HP used to make good printers. I have just wasted 5.5 hours over 2 days trying to set up an HP Deskjet 2755e for someone with a Windows 10 home edition PC.

This brand new printer came with a little pamphlet that said to go to https://123.hp.com to set it up. All we wanted was to connect the printer to said PC. So, from the computer, the above web site strongly encouraged the use of a phone but allowed the option to continue from the computer. Selecting that, it failed with a very generic error and instructions to try again later.

OK, let's do it the HP way, via a cell phone, which was not what we wanted but were forced to do. This procedure is overly complicated and the main purpose seems to be to collect data (I had to opt out of just about everything they wanted me to agree to), sell me cloud services, trap me into automatic ink refills (this printer is notoriously bad in pages per ink cartridge) and otherwise make the printer unusable unless I'm connected to HP at every turn. Whatever happened to turn the printer on, plug the cable or enter the WiFi password and it works? After many false starts, having to put the printer in setup mode again and again, it was apparently set up to print from the phone.

But the computer? nope. After trying the same thing from the computer again, the printer could not be found via "add a printer". Again, many many tries. When the computer was finally recognized, Windows said "driver not found". So, had to go looking for a driver on HP's support web site. Of course the first thing that web site was pushing was HP+, their cloud/web printing service. Finally found the driver itself bundled into a file called HP easy or some such (writing this from memory). The procedure kept failing. It must have had some timeout of the setup function/state as I kept getting "printer cannot be configured". All this is over WiFi, as that is the preferred method.

Tried just plugging it in via a USB cable. Apparently this printer has nothing at all in it software-wise that is not installed by the driver and/or firmware installation procedure. The USB system didn't even notice that a new device had just been plugged in. Another dead-end. The setup EXE with the driver in it had an option for a USB-connected printer but it always failed.

Eventually, after many retries via the WiFi method the printer was configured properly and it completed the remaining 2 steps. This took many many minutes and the software kept prompting after that to set up accounts for HP+ and all the other services HP wants to sell me. After declining all of it, the setup ended with an error I couldn't get out of so I just closed the window. Luckily the driver had been installed.

Conclusion:

HP is more interested in annoying the users of its products by trying to sell them everything possible than just making products that just work. Other devices should not be necessary to make a printer talk to a computer. In Linux, plugging the computer to the USB port is all that's needed. I'm regularly using another model HP printer/scanner/fax with Linux and I had to do absolutely nothing beyond plugging in the USB cable.

This printer obviously comes with absolutely no software that is not installed on-the-fly by the driver installation. This is no doubt so that they can keep updating it to keep tightening the noose around the user's neck. The fine print says that, by design, the printer will not work with non-hp ink cartridges and that HP reserves the right to upgrade the software so that even existing HP cartridges stop working when/if they decide they should.

If this is what I'd be facing if I bought an HP printer these days, I'm never buying another HP printer.