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June 20, 2008

humor

Windows Vista makes headlines again, and not of the good sort

Posted Jun. 20, ’08, 9:50 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Apple » Humor

Funny Vista errorTodd Bishop over at Seattle Post-Intelligencer posted a story a couple of days ago with the headline “Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer”. That, my dear friends, is the actual headline of a genuine news article from a non-satirical blog—we’re not talking about Fake Steve Jobs or The Onion here.

Apparently, the hero of this saga, Mr. Charles Walling, recently upgraded from Windows XP to Microsoft’s latest and greatest operating system, Windows Vista, probably anticipating a more fruitful and satisfying computing experience—it’s Microsoft Windows® Vista™ after all, what could possibly go wrong!

Unfortunately for Mr. Walling, however, the transition was anything but perfect. He had a Dell printer he’d been using with Windows XP, you see, and he made the all too simple and yet ultimately fateful mistake of assuming that Vista would be just as welcoming and friendly to it as XP used to be.

If you’ve been anywhere near Vista lately, you probably already know what followed—the printer refused to work using the drivers that it had shipped with and, after Charles was luckily cited as an example of disillusioned Vista users in an earlier Seattle P.I. story, Tom White, a member of Microsoft’s Windows Experience Group, went over to his house to lend him a helping hand.

After several such visits, White was finally able to resolve the issue and get the printer and, more importantly, Vista back on track and working in tandem. The Seattle P.I. story even has a picture of Mr. Walling printing “from his Windows Vista PC” for propriety’s sake, in case it’s too unbelievable that Vista did finally manage to get its act together.

I’m still just in love with the headline of the story—maybe Microsoft should use it in some promotional posters: “Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer. The Wow starts now!”

[Via Daring Fireball via Jacqui Cheng on Twitter]


11 Comments

t said:

Great story for a friday...

June 20, 2008 12:42 PM
John said:

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. When I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard ... well, actually, let's go back a step.

When I transitioned from PC to Mac, I assumed my printer and scanners would both work on a Mac. For my PC, I had a HP Laserjet 1000 and a CanoScan 3000F. (There's an unofficial LJ1000 driver, but it worked intermittently, not the consistent performance I need for business).

So, when I transitioned to Tiger Mac, I was forced to buy a new HP Laserjet 1020 printer, and a Canon LIDE 20 scanner.

Then, when Leopard came out, I assumed these would work. They say, Mac just works.

Well, neither the above worked. There are unofficial drivers for the HP1020 suggested on help sites, but, once again, it didn't work consistently for running a business.

So, once again, when transitioning from Tiger to Leopard -- only a few months after going from PC to Mac -- I had to buy a Laserjet 1300 and Canon LIDE 35 scanner.

Please, please don't get smug, and satirize Vista. Rather, the headline should be: Leopard user finds a printer and scanner tha work with Leopard.

Search google for the multitudes of people who have struggled to get their old peripherals to work with Leopard.

The transition from PC to Tiger, then from Tiger to Leopard, has, as you can see, cost me a tidy sum.

June 20, 2008 4:09 PM
Dave-O said:

I guess Microsoft's strategy will be an engineer in every home to help you get their damned system working.

Vista wouldn't let the XP driver install files in the locations it wanted, so what did it do? It moved them! To locations no uninstaller knew to look! Hilarious.

June 20, 2008 10:24 PM
Kelmon said:

I'd just like to say that I've seen that sort of error message under Windows XP at work and it's just sheer (frustrating) comedy.

June 21, 2008 3:50 AM
Parang Boi said:

I’m still just in love with the headline of the story—maybe Microsoft should use it in some promotional posters: “Man gets Windows Vista to work with printer. The Wow starts now!”


Nice one

June 21, 2008 5:04 AM
DigitalMercenary said:

John,

Your mistake was in assuming that HP had software that worked on anything. Rather than being upset that you had to buy new HP products with each OS upgrade you should be grateful that your HP software worked at all. HP has written notoriously bad software since the 70s. I know. I have been plagued by their software since then. That's why I don't buy their products.

Canon has been somewhat better. But scanners are a different beast. Printers should be a piece of cake, except in HPs case.

By the way I went from Tiger to Leopard and my Canon MP530 worked like a charm.

June 21, 2008 1:05 PM
UncleMac said:

Well, I just made the move from Windows to Mac (Leopard) and love it. The first time I plugged my HP 990 printer into my Mac it "just worked" and i had no Mac drivers to install. I must admit to being surprised because the printer was a good 6 or 8 years old. Also, I thought it had failed when I didn't see the usual (for Windows) "found new hardware" messages. But, there it was, and it works perfectly. No operating system is ever perfect, but Leopard beats XP and Vista hands down!!

June 22, 2008 9:36 AM
D Jones said:

To John:
Your tale of travail and woe is indeed troubling, but some things in it either don't make sense or are show some possible faulty logic.

Switching from PC to Mac, you wanted to bring along for the ride an ancient scanner and printer (5 years is forever in technology) that were never rate to work with the Mac OS, but couldn't--so that's Apple's fault? And then you bought a printer (HP 1020) that, according to HP's website, also isn't supposed to work with Mac OS X? The surprising thing there is that it worked at all with any version of OS X. And, according to Canon's website, the Lide 20 should work with any OS X variant, from 10.1 and up.

Again, I'm not doubting that you had problems, I just think that some of your frustration may be a mis-directed. I have been using Mac almost exclusively for over 10 years as a graphic designer and have never had troubles of the type you describe. The way I avoid these troubles is to try to do research before buying and especially pay attention to user reviews. I have been using a HP 1300 printer with absolutely no problems for at least 3 years (and at least 1 major operating system upgrade), a Xerox Phaser 6120N for almost 2 years with great success, and an Epson Perfection 3200 Photo scanner for about 5 years now. Before spending the money on these, I made sure they would be Mac-compatible and tried to take into account the track record of the company in the area of the device I was purchasing. HP has a long-standing reputation as a fantastic builder of laser printers that support the Mac OS--but don't buy them for Mac if they aren't rated to work with it. Epson has a sterling reputation for scanners that work with the Mac, but I would never trust Canon for that (love their cameras though).

June 22, 2008 2:42 PM
Joachim said:

It's always the hardware manufacturers responsibility to provide drivers for new OS versions. Not the OS manufacturer.

So in this case blame Dell for being lazy and not providing updated drivers that works.

June 23, 2008 3:40 AM
Glenn Dixon said:

John,

Your anecdotal experience does not offset two facts. 1 - Vista has had horrible issues with driver availability since the day of its release. 2 - OS X (Tiger or Leopard) has very few such issues by comparison

June 23, 2008 8:17 AM
Dave-O said:

@Joachim, Dell did provide the drivers. Unfortunately, Mr. Walling installed the old drivers first, and the new ones wouldn't install because Vista had so badly screwed up the prior installation.

June 23, 2008 12:06 PM

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