Why did you stop there?? Message #2 Posted by Jim L on 30 Oct 2001, 6:49 p.m., in response to message #1 by Gene
Instead of continuing on to the next sentence....
"Well, the Epson installed OK, but it was all downhill from there. It would copy only in black and white, and only at a uselessly low resolution. There was no light-dark control. When I could get it to scan without crashing, and had mastered the weirdly counterintuitive interface, I could get a scan into Paint Shop Pro, but I really need a machine that will copy without me having to scan first. I fired off some e-mails and called them up. Once I had got past their stunned amazement that I was trying to use an Epson scanner to copy to a non-Epson printer — who ever heard of a user wanting to do that?! — the techies were polite, keen, and ready to help, but a great weariness had settled on me. "Let's try a few things, shall we? First, reboot your machine..." Goodbye, afternoon. Why do I have to beta-test their frigging drivers for them? Shouldn't the damn thing work out of the box? Who's got the time for this stuff?
I was starting to hate the Epson machine on other grounds, too. It was designed, I had come to realize, by the team in the Dilbert strip, under the supervision of that pointy-haired boss. .... "
The rant is really more about upgrading Windows than HP or Epson though.
"No more: Qhat I have now works, more or less, after a fashion, and I'm sticking with it till I have absolutely no choice but to upgrade. XP? Only if Bill Gates himself comes and installs it."
Honestly, I think it's got to be hard and expensive for a hardware manufacturer to have to keep updating drivers for old products when someone else comes out with a new OS. I haven't yet dared to figure out what's going to break if I upgrade from win95 :-)
(PS there's no space between the [link: and http: like National Review article)
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