaper.

Re:Eh....

[PPH]

You must work for Boeing.

We had a 'paper saving initiative' many years ago. The unit chief figured it was so important that rather than circulating one memo on the topic per group with a routing slip attached, he ordered one copy made for each employee (several hundred) in his organization.

I guess they don't have these in America:

[Kagetsuki]

http://www.epson.jp/products/colorio/printer/me/
Printers with screens and keyboards and built in software to print photos, greeting cards, calendars, and quite a few other things. WebOS would be perfect for one of these and I'd bet that's exactly what they want to do with it.

Re:Hah.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If only HP had invented some sort of 'Printer Command Language' back in the 80s by which an embedded device might communicate with a great many of their printers(and a fair few 3rd party ones) with no platform-specific driver...

Not a surprise, there are a lot of money...

[stanlyb]

Right, there is a very big business behind network printers, or the ability to print anything, from anywhere, to anywhere, even from your mobile phone. If you think this is not a big deal, think again, and look around, and actually try to do it. And then try to think how could you do it in corporate environment. Still no idea how to make it work? And work transparently? Don't worry, there is still no universal solution out there. Now, pick any bank, or any organizations with many branches all around the world, and keeping in mind that there is still not good enough solution, you could imagine how much money are there, and what an advantage you could have if you do it properly.

Re:THERE BE GOLD IN THEM THAR INK CARTS !!

[SJHillman]

Ink is not toner. Toner is reasonably priced compared to inkjet cartridges, which is why there's only silver in toner cartridges. And I saw this with my hands covered in toner after spending the past hour digging through a HP LaserJet looking for a damned stuck sensor.

Someday I'm gonna weasel my way into the boardroom

[james_van]

and take over a company. Not out of greed or a need for power, but to prove a point - that I can run a company at least as well as an "executive". Day after day we hear about absolutely moronic decisions like this being made, and we listen to suits blither on and on about vision and direction (while it's glaringly obvious that they are completely out of touch with reality) and I really, honestly believe that I could walk in and at the very least not do any worse than them. Maybe it's cause I've spent my whole life at the bottom with the rest of the unwashed masses and I still (so naively) believe that a company who listens to its customers (and good common sense) can be more successful that a company who caters to its shareholders whims, maybe I'm just an idiot. But someday, mark my words, I'm gonna weasel my way into a CEO spot and I'm gonna try my damnedest to do something smart! And then I'm gonna get promptly fired and go back to my cubicle and write PHP.

Re:Hah.

[pseudonomous]

I would like to disagree with the moderation of your comment, it is *not* funny. It is $&#*ing tragic. There was a problem "every printer needs it's own #!*& driver", there were at least two solutions, postscript and PCL that date back to at least the 1980s. But, unless you've got something fancy enough to be considered a network printer, odds are that "the printer still needs it's own #!*& driver". Postscript printers were not-so-common in the 1980's because it was computationally expensive and microprocessors and RAM were not cheap back in the 1980's, but they *are* cheap now. So, let's recap:

1. 1) We had a problem
2. 2) We found a technical solution 30 years ago
3. 3) We still have the same problem, I have no idea why.

Re:Hah.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Don't worry, we will soon solve the problem with "Cloud Printing" or some such nonsense; because implementing a hardware RIP like they did on a 12MHz M68k with less than 2MB of RAM back in '85 is much more difficult than dragging half the internet into the problem...

What is even more annoying is that, even if implementing a full Postscript RIP in the printer hardware were too expensive, or too slow, the standardization of USB, and the various USB device classes, would have been a perfect time to introduce a reasonably sane USB printer class, for low-end printers, where they could declare their parameters(color/BW, available media sizes, resolution, etc) and receive fully crunched pixel data, in appropriate color depth, resolution, and size, from a software Postscript RIP on the host computer. That would still burden the host CPU; but host CPUs are damn fast, and you'd just need to target a single page description language. Instead, we got a USB Printer Device class that is basically a polite standardization of "how to send whatever horror your cheap shit requires over a USB cable"...

Re:Generic drivers suck

[jbolden]

A production environment? In a production environment end users (I'm assuming graphic designers) shouldn't be printing at all. They should be sending their jobs to an EJS team working on professional equipment. Content creators are not experts in rendering.

And HP doesn't make production quality equipment anymore. As for the rest, they are supported by generic postscript drivers.