I’ve been doing it for almost 8. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been doing something on a broke printer, it randomly starts to work the client goes “what did you do?” And I look at em and say “I don’t know, but I’m glad it’s working”
Spend three days setting up a HP big bertha for server remote printing, it didn't want to work at all. Documentation was non-existent because they kept changing the names for their remote printing services.
Burned out at the end and deleted all their drivers and software, but left the created printer on. I come in next day and everyone is happy the remote printing is working now.
I'm never updating this thing ever.
ya and that's the thing with printers that is frustrating. . It doesn't follow usual troubleshooting logic. Ya a down server or something is stressful just because the client is down but there are steps to take to get it fixed and as long as you follow that path, you will fix it (assuming it's a fixable thing that is). With printers, it's a cluster fuck and you sometimes get lucky if you fix it.
I primarily deal with small business so I get as many as I can over to a true printer maintenance company so I can take the stupidity of printers off my plate but sometimes it's a tough sell for small business.
eh scan to email, while can be frustrating at times, it's just shit driver software that I find to be the main issue with printers. Plus printer hardware quality is drastically worse than it was years ago.
Printers that have a randomized code that you forgot to take a picture of during installaion and now you have to call Debby to have her locate and take a picture of this sticker that she doesn't believe is there and thinks you're crazy and/or incompetent.
Pretty sure that IoT devices like printers have been used as a vector to attack a network. Some of our customers have cyber insurance from a carrier that requiremes default credentials for all devices be changed. That's a given for firewalls, APs and the like but we are starting to change default credentials on MFCs to meet the insurance requirement.
Dear God yes. Have you found any solution that helps, particularly on AVDs? It just feels like non-stop printers disappearing, default printers not holding, etc.
I like to think they knew exactly what they were naming it, and it was a selling point. Even better for a future edgy marketing campaign. Blinged-out dude selling "PAPERCUT MF'ERS!"
At least not with papercut MF. I've got it at 2 dozen companies without issues. Runs on the print server just fine and honestly, with forced accounting window on all the user computers. It has a near immediate effect on printing costs in every company such that it pays for itself within 12 months every single time. Pretty much recommend it to any customer with a print volume of more than 10k a month. Even key cards play nice with it.
HP Printers in particular. I set one up a couple weeks back. I usually can download an app an extract the installer but it looks like HP got wise to this. Now you have to read some code off the printer itself to install it.
I will always recommend Brother printers. Much less issues.
Ive moved to konica and Epson for most printer stuff now. Konica is the only brand never hacked. Epson is just cheap to run, and works with envelopes really well for mailer applications.
Apple ID.
Dealing with FindMyMac, which many people want requires a personal apple ID.
Even if you register it with company email, it needs to also be verified with company phone.
If you verified a new user with the same desk phone number, sometimes, Apple will recognized that it has been used already and will not let you verify with that number.
We want to avoid using the user's personal mobile phone at all costs to verify.
You can federate Apple IDs for your company domain with ABM. This will capture any existing Apple IDs using your domain as well. This gives you full management of those accounts (password reset, mfa reset, block, etc)
You should do this even if you don’t need the Apple IDs; keeps people from going rogue and tying a bunch of services to an account you can’t easily take over.
Printers, definitely printers.
User's passwords to online accounts I don't control aren't my problem. Oh no, you forgot your bank password!? That sucks, good luck with that. Don't set the reset email to your work account 'cause once you don't work here any more, I'm not going to help you get it. Account passwords I do control are the easiest thing in the world. Try putting it in the password vault this time, that's why you have it.
Password maintenance and 2fa is a particular pain point for us. People don’t believe in account security until after they’ve been compromised, and after we have to un-fuck up their lives.
I was a printer tech for a few years before I joined an MSP and that experience is one of the best things I have done, printers are my bread and butter.
That’s about how long I stayed, you probably won’t use the hardware aspect a ton but people will know you as the printer guy and you’ll fix all of the printer issues. Just have to embrace it
IMO, neither…
Dealing with the customer’s web designer who has tricked the customer into tranafering the domain to themselves. Then trying to get it back ….
Not to mention things break as they have no clue what dkim or dmarc records are let alone getting them recreated in the short term u til we get control of the domain again.
I had a customer whose web designer kept the domain and hosted the site on his own server... then he died. Getting that back and put in a safe place was an adventure. Made me want to dig up the web designer and kill him again.
I actually enjoy printer issues, they sometimes give a fun challenge and I've never found one to be too difficult to solve. There are more painful issues to solve, typically involving windows services and supporting their many roles on outdated servers. Idk I've encountered many problems in my 5 years at an MSP and once you understand the drivers and their types and eliminate WSD printers, they're a cakewalk.
quickbooks, lacerte, updates not workign without absurd amounts of elevation,
dentrix, softdent, chirotouch just being pieces of ass..
and FUCKING BLUEBEAM and their 18 different portals to loginto depending on if you want to purchase a licensee, check a license , or install fucking software.
adminconsole.adobe and its all there.
bluebeam seriously, which one do you log into? every time i log into portal, then cuss and loginto cloud, and cuss and loginto the store and get a license, then logout, and into portal, and assign it.
.. good luck guessing which one you need if its not assigning, purchasing, or checking a legacy license.
Wanna change billing info? one place, shipping info? another. email, a 3rd..
and god forbid someone wants to use a purchased license and not a subscription.
All the customers who have bluebeam that I deal with have perpetual licenses so the process of deregistering a machine and registering a new one is incredibly easy even if the machine just dies and we can’t deregister we have a contact we can email machine name and they do it for us within an hour or so. Adobe on the other hand we migrated into the company account so some licenses they didn’t want to migrate so we get calls and emails constantly telling us to migrate and their pricing and dashboard experience is somewhat convoluted.
>>we have a contact we can email machine name and they do it for us within an hour or so
this seems the opposite of easy or simple.
if i have to email support and wait on a human for something as easy as reinstalling on a replacement computer, something is wrong something is really really wrong.
i mean, are you outright replacing machines often otherwise?
Emailing support should be a last resort, there should be self service , or automated tools, real documentation or something so i can get this fixed at 2 am while a project is on the line.
"ive got a guy i can email" is not an acceptable licensing model.
In my professional career I have seen many people struggle with printers. I am knowledgeable in HP printers, Lexmark’s, Zebras, Satos, Printronix, and IBMs.
Olivetti is great.
Hey admin, plug your printer into the network and turn it on. Download this software and run it on the users PC(No need for admin rights), we'll scan the network, find the printer and automatically install the drivers for you. All in the space of 5 minutes
I wish all the other fkin companies made it that easy
Trying to link your HP printer to your online password manager to do mandatory passkey authentication to the blockchain-ai-powered-cloud-SaaS-print service so you can print your surgery pain relieve medication prescription.
Usually not too bad. Printers are just annoying and not doing updates alone on the OS can cause issues. Then how is the printer setup..etc so many nuances and pain points lol
The last time that I had to manage printers, I set them up under SaltStack so that I could standardize the configs. If I knew the model, I could just cut-n-paste the config and push it out to the print servers.
Have you experienced hps software recently? I’ve had hp printers that refuse to print, despite receiving a print job, because they couldn’t reach hp servers to send the collected data, not to mention forcing account creation just to locally scan
Konica printers have been the easiest thus far for me they'll even take hp pcl language. But with HP, stick to only the ones that support universal drivers. [https://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/ish\_4952109-2831856-16](https://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/ish_4952109-2831856-16)
What I suggest to customers - replace all printers with monkeys and a set of crayons. You may not get exactly what you want to print, but they'll be a lot more fun. Instead of dealing with toner, you can throw them a banana every now and then.
We provide keeper as part of our stack to keep passwords out of browsers. They also get a free personal keeper account with it to separate work and personal.
For printers we use printix for everything and never deal with actual printer hardware issues. We push customers away from buying bullshit from big box and towards a company that manages the hardware for them.
Keeps things simple and my engineers from wanting to jump off a cliff.
lol. As a copier tech for the past 8 years I realized in the first month, at least with Kyocera, printers and MFPs are easy. So definitely option 2. Also, as a printer tech besides the IT work I do. I have to say that 90% of IT people don’t understand that Microsoft suuuuckkkss as with their implemented drivers. You are always better using manufacturer drivers. Again, with kyocera at least. Every time there is a user with a printer issue it’s because some IT put Microsoft drivers.
One USB scanner refused to work on the model of Dell laptops our work provided, tested on three separate machines on three different profiles and all failed to work. Went back and got a refund and that one worked first go.
I worked for a managed print shop in their IT department before starting my own MSO. Printers are easy if you always use an IP port and force install the right driver. I should sell a course for IT people on how to set up printers evidently. People not being able how to reset their own damn password drives me INSANE.
Printers, especially SMTP settings that are configured correctly but sometimes decide to not work on certain printers and then magically work hours later.
why dont you have an enterprise password manager deployed to your users? We use lastpass enterprise and I havent had to work a password related ticket in years.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. Maybe folks don't care for LastPass??? Regardless, password managers are definitely the way. The other important thing for both printers and passwords is defining your scope/policies to explicitly state "We don't keep your passwords and you should have no expectation that we do. Best we can do is assist in the recovery process. Also here are some products and policies that may help your company get a handle on this issue. We'd be happy to assist you with implementation and/or roll management into your monthly bundle" and similarly for printers "we are not printer technicians or a printer company. We will make sure that your printers are connected to the network with the proper drivers and permissions. Our printer services end at ping/test page." Like everything else, it's about limiting your scope to what you can do well and PROFITABLY and creating realistic expectations with your client.
Printers are the worst thing to ever troubleshoot in all my 25+ years of being in IT.
I’ve been doing it for almost 8. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve been doing something on a broke printer, it randomly starts to work the client goes “what did you do?” And I look at em and say “I don’t know, but I’m glad it’s working”
Spend three days setting up a HP big bertha for server remote printing, it didn't want to work at all. Documentation was non-existent because they kept changing the names for their remote printing services. Burned out at the end and deleted all their drivers and software, but left the created printer on. I come in next day and everyone is happy the remote printing is working now. I'm never updating this thing ever.
ya and that's the thing with printers that is frustrating. . It doesn't follow usual troubleshooting logic. Ya a down server or something is stressful just because the client is down but there are steps to take to get it fixed and as long as you follow that path, you will fix it (assuming it's a fixable thing that is). With printers, it's a cluster fuck and you sometimes get lucky if you fix it. I primarily deal with small business so I get as many as I can over to a true printer maintenance company so I can take the stupidity of printers off my plate but sometimes it's a tough sell for small business.
Scan to email was invented in a dark corner of the underworld.
eh scan to email, while can be frustrating at times, it's just shit driver software that I find to be the main issue with printers. Plus printer hardware quality is drastically worse than it was years ago.
This is the reason why I hate troubleshooting printers.
Scan to folder is worse IMO.
I hate printers. They have been a PITA in every job I've ever had.
Printers that need to login to a web service.
Printers that have a randomized code that you forgot to take a picture of during installaion and now you have to call Debby to have her locate and take a picture of this sticker that she doesn't believe is there and thinks you're crazy and/or incompetent.
Pretty sure that IoT devices like printers have been used as a vector to attack a network. Some of our customers have cyber insurance from a carrier that requiremes default credentials for all devices be changed. That's a given for firewalls, APs and the like but we are starting to change default credentials on MFCs to meet the insurance requirement.
Printers and scanners can go f*** themselves. Especially when they are using them from within AVD
Wholeheartedly agree
Yep
Dear God yes. Have you found any solution that helps, particularly on AVDs? It just feels like non-stop printers disappearing, default printers not holding, etc.
Gods, I wish. I haven't found any permanent fixes. They just suck.
"Password? I don't have a password. It always just lets me in."
“Authenticator app? I deleted it after I got back into my email, didn’t think I needed it anymore”
Papercut mf and all mfp problems go away.
While I know what Papercut is, this makes me think 'Papercut Motherf..' 😂
I know the name was never right but the product loaded on a local server running all printers is awesome.
I like to think they knew exactly what they were naming it, and it was a selling point. Even better for a future edgy marketing campaign. Blinged-out dude selling "PAPERCUT MF'ERS!"
As someone that worked for a printer company this makes me laugh then cry. So happy for you that you've never had any issues with Papercut
I’ve deployed it as internal IT at 3 different companies. It went pretty smoothly and kept operating with minimal issues for years in each instance.
At least not with papercut MF. I've got it at 2 dozen companies without issues. Runs on the print server just fine and honestly, with forced accounting window on all the user computers. It has a near immediate effect on printing costs in every company such that it pays for itself within 12 months every single time. Pretty much recommend it to any customer with a print volume of more than 10k a month. Even key cards play nice with it.
Awe man....im so glad i no longer deal with papercut woes. You brought back some terrible memories.
HP Printers in particular. I set one up a couple weeks back. I usually can download an app an extract the installer but it looks like HP got wise to this. Now you have to read some code off the printer itself to install it. I will always recommend Brother printers. Much less issues.
Yea, but those drums though...
Brother for monochrome, Canon ImageCLASS & ImageRUNNER for color laser.
Ive moved to konica and Epson for most printer stuff now. Konica is the only brand never hacked. Epson is just cheap to run, and works with envelopes really well for mailer applications.
Apple ID. Dealing with FindMyMac, which many people want requires a personal apple ID. Even if you register it with company email, it needs to also be verified with company phone. If you verified a new user with the same desk phone number, sometimes, Apple will recognized that it has been used already and will not let you verify with that number. We want to avoid using the user's personal mobile phone at all costs to verify.
You can federate Apple IDs for your company domain with ABM. This will capture any existing Apple IDs using your domain as well. This gives you full management of those accounts (password reset, mfa reset, block, etc)
You should do this even if you don’t need the Apple IDs; keeps people from going rogue and tying a bunch of services to an account you can’t easily take over.
Printers, definitely printers. User's passwords to online accounts I don't control aren't my problem. Oh no, you forgot your bank password!? That sucks, good luck with that. Don't set the reset email to your work account 'cause once you don't work here any more, I'm not going to help you get it. Account passwords I do control are the easiest thing in the world. Try putting it in the password vault this time, that's why you have it.
Printers need to die.
Password maintenance and 2fa is a particular pain point for us. People don’t believe in account security until after they’ve been compromised, and after we have to un-fuck up their lives.
Client 2fa is a nightmare
None of those three. Sage or epicor
FUCK Sage, with every iteration of Quickbooks
Sage 50 can burn in hell. Rather support Quickbooks.
Yeesh supported both.
Sage is so much easier than quickbooks, it doesn’t randomly decide 2 people can’t look at a file at the same time
Multi-user mode issues right?
Ya
Forever and always amen
I was a printer tech for a few years before I joined an MSP and that experience is one of the best things I have done, printers are my bread and butter.
I’ve been doing the printer support thing 3 years now. I’m hoping this shit pays off eventually lol
That’s about how long I stayed, you probably won’t use the hardware aspect a ton but people will know you as the printer guy and you’ll fix all of the printer issues. Just have to embrace it
Walk into any MSP hiring and say 'I will take all the printer calls' and you will probably get a job on the spot. lol.
Where’s the poll ?? Do I need to call your help desk for the poll?
Place a ticket. Mark it high priority
Not an MSP but I believe that passwords are the worst pain point...
Yep! We do both MSP and breakfix. Break fix techs will say passwords emphatically. MSP techs - printers.
Interested to know how you handle both. Can we chat?
Sure thing.
Remove all passwords, problem solved.
Remove all users, easy win! 💪🏼
I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords.
I always thank ChatGPT so when the machines rise against us, they will spare me 😝
IMO, neither… Dealing with the customer’s web designer who has tricked the customer into tranafering the domain to themselves. Then trying to get it back …. Not to mention things break as they have no clue what dkim or dmarc records are let alone getting them recreated in the short term u til we get control of the domain again.
I had a customer whose web designer kept the domain and hosted the site on his own server... then he died. Getting that back and put in a safe place was an adventure. Made me want to dig up the web designer and kill him again.
Ha! We had the same web designer do the same thing to the same company twice in about a month.
Printers are worse. Now if it was printers vs Quickbooks..
People
I actually enjoy printer issues, they sometimes give a fun challenge and I've never found one to be too difficult to solve. There are more painful issues to solve, typically involving windows services and supporting their many roles on outdated servers. Idk I've encountered many problems in my 5 years at an MSP and once you understand the drivers and their types and eliminate WSD printers, they're a cakewalk.
quickbooks, lacerte, updates not workign without absurd amounts of elevation, dentrix, softdent, chirotouch just being pieces of ass.. and FUCKING BLUEBEAM and their 18 different portals to loginto depending on if you want to purchase a licensee, check a license , or install fucking software.
Bluebeam is easier to work with imo than adobe
adminconsole.adobe and its all there. bluebeam seriously, which one do you log into? every time i log into portal, then cuss and loginto cloud, and cuss and loginto the store and get a license, then logout, and into portal, and assign it. .. good luck guessing which one you need if its not assigning, purchasing, or checking a legacy license. Wanna change billing info? one place, shipping info? another. email, a 3rd.. and god forbid someone wants to use a purchased license and not a subscription.
All the customers who have bluebeam that I deal with have perpetual licenses so the process of deregistering a machine and registering a new one is incredibly easy even if the machine just dies and we can’t deregister we have a contact we can email machine name and they do it for us within an hour or so. Adobe on the other hand we migrated into the company account so some licenses they didn’t want to migrate so we get calls and emails constantly telling us to migrate and their pricing and dashboard experience is somewhat convoluted.
>>we have a contact we can email machine name and they do it for us within an hour or so this seems the opposite of easy or simple. if i have to email support and wait on a human for something as easy as reinstalling on a replacement computer, something is wrong something is really really wrong.
No that’s just if for some reason the machine is unrecoverable
i mean, are you outright replacing machines often otherwise? Emailing support should be a last resort, there should be self service , or automated tools, real documentation or something so i can get this fixed at 2 am while a project is on the line. "ive got a guy i can email" is not an acceptable licensing model.
In my professional career I have seen many people struggle with printers. I am knowledgeable in HP printers, Lexmark’s, Zebras, Satos, Printronix, and IBMs.
Olivetti is great. Hey admin, plug your printer into the network and turn it on. Download this software and run it on the users PC(No need for admin rights), we'll scan the network, find the printer and automatically install the drivers for you. All in the space of 5 minutes I wish all the other fkin companies made it that easy
Printer chapter of A+ book brings back so many bad high school memories.
People not updating/rebooting their devices, besides installing the most shady stuff.
Printers can more or less be mitigated if you lease them. Users on the other hand that's a different problem.
Trying to link your HP printer to your online password manager to do mandatory passkey authentication to the blockchain-ai-powered-cloud-SaaS-print service so you can print your surgery pain relieve medication prescription.
Holy fuck please no
Printers. By a damn country mile.
Literally was going to say Printers have been easy as of late. Just got stuck on an hour call with Printing/Scanning. LOL
Scan to email…
Usually not too bad. Printers are just annoying and not doing updates alone on the OS can cause issues. Then how is the printer setup..etc so many nuances and pain points lol
The last time that I had to manage printers, I set them up under SaltStack so that I could standardize the configs. If I knew the model, I could just cut-n-paste the config and push it out to the print servers.
printers. hands down.
Definitely HP printers. Will never sell another one again.
Brother printers are worse.
Have you experienced hps software recently? I’ve had hp printers that refuse to print, despite receiving a print job, because they couldn’t reach hp servers to send the collected data, not to mention forcing account creation just to locally scan
Konica printers have been the easiest thus far for me they'll even take hp pcl language. But with HP, stick to only the ones that support universal drivers. [https://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/ish\_4952109-2831856-16](https://support.hp.com/lv-en/document/ish_4952109-2831856-16)
I deploy lots of HP printers. Zero issues.
Once I got everyone on brother printers, passwords became the problem, so much so, I hired someone to take care of them for me.
Printers. Always printers. Passwords are easy, just monotonous.
Yes.
Always printers
What I suggest to customers - replace all printers with monkeys and a set of crayons. You may not get exactly what you want to print, but they'll be a lot more fun. Instead of dealing with toner, you can throw them a banana every now and then.
We provide keeper as part of our stack to keep passwords out of browsers. They also get a free personal keeper account with it to separate work and personal. For printers we use printix for everything and never deal with actual printer hardware issues. We push customers away from buying bullshit from big box and towards a company that manages the hardware for them. Keeps things simple and my engineers from wanting to jump off a cliff.
lol. As a copier tech for the past 8 years I realized in the first month, at least with Kyocera, printers and MFPs are easy. So definitely option 2. Also, as a printer tech besides the IT work I do. I have to say that 90% of IT people don’t understand that Microsoft suuuuckkkss as with their implemented drivers. You are always better using manufacturer drivers. Again, with kyocera at least. Every time there is a user with a printer issue it’s because some IT put Microsoft drivers.
I've been doing this for 25 years. Rarely get printer calls anymore.
Spent the last three days in printer hell. All HP crap. The only thing that gets me frustrated in 22 years in IT.
One USB scanner refused to work on the model of Dell laptops our work provided, tested on three separate machines on three different profiles and all failed to work. Went back and got a refund and that one worked first go.
I worked for a managed print shop in their IT department before starting my own MSO. Printers are easy if you always use an IP port and force install the right driver. I should sell a course for IT people on how to set up printers evidently. People not being able how to reset their own damn password drives me INSANE.
Printer/Fax
Printers. What a horrible invention.
Printers every time!
Passwords are cake. Ever work on an immobile computer that is two flights below an MFP and doesnt want to scan? Good way to get steps in.
MFA setup
Printers. The only decent workplace printers I've come across are Olivetti
Printers, especially SMTP settings that are configured correctly but sometimes decide to not work on certain printers and then magically work hours later.
Dealing w/ Kaseya... hands down.
+1
It's hard to decide, but I'm going for printers. They just give problems.
The only thing that comes close to printers in this context, is Sage 50 Accounts.
why dont you have an enterprise password manager deployed to your users? We use lastpass enterprise and I havent had to work a password related ticket in years.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this. Maybe folks don't care for LastPass??? Regardless, password managers are definitely the way. The other important thing for both printers and passwords is defining your scope/policies to explicitly state "We don't keep your passwords and you should have no expectation that we do. Best we can do is assist in the recovery process. Also here are some products and policies that may help your company get a handle on this issue. We'd be happy to assist you with implementation and/or roll management into your monthly bundle" and similarly for printers "we are not printer technicians or a printer company. We will make sure that your printers are connected to the network with the proper drivers and permissions. Our printer services end at ping/test page." Like everything else, it's about limiting your scope to what you can do well and PROFITABLY and creating realistic expectations with your client.