Another Rant

Coming close on the heels of my blog on the suckiness of Dell, I am proud to inform you that I have more stuff to rant about. Namely, the ass sucking pathetic suckiness of Hewlett Packard Printers and Windows Vista.

My dad (yes he features again), seems to have become a sort of magnet for gadgets that don't work. After his crappy experience with the Dell (which I have now persuaded him to offload onto me), he went and bought himself a brand new spankin' laptop with Windows Vista loaded. So far so good? Next thing you know, he's calling me three times a day asking me how to get his HP laserjet printer to work with Vista. I was like.."uh dad..just go to HP and download the driver and bada bee bada boom its gonna work." Silence for a day or so until he calls me over to his office 'cos he cant figure out how to do it. So anyways, feeling smug 'cos I can show my dad what a whiz I am at computers, I go to HP, download the drivers from the site (clicking on the link that says "Vista Drivers"), wait for like 20 minutes until the whole thing downloads and then start the installation. And it fails. Download some more drivers from another part of HP website. Try to install. Fail. Go to a website set up by HP called "Vista Beta Drivers" or some such numbnut crap..download more drivers. Fail. After about 1 day and 3 hours of this I give up and tell my dad the problem is beyond me..maybe the guys at his friendly neighborhood computer shop can help him. He goes there, tells them about it and they quietly inform him that NOT A SINGLE HP PRINTER SUPPORTS VISTA!!!!!! Fuckin A!! Except for some really high end ones apparently. HP has refused to update their drivers to support Vista and unless you wanna spend gazillions of rupees you cant even buy a new Vista compatible printer!! Now my dad is stuck with a sweet little laserjet printer which wont work on his equally sweet though Vista running laptop.

On the other hand, my mom's hand me down Canon IP90 printer has all the drivers for Vista available. Although it must be noted that after she fiddled around with Vista on her notebook for about a week, she loudly demanded that it be removed immediately and XP loaded back on. Wise woman she is.

Moral of the story - Dont buy HP printers. First of all, their products although nicely priced, come loaded with bloated software that hogs hard disk and memory space. To get my last HP printer working, I had to install 500MB worth of software, then uninstall 495MB of the software to keep just the relevant drivers, and then disable other crap from loading when Windows started up. And second of all, they dont support Vista after a year of it being out!

My next bit of ire is aimed at Windows Vista. Not only is it not that much of a step up from XP, but it also constantly annoys you whenever you want to install or change anything on the system by asking for your permission. I mean..come on! If I clicked on the damn program, it means I wanna do it. Im not retarded. I didnt click on change network settings by mistake, so stop asking me for permission to load that module. Im sure the script kiddies have already figured out how to install their spyware and malware without the box popping up but for the actual user of the system, its like a beaurocratic hellhole. Next thing you know, they will be asking you to sign Form A in triplicate and fax it to Bill Gates before you get clearance to open a new Word Document.

Second moral of the story - stick with XP if you can, at least its a known devil! And it gets my mom's ringing endorsement! And for the sake of mankind, world peace, the environment, your loved ones, your pets, your car, (can I make this any more compelling?) DONT BUY AN HP PRINTER!