HP printer now asking to create an Account and register...

[king1]

HP Printers : good printers , garbage software/drivers .
I'd never recommended or sold them when I was in IT.
Their garbage drivers go all the way back to Winxp days : a IE (yes IE) update stopped some HP's from printing .
HP didnt fix it , so a frustrated US programmer fixed their software bug for them & made it available online: he said it was lazy bad programming that caused the issue .

More recent : Win10 not compatable with a 1YEAR OLD HP MFC  : would print 1 page then require a PC reboot to get another page out. No drivers or software available at all from HP for this 1 year old printer (printer still worked on the old Win7 PC) . The solution, my customer bought another printer , a Brother . That worked without issues.

Another of my customers (I was in IT ) , bought a brand new (budget) HP inkjet. You had to use a smartphone app to set the thing up & connect the printer to wifi
yes , PC setup required a smartphone app . Of course that didnt work. Included setup doc's were incomplete (ie usueless) , requiring a call to HP to find out how to connect the printer to wifi & the to the PC
There were NO DRIVERS available on the HP site . To connect to a PC , turns out you had to download the HP app from the MS APP Store , requiring customer to sign up for that . So, 3/4hour plus to get a brand new HP printer usable, it cost the customer more in my time than the printer cost .

HP, why not just make drivers available , like other GOOD printer brands do . Dont be lazy and require Winupdate to get printer drivers , that doesnt allways work .
A pity , back when I was a printer tech, HP used to be the go to printer for build quality and reliablity.

rant over :-)

and Amen to that