wlaidlaw Posted September 10, 2007 Share #1 Posted September 10, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) When my HP B9180 is working I am delighted with it. However, they are proving worryingly fragile. I am just about to have my third replaced in around 6 months. The first one was dead on arrival as it lunched its gearbox on initial start up. The second one worked but you got the little spring loaded feed rollers being spat out with each print and it was very difficult to get them back in. This one has only printed 80 A3+ prints. It has started in the last week banding the last 1 -2 cm of the print as it exits the printer. Apparently this is a known roller fault, not holding the paper against the print heads for the final part of a borderless print. What concerns me is that my guarantee runs out in 6 months and then what do I do. I will be contacting HP and asking if there is an extended guarantee scheme but I am guessing maybe not. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted September 10, 2007 Posted September 10, 2007 Hi wlaidlaw, Take a look here Unreliable HP B9180. I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
marknorton Posted September 10, 2007 Share #2 Posted September 10, 2007 Don't want to generalise, but HP build-quality has declined markedly over the years. They used to be a byword for engineering excellence, now it seems the products are built down to a price and you can't buy a product with a view to a long operational life because if it does go wrong, the products are well-nigh irreparable. There aren't the parts and there isn't the expertise and then you have the issue of actually getting the thing to somewhere where it can be fixed. Canon, Epson, HP, they all make me rather gloomy I'm afraid. At some point, we are going to have to stop dumping product in landfill because they were made in a batch and are no longer maintainable. I use an HP-55 calculator, bought in 1975, every day. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shootist Posted September 10, 2007 Share #3 Posted September 10, 2007 Yes there is a extendend warranty available during the duration of the original warranty period. Not sure what it is for and what it covers in the UK or how much it is but I bought one for $40 in the US and it is for 3 years. I do believe it is now up to 60-70 US $ for the same extended warranty. The one I bought was for ALL Photosmart printer models then HP realised the one for a Pro type printer, like the B9180, should be more money then for the home, less expensive, models. Here is the USA site page. Buy HP extended service plans for printers direct from the HP Home & Home Office Store Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cindy Flood Posted September 10, 2007 Share #4 Posted September 10, 2007 Looks like the extended warranty is $74.99. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwalker649 Posted September 10, 2007 Share #5 Posted September 10, 2007 Wilson I agree, my HP B9180 seems to be very fragile. I sent mine in for repairs last week. I'm going back to printing 13X19 on my Canon ipf5000. It had some bugs in the beginning but has been quite reliable since. It seems they are more interested in selling the ink and giving away the printers, resulting in poor quality IMO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted September 10, 2007 Author Share #6 Posted September 10, 2007 Yes there is a extendend warranty available during the duration of the original warranty period.Not sure what it is for and what it covers in the UK or how much it is but I bought one for $40 in the US and it is for 3 years. I do believe it is now up to 60-70 US $ for the same extended warranty. The one I bought was for ALL Photosmart printer models then HP realised the one for a Pro type printer, like the B9180, should be more money then for the home, less expensive, models. Here is the USA site page. Buy HP extended service plans for printers direct from the HP Home & Home Office Store Ed, This is available in the UK for £58 + VAT but not in France, where my B9180 is resident. It shows the 3 year service plan on the HP France website but when you look at the price - it says "actuellement non disponible" I am going to have to phone them up to see what is going on. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shootist Posted September 10, 2007 Share #7 Posted September 10, 2007 Advertisement (gone after registration) Ed, This is available in the UK for £58 + VAT but not in France, where my B9180 is resident. It shows the 3 year service plan on the HP France website but when you look at the price - it says "actuellement non disponible" I am going to have to phone them up to see what is going on. Wilson Well not sure how extended warranties work in France but here in the US there are some states that do NOT allow companies to sell extended warranties, Like Florida. They consider it a Insurance policy and the company is NOT in the insurance business and doesn't have a license to sell insurance in that state. YES totally ridiculous. Maybe France is similar. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Mondello Posted September 10, 2007 Share #8 Posted September 10, 2007 Thanks to this thread I just ordered the extended warranty for my B9180 -- which I purchased on Sept 14 2006! (so I just made it!) Mine has been reliable but $75 is a very reasonable amount for 2 additional years of manufacturer's warranty IMO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
luigi bertolotti Posted September 11, 2007 Share #9 Posted September 11, 2007 ... Damn... Wilson, it was 2 Sept. when after a thread on printers, I almost took the decision to go for 9180 instead of Epson 1800... I do not have bought yet... shall I change my mind ? I have verified that in Italy the 3 year extension is available... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted September 11, 2007 Author Share #10 Posted September 11, 2007 ... Damn... Wilson, it was 2 Sept. when after a thread on printers, I almost took the decision to go for 9180 instead of Epson 1800... I do not have bought yet... shall I change my mind ? I have verified that in Italy the 3 year extension is available... Luigi, I would still go for the HP because at least HP service is very responsive if with a VERY strong Indian accent. In the UK Epson service for their non professional photo printers, which includes the R series, is unhelpful unresponsive and generally useless. My R800 and R1800 have been at least as unreliable as the HP (mostly roll feed and head blocking problems) but the ease in getting the HP sorted is what makes the difference. I have a new B9180 being delivered on Thursday. There was no need to argue or plead my case - it was offered virtually straight away. Epson - you had to argue for about half an hour before they would meet their obligation of the on site service, I had purchased. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ho_co Posted September 11, 2007 Share #11 Posted September 11, 2007 ... I use an HP-55 calculator, bought in 1975, every day. Mark-- Any idea what happened to RPN? Seemed to me that HP had won the race with the better product and the better logic. They had even announced a contest to come up with a better name than "RPN." And then overnight, they dropped all the RPN devices except the HP 12C. Any idea why? --HC Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
luigi bertolotti Posted September 11, 2007 Share #12 Posted September 11, 2007 Mark--Any idea what happened to RPN? Seemed to me that HP had won the race with the better product and the better logic. They had even announced a contest to come up with a better name than "RPN." And then overnight, they dropped all the RPN devices except the HP 12C. Any idea why? --HC ...speaking about old HP gear is something similar to speak about LTM or M3 and so... the handhelds 25-35-45-55 etc. were unbeatable and with a solidity that makes it laugh seeing today calculators... and is there someone who remembers HP's first "Desktop PCs" like HP 85-86-87 ? And the Engineering Desktops 9830-9835-9845 ? I have one dated 1982... still works if I switch it on... I do not know the exact reason for they abandoned the RPN... but people at HP Italy (I have been in business with them for over 20 years) told me that it couldn't well adapt to the increasing programming functionalities that microcompenents allowed... and risked to became an oddity... sure it is still very appreciable when one is accustomed ...and my handheld is an HP 11C Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
marknorton Posted September 11, 2007 Share #13 Posted September 11, 2007 Ah yes, RPN a back to front version of Jan Lukasiewicz's Polish Notation. It's still used in computer science and I wrote a compiler in the early 90s which converted all infix notation (such as 5 + 4 * 9) to RPN where it's very easy to process and all intermediate results are maintained on a suitably deep stack. There's an interesting algorithm called Dijkstra's Shunting Yard algorithm for converting infix to RPN. I knew those hours spend playing with a model rail-road as a kid would come in useful! The great problem with infix is that you need parentheses or operator precedence rules to avoid ambiguity: 5+4*9 could be 81 if you work from left to right, or 41 if you assume * has precedence over +. Put in RPN, and the ambiguity goes away and you always evaluate left to right: 5,4,9 * + = 41 5,4+ 9 * = 81 As for why it's not popular, we're conditioned to use infix from an early age and outside my contemporaries at Cambridge, I don't know anyone who still uses it day-to-day, though enquiring whether you use Reverse Polish Notation is not a great ice-breaker at dinner parties... After more than 35 years of using RPN, I find I tend to use more parentheses that I need to (for example in Excel) just to be sure. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
luigi bertolotti Posted September 11, 2007 Share #14 Posted September 11, 2007 After more than 35 years of using RPN, I find I tend to use more parentheses that I need to (for example in Excel) just to be sure. __________________ ME TOO, EXACTLY THE SAME !!!, and in Excel above all !!! I (consciously) tend to assume that so as RPN was "logical", the traditional "parenthesis-based" alghoritms are "stupid" , and is better to make things ABSOLUTELY defined. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted September 11, 2007 Author Share #15 Posted September 11, 2007 Excel - parentheses - reminds me of before I retired writing formulae with Vlookup and Hlookup tables and conditionals to do financial modelling for venture capital. You sometimes ended up with 7 or 8 layers of parentheses. It improved when they brought in Auditor and different coloured brackets - Yeuchhh - I'm glad I am retired. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted September 13, 2007 Author Share #16 Posted September 13, 2007 The saga continues. HP have delivered a replacement B9180 today. When I was unpacking it, a loose plastic paper feed roller dropped out of the polythene bag coving the printer. Ho humm back onto HP and yet another new B9810 will be delivered to me next week (number 5!). The only good news is that I win a set of cartridges each time. What with that and my WD hard disc woes of yesterday, I assume I must have annoyed someone up there. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
fursan Posted September 13, 2007 Share #17 Posted September 13, 2007 I was about to get me a B 9180. Would you still recommend I get one? Will HP pay for shipping to/fro? The saga continues. HP have delivered a replacement B9180 today. When I was unpacking it, a loose plastic paper feed roller dropped out of the polythene bag coving the printer. Ho humm back onto HP and yet another new B9810 will be delivered to me next week (number 5!). The only good news is that I win a set of cartridges each time. What with that and my WD hard disc woes of yesterday, I assume I must have annoyed someone up there. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted September 13, 2007 Author Share #18 Posted September 13, 2007 I was about to get me a B 9180. Would you still recommend I get one? Will HP pay for shipping to/fro? HP pays for all the shipping but not for the frustration and down time with no printer. It has all put a dent in my faith but what alternative is there. Epson service is worse and Canon does not seem to be in this game with their equivalent Pixma Pro's costing quite a bit more. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
wlaidlaw Posted September 14, 2007 Author Share #19 Posted September 14, 2007 The saga continues. HP have delivered a replacement B9180 today. When I was unpacking it, a loose plastic paper feed roller dropped out of the polythene bag coving the printer. Ho humm back onto HP and yet another new B9810 will be delivered to me next week (number 5!). The only good news is that I win a set of cartridges each time. What with that and my WD hard disc woes of yesterday, I assume I must have annoyed someone up there. Wilson It REALLY is not my week. My iBook suddenly got a bit hot and clicked off. Now it will not start at all - clicks off halfway through the start up chord, battery in or out. Of course due to my external hard disk failures, I don't have a back up for it either, as I am waiting for new external hard disc array to be delivered, which is not due until Monday - three days too late. Wilson Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.