HP's Strange Obsession With WebOS For Printers 226
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."
We B OS (Score:5, Funny)
Discuss...
Re: (Score:3)
Re:We B OS (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I am angry about this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the update service is to make up for the lack of an update system built into the OS...
The rest can really be done without.
Try Linux if you want sensible printer drivers, especially for HP printers... No helper apps, uses the update service already built into the OS etc.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How long has it been since you used windows? Mine has no problem updating itself. It's also more than happy to update printer drivers. Well, assuming the printer vendor can make them stable enough to pass basic tests ...
Maybe youve heard of Windows Update?
Re: (Score:2)
There are some standard windows driver for SOME hp printers. Which never seems to be the case of the one you have in hand. But their driver downloads are in the order of magnitude of the hundreds of megabytes, and they install their own update services plus a crapload of stuff that you never use.
Re:We B OS (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
It all depends on the printer manufacturer - they can do it the Right Way and put it all in the driver that's on WU, or they can require you to download and install a 100Mb "print app".
Re: (Score:3)
Well, the update service is to make up for the lack of an update system built into the OS...
The rest can really be done without.
Just because you haven't used Windows in 14 years and have absolutely no clue what you're saying doesn't mean you need to spread your that ignorance to everyone else on the site in order to promote Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
And yes 14 was an approximation.
Re:We B OS (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
It's obvious you've never used CUPS. Even legacy and exotic printers work perfect on Linux. Linux uses the exact same printing system as Mac OS X.
Re:We B OS (Score:4, Insightful)
"Try Linux if you want sensible printer drivers"
My oh my, how far we've come.
Re: (Score:2)
No, they are apple's.
Re: (Score:2)
There are small drivers for HP. You don't have to install the entire machinery. Most HP printers support PCL, PDF some still support Postscript. Just send generic print codes to your printer and don't bother with the HP software.
Occam's razor (Score:2)
Maybe there's something about webOS and printers that HP knows and the rest of the world doesn't."
Or maybe HP mismanagment is so technologically clueless that they fundamentally misunderstand what webOS is.
My bet's on the latter.
Re: (Score:2)
Can we just decide as a group that we will never mention HP print drivers.
HP print driver quality (Score:3)
I pretty much have to say that I've stopped buying HP printers based on the lousy drivers they supply. The drivers are huge, badly designed and incredibly slow. Even worse I don't want my printer driver popping up in the corner with "special offers" (marketing speak for ads). It's a printer drivers. It's really too bad because back in the good old days, HP made really good printers. (We still have some 10+ year old laserjets in use.) I can't speak to the current quality of HP devices, but I suspect that th
Re:We B OS (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We B OS (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Generic drivers suck (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:We B OS (Score:5, Informative)
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: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
They offload most of the rasterization onto the host PC, have no job control features and are generally awful.
Nowadays most host PCs have enough hardware grunt to manage most rasterization needs. Even USB2.0 is good enough for home users[1].
It's a software problem, it doesn't have to be that crappy and so it's HP's fault :).
[1] 1200 dpi * 1200 dpi * 8.27 * 11.69 * 256 levels of grey = 140MB (if your printer can only do pure black or white 1200dpi dots then it's 17.5MB). Without compression and assuming 30MB/sec USB transfer rate that's about 4.6 seconds to transfer a page to the printer. Which is about 12 to 13 pag
Re: (Score:3)
It's not the gruntwork of rasterizing---I agree you could write a decent rasterizer that isn't a buggy piece of crap. The problem was that people are complaining about huge printer driver sizes, and part of the reason is the rasterizer/interpreter needs to be included.
The other point is that, well, on-host rasterization is usually a trait of poor-quality printers. It's not a direct correlation, just a harbinger, and it's not the fault of on-host rasterization, but if you avoid it and get printers that do
palm? (Score:5, Funny)
*facePALM*
It could be a leverage point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It could be a leverage point (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bit harsh, I've never had an inappropriate relationship or been accused of sexual harassment in my life!
or maybe the Yes men... (Score:2)
LSD in the water in the board room.
Now that would be LULZY. Come on OWS!
Re: (Score:2)
Well why do you think they're so confused about ditching their PC division? On one hand it'll appease the printer faction when the war begins, on the other hand there's potential that the PC faction will defeat the printers and so HP puts itself in danger offending them too. HP is stuck right in the middle of this upcoming war the poor bastards.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. It only claims to use Android, so that people don't realize it's really running the sentient WebOS and is secretly plotting to take over the world.
Re: (Score:2)
The realised a few years ago that there was no point competing at the bottom end of the inkjet printer market. Rather than join the race to the bottom they decided to re-position themselves are more of a premium brand. Their current models have colour LCD screens and you can plug a digital camera in directly. Then there is wifi connectivity and photo-enhancement. There is already quite a bit of software in there just to handle that stuff, and going to a full OS with installable apps is the next logical step
Re: (Score:2)
The realised a few years ago that there was no point competing at the bottom end of the inkjet printer market. Rather than join the race to the bottom they decided to re-position themselves are more of a premium brand. Their current models have colour LCD screens and you can plug a digital camera in directly. Then there is wifi connectivity and photo-enhancement. There is already quite a bit of software in there just to handle that stuff, and going to a full OS with installable apps is the next logical step.
Unfortunately for the consumer it makes no sense. For cheap colour printing a laser printer is better and cheaper overall, and for high quality photo prints is to cheaper to just order them online or at a photo shop. Let them worry about all the expensive inks and paper required, or the blocked print heads and paper jams.
True. I make do with a cheap monochrome laser and online printing for the rare occasions when colour is necessary.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, my HP LJ1200 is still humming along. I've replaced the paper tray twice and torn it down to clean off rollers and touch up the initial paper grabber thing with some of that secretary finger sticky stuff they use to flip through papers. And have only used 3 cartridges since I got this in early Oughts.
Re: (Score:2)
I just bought an HP monochrome laser printer which runs over WiFi, a LaserJet 1102w, I needed it to print out Mathcad assignments and it will also be useful for printing out the occasional online tickets.
A very interesting feature (which was not really promoted) is that the drivers for the printer are on it. Initially I had to plug it in via USB (it has no RJ45 port) to configure the WiFi password and the printer presents itself to Windows as a mass storage device with the drivers on. Once the the WiFi netw
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately for the consumer it makes no sense. For cheap colour printing a laser printer is better and cheaper overall, and for high quality photo prints is to cheaper to just order them online or at a photo shop. Let them worry about all the expensive inks and paper required, or the blocked print heads and paper jams.
Wrong. Laser printers don't offer the same profit margin to HP that inkjets and their overpriced ink do. So with plenty of marketing and slightly lower initial costs, they'll convince con
Products in the pipeline? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I imagine they have expanded WebOS for printers to interface to most other OSs, and this is what they don't want to lose, even if there are no WebOS devices that need to print anymore.
Re: (Score:3)
As someone who manages a product with dedicated connectors for the various MFP devices (the big ones, in offices, not the $250 office depot specials), I for one HOPE there is a WebOS based change in the landscape.
All the vendors use shitty resistive touch screens, pissant code models, and have such a wide range of display size/capabilities that developing and testing are a nightmare.
I have long thought that an iOS based UI for a printer would be a humongous step forward. Likewise, a WebOS interface will be
Re: (Score:2)
exactly the point - a single codebase will be much cheaper to maintain in the long term, and also allow additional network-connected features.
There's no reason why the $250 can't have these too, it should provide a value-add feature in usability that might help sell the printers.
Well, they already have this - (Score:4, Informative)
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re: (Score:3)
You ain't seen the half of it until you've been inside that firmware. I don't know what compiler they are using, but it produces total crap for machine code. We're talking entire giant switch statements that effectively do a NOOP.
Re: (Score:2)
I can only guess on that being for cropping photos direct from a memory card for printing. That's the ONLY demand I could think of.
Been crap for years (Score:2)
Hah. (Score:3)
Especially funny considering my Touchpad could not natively (i.e., at all) be configured to print to the network-enabled printer on my home network. I suppose it's possible that a third-party driver would be needed, but one would think that a) they would try and package all possible driver downloads or b) would allow you to search the internet for them or c) allow user to upload driver manually, but none of those is apparently possible.
Ah well, I haven't booted into WebOS in weeks, anyway, and the new Cyanogen Alpha 3 is terrific.
Re:Hah. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you. I was going to say that. Oh and BTW most HPs also have PDF. Some have Postscript and a few have IPDS.
Re:Hah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hah. (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
Read the forums. You need to:
1) enable snmp public read string on the printer. This is how the touchpad figures out it's a compatible printer
2) have a printer that can speak PCL
Re: (Score:2)
2) have a printer that can speak PCL
But which flavour of PCL?
Remember that with PCL 6 (and 5e?), you no longer send PCL commands to a printer that then interprets it much like postscript, but you run a PCL compiler on the PC and send pre-compiled instructions which must be specific to the capabilities of the printer you print on - i.e. for anything except basic printing, you need bidirectional transfer to query the capabilities. Print A4 to certain PCL printers with letter paper, and watch them hang, because the logic isn't in the printer an
No Surprise: WebOS is HP's Best Option (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
There are a huge number of touch interfaces. Blackberry has 2: BBOS and QNX (QNX is excellent for a hardware device). JavaVM, BREW...
WebOS is a good choice I agree with you there. But there is nothing particularly special about it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
or they could just pick an industry mag from 8 years ago and go with any toolkit they want and just code it to look like they want.
and they already make an android printer.. (dunno if it's g licensed with market etc tho, there's no need really).
Re: (Score:3)
history: HP had Chai and a 100% Java PIM platform on a Linux kernel running on one of their Jornada handhelds. When it was time to market it the project was shuttered because if they shipped
Eh.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.... (Score:4, Funny)
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.... (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
That's been the meme for a generation. At the same time average number of impressions printed by computers skyrocketed all through to about 2000 and continues to be very high still. Today a $5000 workgroup printers is capable of doing duty cycles in range of 50k-100k impressions between servicing on average, reliability you used to have to be in the $250k range to get. While the
Re: (Score:2)
The whole printer drivers system really seems like a relic of a bygone era at least for network printers. Why should I have to install a special driver just on every machine (an action that requires admin privileges) just to be able to send print jobs to a printer?
Also while I don't personally like relying on cloud based services I can see that for normal users having a destination in the cloud they can send their print jobs to when away from home is rather useful. Like it or not most peoples networks are b
I guess they don't have these in America: (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.epson.jp/products/colorio/printer/me/ [epson.jp]
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: (Score:2)
Indeed, no we don't have anything like that. The closest thing I've seen have tiny 320x240 screens and some of them are touch capable, which are merely for options.
WebOS would probably be a good fit for something like that but a bit unnecessarily advanced. I guess if they already have the tech though why not use it.
Re: (Score:2)
Well with WebOS they'd have a solid API they could use for generations of printers without a lot of porting and compatibility issues. In fact they are already trying to come out with "Print Apps", I'm sure they'd like to have those on the printer itself: http://h50146.www5.hp.com/products/printers/inkjet/print_apps/ [hp.com] Add to that the ability to update the software and probably a variety of wireless integration features and you have what would basically be an all in one printing solution for people who can't d
Re: (Score:2)
Heck, today even the coffee maker in our lunchroom has a small color touchscreen display - it even has an idle-mode slideshow of coffee beans.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It is! And they sell fairly well actually.
Not a surprise, there are a lot of money... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
In a corporate environment? I'll tell you how to do it.
You run a printer job distribution server, like IBM PSF, FlexServer and Solimar. Mobile jobs are tagged by type and location, with options for user preferences to that system which dispatches globally to local printer servers / inner office mail. It could also connect to 3rd party providers like Kinko's for remote pickup. End users are then sent a job ticket via. email.
I built that sort of thing 15 years ago. The reason it doesn't work well at hom
Re: (Score:2)
advantage for consumer is not an advantage for the companies involved here. they already made several okay protocols for universal printing. just email a pdf and have it printed, that's been done already, as a lot less cumbersome protocols for the same thing.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd put Android on the printers. Java is the most cross-platform execution environment, and the Android OS is built on that principle. It especially matches the Android that runs most mobile phones (and other mobile devices) from which most individual printing will be done over the next years.
Android is rising as WebOS has fallen. Why would you pick a loser instead of the clear winner that's technically better for you? Oh, right: HP.
Re: (Score:2)
You could do what my Epson workforce pro does - it's wireless built-in, so once you've got it connected to the network, you can just put whereever there's a power socket.
There's a print-via-email webservice they have, you email your document to a special email address and the (internet-allowed) printer will fetch the document and print it for you. (no, I don't know if it polls regularly or gets a notification sent to a web service running on the printer).
There's an android app to print your pictures (but no
And thus Skynet was born.... (Score:2)
Someday I'm gonna weasel my way into the boardroom (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
But you're not friends with lots of other CEOs. That, my friend, is the primary - and often only - qualification to be CEO. Otherwise how would they keep all the benefits for themselves, and push the fallout from their bad execution down to everyone else?
Class. Great taste, less filling.
Makes sense for some printers. (Score:2)
HP drivers are terrible (Score:3)
HP makes great hardware on the large format printer segment (24", 36" + rolls). I know of one engineering firm that switched brands specifically because HP drivers were so bad they got tired of jumping through hoops to get what they wanted on paper.
For example tell a KIP to print a 24" x 36" page, and you get one. Exactly. Tell HP to do the same and you will likely get something 1/4" off in both directions. That forced them to pull tricks like printing barely visible lines at the right place in the margin to fool the printer. One of their offices gave up and made huge margins on all of their pages.
It became much easier to just switch brands and not fight the driver, even though they likely had best of class hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
You had a roll printer that could not print to the edge of the page? What model?
deja vu, all over again.. (Score:2)
I think HP is trying to replicate the success that Palm previously enjoyed when it split into Palm One and Palmsource - one company for hardware and one company for the software.
Why Not Android? (Score:3)
Seems to me that a small, performant JVM embedded OS would be perfect for the highly diverse, low powered devices that are HP printers. Even the Java feature of network-mobile objects, that execute the same code in different ways to exploit the different local HW, seems better for printers than for most other kinds of devices. Android is an OS that HP wouldn't have to pay (much) to produce or maintain, so HP could focus on HW instead of the SW dev that it's never been good at. Why would it want anything but Android?
Only to maintain total control of the SW. But what benefit is that to HP, compared to the benefits of using Android instead?
Stealth mesh? (Score:2)
The printers mesh-network with each other, and the ones that have a real internetwork connection do the backhaul.
Think about it - how often have you looked for a wifi connection in the middle of nowhere, and all you could see was some poor lonely HP printer looking for some peer-to-peer action...
Jumped the shark ... (Score:2)
HP seems to have long ago jumped the shark.
They went from making really good stuff that was used in business (laser printers, HP-UX and my old HP-9000 workstations) to absolute crap that isn't even usable at a consumer level.
I think we've thrown out 2 HP printers at home in the last few years because they just didn't last -- well, that and it cost less to replace than to buy new toner for it.
Not sure if they'll turn around or not, but I've viewed HP as making products I'm not willing to gamble on for a whil
WebOS Printer Support (Score:2)
Of course, most HP printers didn't work. Like my LaserJet 1018. Or Color Laserjet 4600.
Come to think of it, never got a single printer working with it. There's a reason HP's profits are down 90%.
Is it so hard to have an ARM version of CUPS that can print to everything?
HP's new slogan (Score:3)
HP: Whatever the correct decision is, we do the opposite.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:THERE BE GOLD IN THEM THAR INK CARTS !! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
what are they adding to the ink that is worth more than gold?
IIRC Inkjet ink costs 8 times the price of gold by weight. (Don't know how that price has changed in the last few years though).
Re: (Score:2)
AFAIK it's still around $4500 per gallon.
Re: (Score:2)
what are they adding to the ink that is worth more than gold?
IIRC Inkjet ink costs 8 times the price of gold by weight.
Profit, lots and lots of pure profit.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean huevos? Yes, you do pronounce the spanish word for eggs much like you could possibly pronounce WebOS. Doesn't make sense to me, though, how huevos also became synonymous with any male parts - Biology 101 says girls make eggs. I can assure you that if I make huevos rancheros that they are made with chicken eggs.
Re: (Score:2)
Men's "balls" look more like eggs than they look like balls. Don't you have any to check?
Re: (Score:2)
What's your point? I don't refer to them as "balls" either.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not possible for HP to innovate, no matter how beleaguered they are, because of the morons they keep picking to run the place. Apple was able to do it because Jobs 1) was an engineer, at least by degree IIRC, though obviously he let Woz and later others do the hard engineering, but at least he had enough background to understand things unlike a moron like Meg Whitman, 2) Jobs actually had half a brain, again unlike the morons at HP, and 3) (this is probably the biggest factor) Jobs wasn't in it to get