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	Phil's Blogservations Thursday, October 25, 2001 Posted by philgomes 4:25 PM An XP Tale of Woe: So, Microsoft has launched another OS that, sooner or later, you'll be forced to purchase. After spending a bit of Tuesday morning hooking up my girlfriend's brand-spaking new XP-loaded PC with software and hardware drivers, I have the following tale to tell. I'd have to start by saying that I'm less irritated with MS than I am with the hardware guys who haven't developed/posted XP drivers to their respective support sites. My girlfriend has a Xerox XJ6C color inkjet printer. When I went to "Add A Printer," XP dutifully told me that it saw and recognized the XJ6C. "Nice," I thought. Did I have a driver installation disk? No, but I did have an Internet connection. Xerox's site offered XJ6C drivers for 9x, NT, and ME. No XP. So, I tried the NT driver, figuring there was something to the architectural similarity between XP and NT. Installation got 95% there when the computer told me that the driver software had not been submitted for XP logo certification and that my system would become increasingly unstable if I continued. I continued anyway, and the installation simply aborted. No changes to XP occured. The computer otherwise works fine now or, at the very least, I'm back where I started. I tried the other driver options in vain. I then decided to call Xerox tech support. I reached a live person in under 30 seconds. (!) I figured this meant one of several things: That 1) Xerox products are so good that they don't require support, and that I was just some ape brandishing mastodon bones at the foot of the Xerox Monolith, 2) a phalanx of knowledgable support professionals was there to help me, or 3) no one is buying their stuff anyway. I was told that the XJ6C was *gasp* a four-year-old device and that the company had opted not to develop an XP driver and pursue the necessary certification for that product. "You can try the driver for the Hewlett-Packard 550c," the support tech said. Shame on Xerox for all-too-quickly end-of-lifing support for some of its products and not properly supporting its customers? Shame on Microsoft for not putting in some kind of 98/NT driver-level emulation? Who knows? HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes[[dot}]com SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.