I've dealt with computers for quite some time in my life. And through my experiences, I've found what I believe to be the best way to run a computer... a way to get 100% from your machine 100% of the time. And at times, it seems like software programmers do there absolute damnedest to screw that up. And this is an example of just that.

Let's say you have a piece of hardware that you've made. Let's say it's a printer. You are more than likely going to have to create device drivers so the hardware will run properly. Let's say that it's also a scanner, so you MAY need to install a single program to make an interface for users to use said scanner. This is all you'd ever need.

Unless you are HP.

(Warning, this image my be too graphic for those who actually care about how their computers run.)


This is a screenshot of Add/Remove Programs after just finishing a fresh install for an HP printer that I recently installed for someone at work. Ten. TEN f*cking programs to go along with something that just prints out a damn sheet of paper! This infuriates me to no end.

Customer Participation Program?! f*ck you. No. Just f*ck you.

There is no excuse to have all this crap on there. And what's worse is that most of this junk wants to run at startup. I honestly can't see this as anything more as an attempt to just ruin your computer. I'm fairly sure that 99% of all users never even touch this software anyways. All that's needed is the drivers and if there's needed software to run the scanner. Anything else is just insanely useless. Why?! TELL ME WHY!

cant you just run it as a plug and play? dl a driver for it and screw installing all the crap software?

ive had this problem with a few programs, even windows is guilty of making piles of crap clog up my run list. cannon camera also forces you to add a hundred programs just to move files from your camera to the computer. the worst is that your computer runs slow just for having that nonsense run in the background. you dont use it, it doesnt do anything for you, its not easily accessible anyway and yet your forced to have it run and slow everything down.

i blame the terrorists, they are responsible for this.

Yeah, you can fix this. You can either go into custom install and do selected components. And even if you don't, you can still go in and uninstall most of that crap. An the stuff you need to leave, you can go in and disable them from running at startup by going Start>Run>msconfig>Startup and disabling that junk. But that's not the point. I'm trying to figure out what makes HP think that ANYONE needs any of this sh*t or why they'd go through the effort to program these things that absolutely no one uses. And the end result is just more damage to your computer just to print something out.

Oh and guys, if you simply MUST have a printer. I suggest Brother. They seem to just install the needed software most the time.

I have a Brother laser printer at home. I love it - super simple, no bloatware. It just works.

Plus, the toner cartridges are really very economical compared to ink-jet cartridges.

Or, let me put it this way:

It's ETIQUETTE. Your spelling is like kryptonite to my grammar nazi ways.

That said, HP really is one of the worst companies for this type of sh*t. My new computer came with a bunch of HP programs on it and I didn't have a printer installed yet!

My grammar is just fine, btw. Though I have no excuse for my abysmal spelling. Also, HP doesn't make just printers. I know they used to make computers in general. I'm not sure if they still do that anymore... but I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. So whatever programs they were, they probably didn't involve printing... but were equally useless.

You should have put "Etiquette" in capitals just to set him off even more. Since he did it himself.

Just saying.

I am sufficiently set off.