My old HP Deskjet 970cse gave up the ghost about six months ago in a very annoying way. The print head worked fine, but the roller lost its grip on the paper, so every printed page skewed sideways as it printed.

I don't need color printing that much, but the Deskjet printed great photos and the occasional color PDF, albeit very slowly. I'd been researching a replacement for quite a while, asked around ... and then impulse bought an HP Color Laserjet CP1515n at Costco. ;-)

For less than $300, I'm thrilled with the print quality, and it eats toner a lot slower than the deskjet ate ink. Network interface included as well, so it just plugged in and worked. Loving the hardware.

The software, on the other hand...

I installed the print driver. At least, I thought it was a print driver. But oh, no - apparently I was to be treated to the HP experience. I now have not one, but TWO HP crapplets in my notification tray. One, the HPToolboxFX, is semi-useful, as it lets me look at all the printer settings, toner levels in the various cartridges and how many more pages I'll get out of them, that sort of thing. But does it really have to be in the system tray?

The other one, the "HP Digital Imaging Monitor", is apparently useless. If you double click on it, it brings up the "HP Solution Center", yet another crapplet whose primary function is to - open the HPToolboxFX! ARGH!

And, to top it off, for the last week every time I log in there's a background HP Updater process that demands admin privileges. If I give it, it tells me there's "two high priority updates". Try to download, it downloads two files and then - promptly fails to install them. And there's not even a configuration button to tell it just go the heck away!

I'm about to go looking for the business drivers, which HP usually has, which is the stripped down driver only install for companies that don't put up with this crap. But why would they go out of their way to force their crap into my face at every opportunity? This is not selling me on future HP products, people!