I was very intrigued, and not surprised, to see recent posts "Unable to Print Successfully in Duplex Mode Using My HP Photosmart 8450 Printer" and "HP are the worst! They just lost a very happy customer" since they remind me so much of my own recent experience with, and feelings about, HP printers.

I formerly had an old HP Deskjet 932C and it was a great printer for, can you believe it, 7 years! So, when it finally conked out late last year, I bought another HP printer. This PhotoSmart printer works great, but the software has been an absolute nightmare, one problem after another. I have probably been on the phone with HP Tech Support at least 10 times these last 4 months (and HP tech support is a whole 'nother topic and post for this forum probably!).

I sent a letter to President Hurd on the HP website earlier this week and got a call the next day from one of his minions which for a minute or two actually stirred some hope in my breast - alas, all this lackey had to say basically was, "well, sorry, that's just the way the printer works, there's nothing we can do about it." I thought, and said, "well, what is the purpose of this call, if it is only to tell me you can't/won't do anything?!"

I could post here the long list of problems I've encountered and studiously written down, but I'd like to ask about one in particular, to see if anyone has experienced this, and, if so, what if anything you might have found can be done about it.

At the top of the list of the problems we have experienced from the beginning and that we continue to experience because HP tech support evidently cannot fix it is: after one user of the printer prints something (and this in Windows XP), if a subsequent user of the printer wants to print something in duplex, the dialog box that is displayed asking the user to indicate that the printer can “Continue” to print (i.e., the paper has been manually flipped in the printer) appears in the session of the first user, NOT the session of second user now printing the job in duplex!!! Frankly, I find it just absurd, and outrageous, that the printer software cannot display this dialog box in the session of the user actually printing the job, but dumbly prints this box in the session of the first user. It is extremely inconvenient because somehow someone has to get back into the session of the first user to see the dialog box and click the “Continue” button!!

I am at a loss to understand how HP can market a printer with software that has this kind of an absurd problem! And how HP tech support cannot fix it. And how HP is not quick to issue a patch or new release of the software that fixes this problem right now, and not 6 months from now!!

Has anyone else experienced this problem and (is it too much to hope for!) maybe even found a work-around?

Thanks in advance.

Rod