“Microsoft released Windows Vista to the world one year ago with ads likening the new PC operating system to such awe-inspiring moments as the first American spaceflight and the fall of the Berlin Wall,” Todd Bishop reports for The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Charles Walling just wants it to work with his printer.”
Bishop reports, “The retired Seattle warehouseman has spent hours on the Dell tech support line, installed all the drivers and, yes, double-checked all the cords and plugs. No luck. The cause of the problem isn’t clear, but Walling knows one thing: The same printer worked with Windows Vista’s predecessor, Windows XP.
“‘You can see the frustration,’ Walling said this week, sitting at his desk after Windows Vista displayed an error message in response to an attempt to print,” Bishop reports.
Bishop reports, “Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates recently called Windows Vista the ‘best new product of the year.'”
Bishop reports, “A year after its glitzy retail launch, Windows Vista has developed a reputation as a source of frustration for others. The effects of that reputation are apparent in the habits of PC buyers. At the computer store Quidnunc in West Seattle, for example, owner Bill Hibler estimates that 40 percent of people ordering computers through his shop still ask for Windows XP.”
Bishop reports, “Walling, the retired Seattle warehouseman, moved to Windows Vista when he bought a new PC last fall. Despite the problems he has experienced, he’s sticking with the operating system, figuring it would be too much hassle to go back at this point. He still hopes to fix his printer compatibility problems. In the meantime, how does he print out his documents? ‘I don’t,’ he said.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rob” for the heads up.]
@ Zune Tang®
I see you are still screwing Dell users with Vista.
When I upgraded to Leopard the installation itself went smoothly enough, but unfortunately everything does not work as it should.
Here’s the list. I tried to report these to the mother ship, but finding a place to submit them on Apple’s site is an exercise in frustration itself.
– iCal does not assert alerts
– Mac Help crashes
– Energy Saver schedule: auto-starts in AM, but cannot get past screen saver (spinning beach ball)
-iChat does not work, but Skype does
– annoying PubSubAgent permission request interruption
– system alerts not spoken as set in preferences
– Mail sometimes fails to sound alerts
– Mail sometimes sounds alerts for outgoing rather than incoming messages
– Sound preferences will not retain setting for ambient noise reduction (keeps shutting it off)
I’d appreciate knowing if anyone else has encountered these problems. And I sure hope 10.5.2 fixes them.
Vista sounds a lot like VD: people are excited by the prospect of a great experience, then they get f*cked and spend lots of time and anxiety trying to get rid of their problem.
Another analogy that might work is Hotel California.
@Beryllium
Did you try to install Leopard over Tiger or Panther, or did you do a clean install? I know it’s a pain to do a clean install and have to reinstall all your applications and files, but you wind up with a cleaner, leaner system without inheriting the little incompatibility problems that result from something as important and all-encompassing as a system upgrade over the prior version.
When I’ve installed systems in the past, I’ve always wiped my system drive clean, then reinstalled the system, then all my apps. Yes, again, it is a nuisance, but in addition to avoiding the type of issues you’ve described, I’ve noticed that my overall performance improved.
If you have a new Mac with Leopard preinstalled, or did a clean install, then I’m not sure what to say other than to try another installation. If the problems persist, yeah, call Apple and get some answers.
@ joey:
Yes Apple makes the OS and the computers to run it on so in that respect it’s a smoother experience. However they don’t makes the hundreds of peripherals that work with the Mac like mp3 players (except iPod), printers, hard drives, scanners, routers (except Airport), RAM, graphics cards, processors, etc. So they still need to make sure it works with all those things too.
@ Zune Tang:
Once again you make me laugh man. Spewing the same crap over and over again. You are losing your touch. It’s pretty sad to see you believe your own hype like that. But hey it’s your loss if you want to continue in your little Windows world kissin Bill Gates ass.
Your loss. Our Gain!
@Zune Tang
You have done it now dude, you have let the cat out of the bag. No self respecting Windows troll would admit that they have to learn how to hack registries or spend so long on PC makers support lines to get things done in Windows as an advantage. I now totally believe you are a Mac user having a laugh and will never ever believe you prefer Vista or the Zune.
So, own up. Who are you really? I bet you post as two different people on here don’t you?
@OpJ, “
My father in law has an HP all in one printer/scanner/fax that he bought only a year before he got his mac mini.”
Get him Vuescan, it’ll work.
http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html
@ Zune Tang
HAHAHAHAHA! I told you that you would fizz out. it’s over Johnny……..IT’S OVER! Time to pollute a new message board.
Microsoft should take yet another play from Apple’s playbook. Instead of releasing Windows XP Service Pack 3, repackage it and add a few cosmetic changes to make it look new and different from XP, and market it as “Windows 7.” Then throw out the bloated Windows source code, decide what to do next, and create a usable successor to both Windows XP and Windows Vista. Hey, it worked for Apple with Mac OS 8.x and 9.x, which could reasonably have been called System 7.7 and 7.8. That marketing move gave Apple time to create Mac OS X.
With some posts, the fact that Zune Tang is satire is more obvious.
Soon, Zune Tang will be the last M$ vista user in the world. Great though: he will have acheived at least that (anti-) fame in his life! |o|
Why do you fail to see the bright side in Mr. Walling predicament?
He will save a lot of money not using ink and paper, and he will help save the environment. Obviously, printing stuff is not a requirement. Otherwise, he would not have decided to stay with Vista, or he would have bought a new printer.
I can see Al Gore recommending Vista now! It’s good for the environment.
Some of the comments to the original article are priceless. Stockholm Syndrome, indeed.
“Computers are trouble. That’s almost a given, if you venture beyond email, and there’s bound to be trouble regardless of what operating system is used.”
“I’d actually prefer to use Mac, but I use specific software for my business that only comes on Windows and there is no suitable Mac facsimile.”
“It’s a question of the subtle reasons why you would choose an operating system: Vista comes with a killer version of Texas Hold ‘Em.”
“Windows Vista is a complete stillborn TURDE. And no, I am not an Apple user. Just a regular guy who has wasted HOURS of time trying to do routine things since I was unfortunate as to buy a laptop with MS SINKING TURDE aka Windows Vista.”
back when I did Windows support for a living, it was kinda fun to hack the registry and edit startup files, boot into safe mode, uninstall/reinstall drivers etc. It took a lot of training to do that job. I realized I didn’t have to do that if someone wasn’t paying me so I bought my first Mac in 1999. Life has been good since. It really is the Stockholm Syndrome. And as Zunie noted, it is part of the process of being a power user to have to muck around in Window’s innards to make it function, a badge of honor if you will. And the average schmuck thinks that is just how computers are. It was actually confusing at first using a Mac, cuz it didn’t have any of the problems or stupid work arounds to mess with like Windows does with its Uninstallers and driver downloads etc.
@Mark
Thanks for your reply. I did not do a clean install. I’ve never had to do so with past OS X releases. I do not relish going back to do so, though Time Machine takes some of the bite out of it. The real pain is the non-Apple applications, widgets, etc. Keeping track of them is a major pain. Maybe there is an application to keep track of applications?
Leopard DOES have bugs using Photoshop CS3. The crop tool, the selection tool, pretty much every tool with a text entry box. This problem is TINY compared to using Photoshop CS3 using Vista, where a bug of gigantic proportions exists that cannot remember print settings between images!!!! Both of these are known issues. Advantage: Mac.
Looking back, OS X has been known to have issues when new versions of it come out. I’m still using 10.4 because ProTools does not work on 10.5. Regardless, for the average user, the difference between Vista and OS X is that Apple actually seems to address issues faster than Vista. 10.5 is already at 10.5.1, and a 10.5.2 is expected anytime. Vista? Who knows. Some fabled service pack is coming. I’m surprised that Vista does do smaller, more frequent updates to deal with problems…..
@Mark and @Berylium,
If you do an archive install you will get a clean system without having to re-install a lot of apps. There are some prefs that don’t get copied but that’s about it. Never ever do an update install even if you have nothing but Mac apps on your system.
Digital Mercenary
“He still hopes to fix his printer compatibility problems. In the meantime, how does he print out his documents? ‘I don’t,’ he said.””
How green is Vista!!! How many trees is it saving! Microsoft make some awesome products (removes tongue from cheek, gets back to nutting out Zeller’s congruence law….)
@Beryllium
I don’t know whether there is an application that keeps track of applications. What I’ve done is put my application and Utility folders in list view, taken screenshots of them and printed them. When it came time to reinstall, I’ve gone down the list. Actually, I usually install my Adobe and Microsoft applications first, then everything else. Unfortunately, I usually kill a weekend doing this, but the piece of mind I get is worth it.
I currently have a new Macbook and will be receiving my Mac Pro (ordered it about a week ago) in the middle of next month, so I won’t be doing a clean install for a while.
Part of my job is application tech support, and whenever anyone calls with some weirdness going on with their computer I always tell them, “Reboot. If the problem persists after the reboot, call me.” About 90% of the time I never back from them. Doing a clean install is the equivalent of a reboot, just on a much grander scale.
So, as big a pain as it is, that’s what I’d suggest. And it’s what Apple tech support will suggest if all else fails.
Good luck.
I work in IT and can testify to the compatibility nightmares associated with Vista. Microsoft would have you believe that they are all the fault of third parties who are too lazy to update their drivers, but guess what? Many of Microsoft’s own existing products don’t work properly with Vista.
I ran into this one just the other day: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922706
OK, so to fix it, I can either install Windows Server 2008 (which isn’t even available as a final release yet) and spend a bunch of time back-hacking pieces of it into Server 2003, or I can try to find the referenced “hotfix”. Yeah, good luck with that one. (I finally did get it, but let’s just say it wasn’t through any publically-available channel). And even then, we found that Vista still won’t work right with this product unless changes are made to the IE security zone settings and trusted root certificates on every client.
This is by no means the first problem like this that we’ve found with Vista. Microsoft’s knowledgebase is full of articles about how “X and Y” won’t work with Vista, and that the solution is to upgrade all your servers to Windows Server 2008 (actually, many of them still say “Longorn Server” because they’ve been promising fixes for all this stuff before it even had a shipping product name). You’ve got to be kidding me!
It’s almost like MS is TRYING to take all the IT people who are in their pocket, giving them guaranteed market share, and do everything possible to alienate them.
If I were a MS shareholder, I’d be selling as fast as possible right now.
“My father in law has an HP all in one printer/scanner/fax that he bought only a year before he got his mac mini.
HP still hasn’t released a Leopard compatible driver for the scanning portion of the machine, which was his whole point in getting the thing.
I wouldn’t brag too much about Leopard re: drivers.”
I have an all in one from HP which never scanned from the printer end of it, even with Tiger. Never use the SCAN button on the printer. To scan, put the document in the printer and then use Spotlight to find HP Scan. Use the scanning prompts on your Mac’s screen, not on the printer itself. This has worked every time on all of my Macs using both Tiger and Leopard. One other thing: to scan, I have to unplug my printer from Airport Extreme and plug it directly into the Mac I am using (or a hub connected to ONLY that Mac); but that was the same with Tiger, too.
Printing, however, works perfectly on all Macs via Airport with both Tiger and Leopard.
@OpJ:
re: My father in law has an HP all in one printer/scanner/fax that he bought only a year before he got his mac mini.
I use Apple’s bundled Image Capture app for my scanning. Seems to work on most scanners. Look in your Applications folder and give it a try!
You turn me on, baby! Shake it like you mean it, or don’t; it’s all good. ~Studolicious
p.s., that’s not really my name.
seems to me that vista jsut wanted to be windows MEII