Did I mention HP sucks?

OK. So I am in the position of managing a Dental Lab's IT dept. that was set up by the person who ran the place before me.
Anyway, the marketing dept. depends on an HP CLJ 3600 for creating all their monthly/weekly fliers and other mailers.
2 weeks ago, the printer went in to an endless calibration cycle. It kept up until, as per a forum post and the tech support agent on the phone with me, I pulled all the ink cartridges and the main board, booted up and waited for the error message and then replaced the components one by one. That got it printing again, but the colors were way off. Phone support was not able to help. Hours were spent with them updating firmware, replacing all the ink and doing cold resets one after another.
Finally, they scheduled a field tech to come out the next day. I was called on Thursday to be alerted the tech was not able to make it until Friday because some parts had not come in yet.
I expected the tech on Friday, and was not overjoyed when he never showed up. On Monday morning I got a call that the part was finally in and he would be there on Monday. nearly three hours of the field tech's efforts provided no improvement.
Tuesday saw more time on the phone, another 2 hours, discussing the issue with polite yet useless support folks with heavy accents.
I finally got message that 2 techs would be coming on Wednesday.
Sure enough, 2 techs worked for more than 2 hours and there was no improvement. The printer was still not printing colors correctly.
The following day, I was informed that 3 techs would be out on Monday to look at it. I argued for a replacement and was told it was not policy. We had even purchased the upgraded extended warranty from HP and they still refused to help up get back up and running in a timely fashion. I was transferred through 3 departments before I was finally told that they would process a replacement only if the techs on Monday could not fix the issue. Unfortunately, it would take 3-5 business days to get the printer. WTF? So, on Monday it turned out to be 4 techs and took almost 3 hours to finally fix it.
Now, not only was our marketing dept. down for more than a week, which cost us a lot, HP also wasted their own money. The printer in question only retails for about $500. Their cost to replace it would have been about $200. Instead, they sent a total of 4 techs out on 3 separate calls to replace almost every part in the printer while causing a customer to be down and unproductive for more than a week.
I warn all of you to stay away from HP and definitely stay away from their warranty service unless you get the 24hr replacement plan. Even then, it's more expensive than just buying a new printer.
Also, with the small laserjets, they don't work well with terminal services. Specifically, they don't redirect through remote desktop (RDP) connecting to WTS.
I switched out a couple HPs for Brother printers and the Brothers work fine.
After this very frustrating experience with HP, I can not recommend them in a business environment. It really hurt us to be down that long. I will be replacing our HPs this year. Sorry HP... You suck!

funny email forwarded by Witty

This is probably a made up letter, but it's funny.. So I wanted to share it.:

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid term.

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.

One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities :

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it?

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct . . . leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'

THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

UFC 94.. St. Pierre Vs. Penn.

This will be a very quick note. I just wanted to bring up that St. Pierre is now sponsored by The Men's Warehouse.
So, next time you want clothing to make you look like a champ, think Men's Warehouse.