I’m supposed to be writing tonight’s report right now. Instead, Ponzi’s asking me to spend the next hour in her office, setting up two “crucial” pieces of hardware. One happens to be a photo printer, the other happens to be a flatbed scanner. I’m simply not looking forward to doing either one. USB was supposed to make life easier, but I’m still worried about getting trapped inside some kind of driver dilemma.
Maybe Vista is spoiling me, per one of my hardware experiences this weekend:
I just picked up a new laser printer all-in-one center (an HP LaserJet 3052). I popped in the CD to install the drivers and software, as that’s what it tells me to do – at least, for Windows XP and earlier. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the installation program to complete. “Run as Administrator†didn’t work, nor did logging in as the Administrator and installing it from that account. I was just about ready to give up, when I decided to plug the cable int… wait a second. Vista recognized every single function of the device – from printer to scanner.
Yeah, I think Windows has finally turned a corner in terms of hardware support. The “Windows Update” service seems to be working like it should have from the very beginning – as a central repository for validated code. It’s now helped me through a couple of driver updates (hard drive controller, video card). I may have problems with Vista’s user interface, but the experience is growing on me.
[tags]drivers, hardware, hardware drivers, device drivers, xp drivers, vista drivers, windows[/tags]