The HP Problem or why the All-In-One series made me lose my faith on HP

Back in the day, the first printer I ever owned, was one of the very first HP LaserJet printers, some of the first commercially available laser printers, and it was blazing fast back in the day.

It took some time to print even back then since the spooler would jam up constantly or in times would find itself continuously sending information to the printer until that job was done and I had to print another batch of jobs which would take me around half an hour, man those were the times...

Nowadays I don't own a printer for several reasons.

1. Prices: At some point the companies that produce printers and the ink thought it would be funny to raise ink prices at obscene levels, so obscene that I've seen cartridges valued in 200 dollars... this is not fair for the consumer and it makes for an unbalanced market.
2. Quality: Printing quality can be horrible. I used to so super draft because I was only doing black and white and that was fine, I could read the paper, and that was the end of it. But when you're printing color, oh boy, it's a whole different story. I've used a bunch of printers in my day going from HP, Canon, Lexmark, Samsung, Dell (I didn't knew Dell made printers by the way so when I saw one I was baffled), Sharp... and a Ricoh. Quality varied between them, some sheets would have ink running all over the place and some other times I would find sheets FULL of ink, everywhere, geez talk about a waste of money.
3. Technical Issues: This, this is what killed it for me. Let us put prices and quality aside, since back then I could afford it, and let us go into what the user really wants. YOU need IT to be reliable, you don't need it BREAKING every time it is critical for you to get a job done, you don't need it to FAIL a job, you don't need it to tell you the whatchamacallitspoolerthingy is not working, you don't need it to give you RANDOM ERRORS on screen and on the printer display, you don't need this at any point. You also don't need cumbersome 1GB software to run it, Windows itself can do all of it nowadays, but HP, this case we'll be talking about the company that I've had the most experience with, decided to make specialized software together with their drivers to bring you efficiency. This software tends to break down at some point and when you lurk the internet it gives you thousands of possibilities. You can go into the HP website and find hundreds if not thousand of patches for every single little detail like a Windows update that won't let you run things. I understand why this happens but for the love of GOD people let us all be reasonable and get on with it, we just need the damned thing to print and not gouge me an eye every time I try and do it!
4. Multifunctionals: The last bit I want to talk about but I need to, I have to, it is a must. Multi-functionals is the last thing anyone needs at home and I'm dead, freaking, serious about it. You can get a scanner and a printer for way less than a multi-functional and you'll save yourself from a lot of hassle. So far and in all honesty I haven't found a situation where you can't just print or scan from different devices unless you are really short in space and if you are, please, do not buy the cheapest multi-functional device you can find in a store. Also try and avoid installing the full software, there are people out there who have managed to obtain the drivers from the installation packages and have spread them throughout the internet and this, in all honesty, is the way to go as again you don't need all the bloat-ware that comes with your CD. You also don't need to be reminded that your printer is running low on ink after X or Y print outs but hey that's just me, if you like being annoyed by a floating box be my guest.