Once upon a time, I had a Lexmark Color Inkjet Printer. It had cost me
over $250. It had a single cartridge for black and the three primary
colors and each was hideously expensive. I only used it when absolutely
necessary and tried to balance to the color use so that each $60 went as
far as possible.
One day, my son announced that he wanted a good (non-dot matrix) printer
for his computer and asked for a laser for his birthday. Not being able
to afford one at that time, I researched ink jet printers and found that
Canon printers had the cheapest cartridges and, in fact, usually had one
for each color. I bought him one and, after use, he was thrilled. The
print quality was great, maintenance costs were very low. In fact, it
was so good, I gave away the Lexmark and bought myself a Canon S750.
This printer faithfully served me for over ten years. I could always
rely on the print quality, I could use it a lot, since each cartridge
was cheap, It only installed a driver which dutifully informed me of ink
levels every time I printed. When I bought a wireless print server, it
had no problem and still performed as if it were a dedicated printer.
Life was Good.
Good things don't last. Late last year, the dear S750 gave up the
ghost. After over ten years of service, it didn't seem like a good idea
just to fix it. Technology had moved on. There were new things. So I
went to the nearby Staples to buy a printer. It seems like a good idea,
they had a $30 credit if you bought a printer, all their fliers said so!
I was entranced by the HP D5460, it was more compact, had a cute little
LCD display to keep you informed and even had slots for camera memory.
How could I go wrong? Little did I know at the time.
First Staples reneged on the rebate. They happily pointed out that the
excruciatingly small print on each flyer meant that the printer had to
be of a certain price, bought during a certain phase of the moon, but
only on a pluterday. But we all expect rebates to be fantasy.
On returning home with the printer, it first informed me that it
couldn't load drivers with the printer on the network. It firmly
insisted the printer be attached to the computer or it wouldn't install.
So twice I had to lug the printer over to two different computers to
install drivers. And what an install! 135 Megs later, I had all sorts
of applications, including one that announced "Buy supplies from HP!"
which couldn't be uninstalled without breaking the printer driver. I
dealt with that later, however, installing the drivers this way now
broke the print server software, which now had to be reinstalled. I did
that and was thrilled that now everything worked! I printed a test page
from each computer. Looking good.
The next time I printed, nothing happened. After I had printed two
pages, the printer sensed that I now needed new cartridges and refused
to print unless I went over and pushed the 'Ok' button, acknowledging
that I understood that the printer was desperately out of ink!
It was then that I noticed a single page stuck into the printer docs
that announced that the low ink indication really wasn't a low ink
indication, but more of an indication that you should buy new carts and
be ready. Such genius.
Well, printing seemed to be fine, but I went back to staples to buy ink,
figuring just once won't be bad, I can then get more online later.
Sticker Shock! Ink was now three times as expensive as the Canon. Even
online it was 2X expensive.
Needless to say, despite the low ink warning, it did print fine for a
long while afterwards.
I missed the ability to know what the ink levels were, just in case I
was going to print pictures. There seemed to be an application, called
the HP Solutions Center, which would tell me the ink levels. I did not
install it at first, because I had experience with 'Solutions Centers'
and knew that was the equivalent of 'Abandon hope all ye..."
Installed it and watched the noisy HP driver pop-ups which dutifully
told me that the print levels were not available at this time. In fact,
they never seemed to be available. Further, the Solutions center told
me that my printer was not active and will I please turn it on. But it
still printed.
So I did what I thought that HP provided....I call Tech Support. After
negotiating 3 voice response systems, I was finally connected to Arripta
at the 7-Eleven, opps, I mean India. She would be very happy to help me
and would I like her to fix it by remotely accessing my computer? Sure,
what the hell. After much entry of information, name, assisting tech
and the 10 digit case number which I would eventually memorize
(8026646878, yes it will haunt me), the application, which happened to
be VNC, hung as starting session. This was because I was trying to use
Firefox and could I please use IE. That didn't improve the situation,
in fact, it continued to look identical. The hand occurred three more
times in succession including a fourth time when my Indian 'friend's'
computer hung also. Of course then followed an intense session of
trying to figure out what was wrong with MY computer. My cache was
cleared so many times, you could see yourself in the shine. Arripta
seemed to love to do the same things over and over again, hoping
something different would happen. Finally she ascertained it was
because I was using IE8 and would I please go and download IE7 and
install it. After an hour of this, I decided I had had enough, told her
so and hung up.
But it's not over....
HP send me an email, asking me about my support experience. Hmm, is
there something lower than zero...then I came to the question: If you
need to contact HP Support again, how would I do it, with all the usual
suspects: email, website, phone, etc. Unwisely they added a choice
called 'other' where I could fill it in. I typed in that I would buy
another manufacturer's printer. Cute for me, but a bad idea because...
The next night at the same time, Arripta called me back. She had the
problem solved! (At least hers). Surprise, surprise, suddenly we could
connect and she had control of my computer. Sigh, at least she was
consistent, she still had the idea that doing things 4 or 5 times in a
row was some kind of charm. Luckily I have another computer, so I
walked away and played my games while she played hers. Some of what she
did was repeatedly try to reinstall the Solutions center and clean the
cache, etc. Finally she announced that the firewall was causing a
problem. Even though it has been turned off since I installed. She
spend another 20 minutes opening up ports in the disabled firewall,
since that was so boring to her, she began to chat me up. Really, wow,
now I've got a date in India.
Finally she announced that all I had to do was reboot and it was all
fixed. And...would I mind talking to her supervisor. At least he spoke
English with less of an accent. He proceeded to tell me that Arripta
was his best tech (I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling him I
felt sorry for him) and thank you for being so patient. At that point
the system came up and to no surprise, the situation remained the same.
The moment I told him it still didn't work, he vanished faster than
any metaphor I can think of. My dear friend Arripta was back and
telling me that there was something in my print server that was blocking
the messages and I should take to them. AND she would be sure to call
me at the same time tomorrow. I was beginning to realize the power of
threats.
Linksys' support site was brilliant and to the point: They support
bi-directional communications to the printer, however, most printer
software does not support networking.
Arripta never called back. I guess we are officially estranged.
Sorry to inflict this on the list, but I had to get this out....
Steve
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