Vista log, continued

I sure hope nobody thought I was singling out Zone Labs and Microsoft’s Outlook team as being more worthy of criticism as anyone else. Far from it – they were simply the two whose software irritated me earliest.

That was before I tried to install the .Net-driven printer software provided by HP to accompany its 2840-series all-in-one color laserjet devices.

Yes, that’s right – the software isn’t Vista-compatible, and there are no updates available that would make it so.

What does exist is a universal printer driver. It’s a fine idea, which answers a question I’ve had for some time: How is it that every time HP (or any other printer manufacturer) delivers a new printer it needs a new printer driver? The features are exactly the same in every one of these things, after all.

HP’s universal printer driver demonstrates that no matter how fine the concept, execution is everything. It demonstrates it through remarkably awful execution.

First of all, the universal driver covers print functions only. So I can’t scan.

And second of all, the universal driver only prints in black and white. Hey, if I’d wanted nothing but black and white pages I’d have bought a black and white printer.

You can say what you like about Vista. I’m not yet all that fond of it. Maybe it’s because I installed the business version and haven’t found where Microsoft hid the eye candy in it.

But whatever else you say about Vista, Microsoft made no secret of the ship date, and then showed the remarkable courtesy of delaying it to make sure everyone was in a position to ship updated software.

Well, okay, courtesy wasn’t the reason. It’s still true that everyone had plenty of advance notice.

I wonder why they didn’t take advantage of it?

– Bob