"HP Smart" - Or a Lie in Two Words

by Colin Cogle  (@colincogle@mastodon.social)

Normally, I write articles like this to show off, that is, to share something cool that I've learned, or to take an existing topic and spin it into a tutorial that my readers may find useful.  Today, though, I come with a failure and a warning, and nothing more.

A client of mine - who shall not be named to protect their privacy, because they didn't know what they were getting into - came to me and asked for help setting up a new printer they'd purchased for a satellite office after some sudden hardware failure.  They wanted everyone there to print and scan, and one of their onsite IT guys even unboxed it, plugged it in, and gave me the IP address.  He'd even set up everyone to print!  All that remained was scanning.

I hopped on one of their servers and logged into this HP OfficeJet 8030e Series All-in-One.

After clicking around for a while, I noticed that there were no settings to configure scan-to-email.  Normally, I'd punch in their SMTP server address, put a few popular names in the address book, check the SPF record, and call it a day.

Now, I was confused.

Perhaps I had missed a setting.  Some HP printers have self-managed and IT-managed modes which decide which settings are visible, but that annoyance was nowhere to be found either.  In fact, I didn't see any options for scanning to folders, OneDrive, or SharePoint, either.  That couldn't be right.

After exhausting all my options, I conceded defeat and slogged through HP's website, clicking on printer support (no, reject all cookies), entering the model number (no, I don't want to take a survey about your website), and finally finding the user guide as a PDF (I thought I rejected cookies already!).  I scrolled down.  I scrolled back up.  I scrolled down again.  There was nothing in there.  It just said to use the once-great now-awful HP Smart app.

I went to download it, and it didn't run on Windows Server.  I expected that, though.  I scrolled down, as yet another cookie warning made me yearn for a Gopher mirror of this site, and I clicked on the option for basic print and scan software.  It downloaded, I opened it, and it said it's not compatible with my Windows Server.  The button to get the right software opened a new browser tab, taking me back to the exact same site I was on.  I was so annoyed that I didn't even send an angry anonymous website survey to whomever reads those - assuming that works without me accepting cookies.

My next stop, since I had some time to kill and needed to vent, was to start a chat with support.  They had options to call, chat, or email support, and this is where my anger reached its boiling point.  Of the four options, the three I mentioned required you to sign in with an HP account.  You couldn't even see their phone numbers without an account!

But it was the fourth option that really escalated this from annoyance to lividity, like finding that an open-source project only accepts user feedback and bug reports on a private Discord "server."  The fourth option - the only option that didn't require an HP account - was to message them on Facebook.

I officially gave up trying to get HP to help me.  However, my client was waiting to get their office set up with a working printer, so I called him and asked to borrow his computer.  Turns out, he had already downloaded HP Smart.  (Just kidding - he either already had it, or Windows 10 was "nice" enough to download it for him.)

From my reading of the user manual earlier, perhaps I could configure printer settings in there.  Pop in an SMTP server, test it out, and see if it'll work for anyone who walks up to the printer.  I clicked on the printer, and clicked the Scan button.

I had to sign in with an HP account.

To scan from the printer to the computer, despite them being in the same room - hell, within line of sight of one another - I had to sign in with an HP account.

I put the phone on mute, afraid that I would spout obscenities worthy of the average X poster.  My client stepped away for a quick break, and I was left alone with his computer.  I had an old HP account from before the HP/HPE split.  I would just sign in, configure scanning once, then log out.  Right?

Wrong.

You cannot put an SMTP server into the printer.  You can't paste a SharePoint document library address, link a Dropbox, or even type a UNC path to save your scans to a server.  All scanning must be done through the HP Smart app.  That means every single user will need to download HP Smart, create a free HP account with their work email, manage that password and deal with more account hygiene, and use the HP Smart app each and every single time they want to scan.

At this point, I explained all this to my client, and we had a cathartic chat that guaranteed this printer a one-way trip back to the store.  I closed the ticket, and not in the way that I'd expected.  HP had defeated me, but I would wind up depriving them of their bottom line in what could only be described as a Pyrrhic victory.

I wish I could say that I took this printer home and hacked the firmware, but those days are long gone.  Any device vendor worth their salt implements a secure boot chain and signed firmware images, and we know HP does that (and does that correctly) when they accidentally bricked tons of their own printers recently - not to be confused with the ink cartridges they purposefully brick when you unsubscribe from HP Instant Ink.

I wouldn't waste money on eBay buying a broken printer, I wouldn't spend a single one of my car's electrons driving to get one for free on Craigslist, and I certainly wouldn't waste my time attaching my chip reader and dumping the ROM.  It wouldn't have even been worth cleaning up the mess had we gone to Office Space on this printer.

Back when they came in beige, HP printers were considered the best of the best.  One of my former managers, last we talked, still had his LaserJet II.  He told me once that, around the million-page mark, he paid a professional to repair and refurbish the entire printer, and it was still going strong.  A LaserJet 4000 that I rescued from an e-waste pile got upgraded with a Gigabit NIC with full IPv6/IPsec support and an unnecessary number of trays; this printer made before Carly Fiorina (piss be upon her) became a cautionary tale for business majors is now celebrating its third decade in my friend's basement.

I'd have kept it if I didn't need a scanner, but I'm now a proud second owner of a mid-2010s HP Color LaserJet MFP that's intentionally not on the latest firmware, lest I violate the sanctity of my third-party toner cartridges.

I write this as someone who started his IT career by getting certified by the company now known as HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.  I even wrote one of the earliest web scrapers to fetch warranty information for all of the HP computers, screens, printers, and other accessories that my first MSP owned, sold, and supported.

In college, I proposed using a buffer overflow to put a message on the screens of active HP printers that weren't where our inventory system said they were.  Yet, here I am, here to tell you which HP printers merely stink, and which ones you shouldn't unbox near an open flame.

Their (HP) printers have become such user-hostile "freemium" money grabs that the constant spinning of Bill Hewlett's and David Packard's (peace be upon them) caskets could provide Earth with perpetual energy.

"America's Most Trusted Printer Brand" is gambling away decades of good will.  Losing me as a customer is one thing, but thanks to my word of mouth having a lot of cachet with my clients, I'm going to make sure they lose them, too.

I hope my HP Color LaserJet with the out-of-date firmware outlives me, because I'm in no mood to browse Craigslist and eBay to replace it with something else.  This much is true, though: it won't be an HP printer (unless it's beige), and it certainly won't be anything with an HP model number ending with the letter "e", which implies that HP Smart is the only way to interface with the printer.

Not every article is me teaching you something cool, or me taking a victory lap.  Sometimes it's a warning.  My customer learned from a mistake.  I learned from his mistake.  May anyone in the market for a new printer learn from this mistake, too.