Matt’s Officejet 6110 scans perfectly under Ubuntu, but won’t play nice with Leopard. When Matt called HP for support, he was told that the company has no plans to issue new drivers so he should just buy a new printer. To soften the blow, the tech mentioned HP’s trade-in program, which would give Matt a whopping $16 for his printer.
He writes:
I recently ditched Windows XP at my house, and have moved to the Macintosh platform (and converted my PC machines to Ubuntu)I’ve had zero issues with the conversion, except for my HP “all in one” scanner/pc/fax machine. Although I can get it to work just fine with Ubuntu, I cannot scan from OS X Leopard.
After some googling, I contacted HP support who informed me that there are no plans to update their drivers for Leopard. This is not an old printer, I bought it 4 years ago and I’d think it’s in their best interest to support the segment of the market that’s moving to Mac.
Instead of solving my problem with a new driver, they’re trying to solve it by offering me a “trade in / trade up” program where they want me to buy a new HP printer. The only thing this will serve to do is to kill any brand loyalty I had to HP and cause me to never buy another HP product again.
I find it funny that the open source community can get scanning working just fine on Ubuntu, but a company like HP can’t tweak their drivers to get it to work on a mac. C’mon HP, get it together!!!
Here is HP’s response-cum-sales pitch:
Hello Matt,Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.
With the Officejet 6110 & the Leopard OS, you will be able to print dew to the pre-installed print driver with the OS. For scanning, there is no software and drivers that will support this. There will be no software updates for this product and the Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard). We do have a program called trade in trade up. This is where you can trade the older unit in on a newer model. If you would like more information about this program, please reply to this email. Thank you
If you need further assistance, please reply to this message and we will be happy to assist you further.
You may receive an e-mail survey regarding your e-mail support experience. We would appreciate your feedback.
For information on keeping your HP and Compaq products up and running, please visit our Web site at: http://www.hp.com/go/totalcare
Sincerely,
Scott W.
HP Total Care
Matt might want to tinker with unsupported solutions. Try using drivers that aren’t necessarily intended for the old Officejet.
Can anyone think of a way to translate the scanner’s outdated language for Leopard? Suggestions in the comments.
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I find this very sad, knowing that HP has put out 10.5 drivers for 10 year old printers and not for this 4 year old model.
People still print? I kid, I kid. Try MacRumorsto see if there is a solution for your problem.
Unfortunately consumer level equipment isn’t really designed to last all that long anymore (and small business equipment is the same, as far as I’m concerned), so not releasing new drivers for a 4 year old device doesn’t make HP that bad of a company.
If you want a printer that will be supported for years, buy enterprise level. My LaserJet 5 was several years old when I bought it, and it’s still supported over 7 years later because it’s designed for businesses. –A few mac users who are upset isn’t as big of a deal as several companies that spend millions on HP equipment every year.
why are people bringing up reliability in printers? This is a driver support issue and I can’t fault hp in this case. Maybe the 6110 didn’t sell well so its not worth it to them to add support for osx. I’ve got a 4 year old microsoft wireless adaptor that has no new drivers for vista. Then again, its an 802.11b device so I got a new adaptor and moved on.
digitalgimpus, not everyone can afford the enterprise cost for something. I subscribe to the BICTIA model — Buy It Cheap, Throw It Away. But even here you can be discerning. The 6110 was a bad choice for the simple fact it was a inkjet platform. Per page costs is too high. I picked up a used 2yo Lexmark mono laser MFP from a dealer. Still have it works great. Got it for what this gent paid new.
But you are right, you do get what you pay for.
@Tallanvor: Oh to imagine a world where “OfficeJet” implied “commercial-grade.”
“it’s not an old printer. I JUST bought it four years ago.”
…Are you KIDDING ME???
This is kind of an OSX problem too. Awhile ago I got a used scanner from a friend and spent the better part of three hours trying to make it work in OSX. I finally gave up and started a virtual copy of XP (this was before bootcamp), it detected and installed the scanner with no problems at all. I’ve had similar experiences with several pieces of hardware.
HP has terrible support in general, and their drivers (both PC and Mac) are utter crap. If they built their hardware with a little better common architecture it would be trivial to release updated drivers. No sympathy for them here. None for the submitter either, as he should know that getting OSX drivers out of HP is like pulling teeth.
I don’t understand why this is on the comsumerist at all. Do you know how much it costs to have a development team work a driver for a new OS? It just doesn’t make business sense, I run a dev team and I would have told this guy no too.
Well, strike HP from MY list of future purchases.
If they made a generic driver that limped along w/ 90% of the features, that’d go a long ways to making folks shrug and say, “Well, it IS a 4-yo printer…”
Instead, any smart customer will say, “HP leaves its customers stranded every time MS or Apple updates their drivers?! See ya!”
2-for-1 by alienating the Green crowd, who’d just as soon not clutter the Earth with the toxic carcasses of their tech goods every two years.
Brilliant marketing, folks. Almost as good as the (No Longer) Plays4Sure fiasco.
Damn.
Change “HP leaves its customers stranded every time MS or Apple updates their drivers?! See ya!” to “HP leaves its customers stranded every time MS or Apple updates their OS?! See ya!”
@SpaceCat85: You had an old HP that did not work correctly with your updated OS. So you bought a new Canon and it works great!
Well duh! A new printer will have new drivers and work well. Had you bought a new HP printer, it would have worked just as well.
DOH!
And I thought it was only Vista users complaining about driver issues. Guess its not Microsoft’s or Apple’s fault your AIO doesnt work.
@randombob: Man, you Mac nutcases make me sick. It’s a consumer product, not a religion. And, frankly, the Mac user viewpoint of malware risks on Windows is overstated — to say the least.
Plus, if “Winblows” sucks so much, why are Apple users running out in droves to upgrade so that they can run Windows on their Mac?!
Neither Windows or the Mac OS is perfect. I use Windows as I enjoy computer gaming, but if I was looking for other applications (like video editing) I’d buy a Mac. Frankly, the only reason why Windows has more malware is that they have a great deal more marketshare. If that changes, then rest assured, the adware and viruses will target Macs. The vast majority of Mac users don’t even use antivirus software – there’s a security hole for you.
After my last HP driver support issue sometime around 2001 or so, I haven’t bought HP since.
If you can get it working in linux, you should be able to get it working in OSX via gimp print.
I have an old (1994) HP laserjet 6L printer that runs great on OSX through a wireless print server.
What’s so great about that? Ink cartridges last over a year, they are refillable/recyclable AND they are cheap ($12).
I shall hang onto this printer like grim death.
@fluiddruid: Running Windows on a Mac is not a “want to” proposition. Nobody is denying Windows its market share, and most computer users don’t have an operating system preference — they merely get for their home what they have at work. Which is Windows in most cases.
But the more important point is this: Apple users are not running to upgrade as you describe. Those throngs at the Apple store are Windows users looking for a way to get Leopard without having to give up the Windows software they already own.
Apple=Risky?
@fluiddruid: hey, troll – your post has to do with HP drivers how?!
And WinBlows?! Does anyone use such a LAME term? Really, seriously, that’s something a third-grader would get laughed at for using. Step it up a bit next time, hmmmokaaay?
Oh, and if the Win malware risk is so “overblown”, I dare you to strip off your virus protection and all the other 3rd-party crap (since MS takes its customer’s data security VERY seriously!) that’s required to stop your computer from spontaneously combusting, for two weeks. Because, y’know, your OS is so advanced.
I’m going to second (or third) the motion to get Canon next time. I’ve an old multifunction (at least 3 years old) that has updated drivers for Vista and Mac 10.5
It also “just works” with Ubuntu as well. (Was I ever surprised). I’ve always bought Canon printers (and cameras).
It’s nice to have that choice validated by others though.
@RISwampyankee: Well, it used to be “RISC-y”
Sorry, geek humor. Couldn’t resist.
It’ll cost some nontrivial amount of money to fix the drivers. If HP doesn’t make the printer anymore, fixing the drivers cannot possibly improve sales, so they have little incentive to do it.
You should have checked compatibility before upgrading.
@Trai_Dep: Neither of my Windows machines have gotten a virus in the past 4 years. Of course I only know this because I *do* run an antivirus.
I love how Apple is at fault here for HP not updating their drivers. I understand why they didn’t do it because it’s an old” printer and they know they canmake you buy another by just making it obsolete. And you’ll blindly obey and blame apple for updating their OS. But, you’re right, apple’s the bad guy here. Damnit apple why don’ you know how to run HP better?
Most OJ 6110s I have encountered were broken so I can say that it wasn’t a terribly reliable device. I have seen other much older HP inkjet models that are still operating. I would be surprised to see many of these still in operation.
Driver support for older printers is a fairly similar situation on Vista as with Leopard. Creating print drivers with basic support came weeks and even months before scanning support for some older all-in-ones. There are some AIOs where HP has no plans on ever implementing a complete set of drivers for Vista so it isn’t like HP is biased against the Mac OS.
Even now I meet a lot of people with old scanners that have no Vista support, so a lack of Leopard scanning support is hardly surprising. In that respect this is almost not even a news story to me.
“This is not an old printer, I bought it 4 years ago and I’d think it’s in their best interest to support the segment of the market that’s moving to Mac.”
For an inkjet that is fairly old. I hate to chime in with others, but most old OJ 6110s are broken or otherwise out of service. Only HP obviously knows exactly how many OJ 6110s were sold, but between that and the number of people who have contacted them for out of warranty repair I think HP can safely say that less than than 10% are still in use anymore. Even if I were kind and said that ~10% of those users were using it with a Mac that still is less 1% of all the units sold. Creating Vista drivers might make business sense, but creating updated Mac drivers makes little sense.
“Instead of solving my problem with a new driver, they’re trying to solve it by offering me a “trade in / trade up” program where they want me to buy a new HP printer. The only thing this will serve to do is to kill any brand loyalty I had to HP and cause me to never buy another HP product again.”
I am sure that if you were willing to pay an HP engineers time for it they would be more than willing to do it, but other from you how many people would they really be writing this driver for? As I noted earlier the percentage of the total sales for this model that are still working where someone wants to use it with 10.5 is pretty low.
While Matt may be offended at HPs offer to buy his printer from him for $16 the reality is that their credit towards the value of a five year old printer is actually not nearly as much of a low ball figure as Matt implies it to be. The same model is selling for less than that on ebay right now. With a little luck could you find a sucker to sell this old AIO for $50? Sure, but most people wouldn’t. I don’t know what Matt would find as an acceptable trade in value, but I would venture to guess that $16 is closer to the real market value for that printer than whatever Matt would accept as a better counteroffer. People seem to forget that it doesn’t matter how much you spent on the unit originally, but how much is it worth now.
I can buy a new multifunction for under $100 that prints faster and has a higher maximum resolution. Comparing this thing to a modern AIO like so I am guessing people are trying to do wouldn’t be right since the newer models print faster and have higher resolutions.
I can say in HP’s defense that they have good driver support for most of their Laserjets. I recently encountered a functioning Laserjet 5si and there are still drivers for both Vista AND Leopard for it. I’ve never seen any inkjets that got any use that lasted that long! I have met people who gone through a new injet AIO almost ever year for 4-5 years. Different vendors didn’t make much difference.
In the vast majority of cases it isn’t cost effective to fix most printers below whose market value in below about $200 so why would it make more sense to spend several thousand dollars worth of an HP engineers time?
My suggestion is the same as most other posters here: try some of the unofficial solutions.
I would stick with HP, but I would look more towards their Laserjet line. Some people like to feel spiteful, but in some cases switching vendors doesn’t improve anything. The reality is by most measures HP is one of the better printer manufacturers. They have above average reliability for their printers, it is easier to find official and refurb cartridges, and despite this model as an exception they tend to release drivers for new platforms long after most of the products have died or went into non-use. I remember meeting people who had a six year old Epson inkjet who had trouble finding any retailer that still sold the cartridge for their printer anymore. I can still easily find cartridges for both HP inkjets and laserjets that haven’t been made in more than a decade.
I’m disagree with the “4 years is like the stone age” crowd here.
This is lame and wasteful that the otherwise functioning scanner is “too old” to support. HP has the technology to make devices that have features like standard, backwards-compatible drivers. There is only an anti-consumer, finically profitable reason not to. (Hence the tag “planned obsolescence”.)
Sometimes they do and it’s like russian-roulette: Will your all-in-one work in 5 years? Nobody knows!
@Trai_Dep: Oh I did that once. I plugged a Windows 2000 machine into the internet once, intending to then patch it and install anti-virus software. Hilariousness ensued when I caught a virus-installing-worm before Windows Update had a chance.
Gave the machine its last rites a few hours later.
You know, I’ve always owned HP printers but when I recently went printer shopping for a SOHO color lazer, this kind of thing (not to mention the ink ripoff) is why I decided NOT to get an HP.
I’ve been very happy with my WIFI enabled Brother 4070 CDW.
If HP doesn’t want to have their dev team write and debug drivers, they should consider open sourcing them and letting the community of stranded users make it work.
Image Capture, SANE and Vuescan do not enable the 6110′s scanning functions to work with Leopard unfortunately. Maybe some of the older drivers will.
Thanks to all who have posted suggestions here. @eskimo81′s seem promising.
According to HP, the scanner will work if you install the drivers in 10.4 and upgrade, but not if you install the drivers in 10.5 because the installer is broken. It’s apparently not a driver issue and affects all HP scanners.
But there may be hope:
Scott W. could have just been full of shit. It’s not like a CSR has never lied to a customer before.
Whoops, I was checking that “all HP scanners” assertion and found that to be untrue. Please strike that.
@zekesmz: Ha ha ha, open source them? That’ll kill their planned obsolescence strategy. And it sounds like communism.
My suggestion? Don’t go with HP. At their heart, they’re a PC company alone. Go with Canon or Epson – they tend to work a lot nicer with the Mac platform, since a decent percentage of professionals who work with images and need things like this work on Macs.
@randombob: Wait, who the hell still uses Kazaa? EVERYONE who’s anyone moved on to BitTorrent. Does the Apple High Horse run roughshod over the latest in piracy news?
@fluiddruid:
Overstated? How many and counting for each platform? Overstated? sure there, sure it’s overstated….
And uh, there’s no way I’m rushing it upgrade so I can run windows. No desire to sit and watch BSOD’s any more.
I gave you gaming. No contest, gaming’s much better on Windows, started there, developed there, the drivers and tech are matured & optimized, it makes total sense. But there’s so much more to the usefulness of a computer than playing games… And I use my computer for such uses, and prefer it to keep working, without needing to resort to ctrl-alt-del. I turn my machine off only to clean it, not because windows has encountered an expected error press any key to continue (hint: only the power button though ‘K thanks).
Hey to each his own; I don’t game and like solid, reliable computing experiences that work intuitively, so I use a Mac. If that’s not you, then fine. but to marginalize a platform because you don’t understand enough about it is sort of silly.
You’re right, it’s not a religion. So why do windows users go out of there way to marginalize other platforms? Inferiority complexes perhaps? I love how if someone says “macs suxors!” it’s OK and no one is supposed to say anything, but if someone says “I disagree!” to that, then they’re mac “fanatics.” OK whatever, it’s not a religion, let’s agree on that, and stop “bashing macs” because they don’t BSOD often enough or because HP has driver support issues. THAT AFFECT BOTH PLATFORMS. Having made the original “Real computers” comment completely baseless.
If my 16 year old Epson laser printer can work in Vista 64 bit (Epson ActionLaser 1500), HP can update their drivers to work in Leopard. I still have no intention of replacing this printer anytime soon, even if it does make the lights in the entire building dim when I turn it on.
@SuperJdynamite: in the TECH world 4 years is OLD!!!! same as in the car world 30 years is OLD!!! sheese. if you don’t already get my analogy, how did you even make to this website?
anyone who faults hp for this, has a backwards way of reasoning. i still am confused how this is hp’s fualt.
the printer is 5 years old (which IS old)
it never advertised to work on the op’s new system
the op didn’t have to change to mac it was pure choice
the printer at least printed, just not scanned.
what company in their right mind would build a piece of technology that would last forever? you should know that they can make a car that would never break down, but why would they? just so they can sell everyone 1 unit then go out of business? believe me, i’m trying real hard to wrap my head around the concept that this is somehow hp’s fualt. just not seeing it.
HELP! my hd-dvd player is now a paper weight, who should i blame? it sure as hell isn’t my fualt, i mean, i should be able to stick blu rays in my vcr, otherwise it’s just “planned obsolescence”, and wasteful. how dare i be forced into new technology every few years! i’m still b*tching to sony about why my cd’s won’t play in my 8-track. i know they have the ability to make it happen. bastards!
ok i think i’ve made my point, c-yall monday!
Lol 4 year old printer and you call it new??@@!!!
The simple answer is to downgrade your mac to a usable OS. This is really apples fault. They change the way that their drivers work at every .1 release. I stopped getting new macs and os versios because of this crap.
I do not expect every vendor to rewrite drivers for all my mac devices every 18 months. Vista is a major change for wndows but Ms has a driver change maybe 4 times in 10 years.
I dunno, if I’m buying a new computer with a new operating system, I’d want to make sure everything I use with it (printers, scanners, etc.) work with it. I know Vista had a webpage/program you could check the compatibility of products with, dunno about Apple. Of course you could always call the manufacture to make sure as well.
Dunno why people believe they can use the same peripherals forever all the while updating their PC and/or OS.
Where’s the person out there running OS/2 on their PS/2 trying to print to a Xerox WorkCentre C2424?
Hunh, I drive a LJ 1100 that has standard drivers across the board. This is their officejet department getting greedy. About damm near bulletproof after 5 years operation.
OS X uses the open-source print system CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) because OS X, after all, is a UNIX variant. Can you find CUPS drivers for it? If so they should be adaptable for OS X.
@snoop-blog: Wow, quite the fan of hyperbole
aren’t we? He just wants to use his scanner with his computer and HP
acknowledges that it doesn’t work and doesn’t plan to fix it. While I
can see why they have chosen to not make new drivers, how is that not
their fault. They can make the keys but they don’t want to because of
cost. Sure they have the right to it since it wasn’t advertised to work
with 10.5, but it sounds like bad business to me and not something I
would do in their shoes. It seems integrity is completely lost on
businesses nowadays as a tactic, because people have such short
memories. The problem is that people have been trained to only use
their technology for so long then throw it out because the company
decides that it shouldn’t work anymore, not because there’s something
actually wrong with the product. I’m terribly sorry if I find something
wrong with that and not worth defending.
At one time the Hewlett-Packard brand meant something. It came from a proud heritage of superior engineering and talent.
However, since the split in 2000, HP has moved full-speed to the trailing edge of technology. They no longer design their own products. They no longer manufacture their own products. They have never owned their channels. They have long shunned getting their hand dirty by actually having an effective feedback loop between end users and product design. They are no longer a technology company.
As a senior manager told me in 1999: “We’ll let Intel do our hardware R&D; Microsoft will do our software R&D; we’ll own the supply chain!” “Do you mean like Dell?” “Yup, only better!” “How exactly is that a sustainable competitive advantage?” -silence- “Ah. OK. Good luck with that.”
@sirwired: I have a Laserjet 4MP. It still works great and I can get toner for it for $40 a cartridge, although I print so little that it’s on only the second cartridge it’s ever had. It’s never failed me. No color, but if I want to print in color I can do that at work, but again, I almost never print anything.
It was a gift from my parents while I was in high school and it’s such a near-universal printer that practically all I have to do is handwave at the computer it gets attached to and drivers fall into place with barely no work from me.
@snoop-blog: Someone somewhere will have support for it or a howto.
You can get parts for VW air-cooled Beetles. When did the Beetle make its first appearance?
Late 1930s! Long before it became popular in the US in the 1960s.
Perfectly reasonable to expect to get support, somewhere, for a 10-year-old gizmo.
@snoop-blog: Office scanner technology has not changed much in 5 years. A reason that computers, media players, and cars are justifiable in this cycle is that the experience changes. I’m not subscribing to a 5-year scanner upgrade cycle. I refuse. I’m pretty sure that HP is lowering costs, adding shinier plastic, and changing the green LEDs to blue ones.
But it is relevant how many people are in this guy’s boat. If it’s him and some other guy, then he’s SOL. If there are a lot of Mac users with OfficeJet All-in-Ones, they’ll fix it.
@Techguy1138: This is a philosophical difference between Apple and Microsoft:
Apple says “If we know there’s a better way, we’ll implement it. We’ll rewrite the whole OS if we have to.”
Microsoft says “We know there’s a better way, but we’ve been doing it like this for decades. We’ll dedicate 200 engineers to the DOS compatibility layer if we have to.”
So yes, “downgrade” is correct.
HP has long had a simmering dislike (and at best ambivalence) toward the Mac platform. Even when they have officially supported the Mac, it was always been only on certain high margin products and with a premium cost that rarely justifies the purchase price. This biased “trend” goes back to the late 80s and has never really changed. No one should ever trust HP to provide Mac support on their printers in large part because they are a Wintel vendor and have a seriously incestuous relation with Redmond.
My advice (sadly) is to buy a Brother all-in-one if you want that type of device and have Mac support. Reasons being: 1) every Brother product I’ve bought or seen in the last decade has explicitly claimed Mac support, 2) Mac support has come at no added premium or cost unlike HP products, 3) the Brother products are far, far cheaper than comparable HP products, 4) HP doesn’t design or make any of their laser products, and of their inkjet products the only HP-design/manufactured component is the inkjet head in the print cartridge which they charge plenty for, and 5) Brother doesn’t make PCs which compete with the Mac platform.
When you buy HP laser cartridges for an HP Laserjet you are buying it from Canon or equivalent Japanese laser engine vendor, and getting the “privilege” of paying both a bloated HP “uplift” and an unjustified “brand tax” on top of that OEM price. The margins on these products are well into double digits. For inkjet ink and paper the margins are into triple digits in many cases.
Let me get this straight. Matt switches to Leopard. Leopard, the new version of Apple’s OS. It doees not support this driver. So, it is HP’s fault that Apple broke the driver and they should have to pay engineers to spin up a new update for something Apple did? Because Apple can do no wrong. Got it.
Let’s try this in another scenario:
Matt switches from XP to Vista, the new version of Microsoft’s OS. Vista, does not support this driver. So, we get another “DAMN MICROSOFT AND THEIR CRAPPY VISTA! VISTA IS A GIANT PIECE OF CRAP AND IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH OLD HARDWARE! WHY DOESN’T IT SUPPORT OLD HARDWARE!?” And, it is Microsoft’s fault, not HP’s, that the driver does not work.
Right, just thought I would make sure I have it down. BTW, this post does an awesome job of showing how bias gawker blogs are when it comes to Windows and OS X.
@ChewySquirrel: Good one! Ha ha ha ha ha!