A couple of years ago I bought a new, cheap, HP Laser Printer, the M110ew. It’s slow, it’s monochrome, and it’s one hell of a lot cheaper to run than an inkjet. It comes with something called HP Instant Ink, which is basically a subscription service to get deliveries of toner cartridges by post when needed, for a small fee per month. It costs me, for a year, roughly half the price of a round of inkjet cartridges which last for a couple of months.
But it is not perfect. I originally set it up to use my main WiFi network. The Wifidevice manufacturer, Devolo, upgraded their firmware a few months ago, and one of the things they did was improve the network security. Everything connected to the updated network, except the printer. A nice newish printer couldn’t handle the new security, whereas my fifteen year old macbook had no problem.
However, this shouldn’t have been a serious problem because I run a second, less secure, WiFi network, mostly because my wife still likes to use her 2004 iMac, and it can’t handle modern WiFi protocols, and for a couple of lazily programmed IoT toys. (I’ve tried to upgrade her, but she won’t move!)
Although the printer seemed to work on the new network, it had a problem: it couldn’t connect to the HP mothership. I have no idea why. Anyway, after a while, it started to refuse to print on the grounds that my account was in arrears—it wasn’t and isn’t. Clearly the actual problem was that it couldn’t communicate with HP servers.
I investigated, and found a couple of weird things. First of all, my secondary network has a WiFi router sitting next to the printer, and a repeater upstairs. The HP printer, in a fit of nuttiness, would only connect to the repeater, and complained about a poor connection. This would have been a very slow connection and would probably have caused the connection to HP Central to time out; hence the connectivity errors? In fact, this was a red herring (damned these poissons rouges): when I forced the printer to use the router sitting next to it, the problems remained.
Disconnecting the repeater didn’t help; it seems the printer insisted on connecting to it rather than the base router sitting next to it. So, unsurprisingly, I decided to reset the WiFi. Much exercising of my anglo–saxon skills followed. I found the following:
- The iOS HP Smart App’s Help system doesn’t work, it always displays a blank screen.
- The Android version, running under Graphene OS, does show the help stuff.
- The Android app, running under Graphene OS, cannot direct the printer to connect to a ‘new’ wifi network.
- The iOS app can direct the printer to connect to a ‘new’ wifi network.
- The iOS app cannot show printer details. It I tap the printer pane, I am only offered an option to hide the printer.
- The Android app, running under Graphene OS, does show the printer details when I tap the printer pane.
- In order to carry out a factory reset because the printer won’t talk to WiFi, one must first connect to the Wifi to reach the printer’s online factory reset button.
- The printer’s own web server does not work with Firefox running under Ubuntu over the printer’s private WiFi network.
- The printer’s own web server does talk to safari under macos, but even it cannot contact HP servers.
- The HP support line, which is extremely difficult to find (hint, use WhatsApp) won’t support me because I don’t live in the UK.
- The HP support line gave me a local number to call that doesn’t work.
- In fact, the Repeated connectivity was a red herring (dratted poissons rouges get everywhere): when I forced the printer to use the router sitting next to it, the problems remained.
I did finally get into the printer’s web site. It turns out that the printer went out of warranty a few days before I noticed it was having problems. My WiFi upgrade might be innocent. Indeed, I’ve had problems in the past with printers stopping working just after their warranty ran out, so I’m particularly suspicious about this. (That was Epson, something like thirty years ago; they’ve long since got their house back in order.)
Meanwhile, I would advise people who want to use this HP service to either have a very simple, insecure, household WiFi network, or be happy to pay for a support contract for a professional to come along and swear at it.
HP instant ink is a good idea but the implementation still has some way to go. I suggest waiting a year or so for HP to iron out the bugs, or buying a third–party support contract.
Note that if this doesn’t get resolved, I’m going to abandon HP and go to another printer manufacturer. For photo printing, it’ll be Epson, but for day–to–day printing, it’ll be another laser, but the choice of manufacturer is open, although I’ll probably first look at Brother.
UPDATE: I got fed up and cancelled the account, telling HP exactly why I did so. Things promptly started working correctly. I’ll give it a few days, and if the printer continues to behaviour, I’ll revert the cancellation.