On Wed, 20 Jan 1999 12:30:44 +0000, Richard Ross
<richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> jammed all night, and by sunrise was
overheard remarking:
> It seems to me that HP's software is in general the achilles heel of their
> products.
I absolutely agree with this. In fact, I just wrote to HP about their
lack of software support about a week ago.
As an electronics engineer, I always had a good opinion of HP hardware
and technology. After all, they made lots of very good lab equipment I
used over the years. The first thing I learned to program was an HP
calculator my Dad used to take home from work.
But all computer devices are a mix of HW and SW these days, and without
the SW, you're doomed.
> The s/w for my Laserjet 5L printer is rubbish, it's forever
> crashing and/or not doing what I ask it to (on several PCs, so it's not
> h/w, and with both WIn 3 and 95) and my colleague has terrible trouble with
> his HP CD writer. I would have grave doubts about buying another HP
> product; their technical support for my printer problems was useless too -
> it more or less boiled down to "buy a new computer".
In fact, I got a very similar response from them, on one of their own
products. Roughly two years ago I bought an HP SureStore 6020i CD
Writer. Last month, due to just too many hardware conflicts and other
companies support policies, I was forced to "upgrade" my Windows machine
to Windows 98 -- not my choice, just the only hope I had of getting
things to work properly (as it is, they're only less flakey, and I am
finally having to upgrade some hardware).
Anyway, the CD writer isn't behaving well, it burned a short-stack of
drink coasters the other day. So I check out HP's usually-good Web site,
look up the 6020i, and -- "Since this device shipped long before Windows
98 was released, it was not designed for Windows 98 and we're not
supporting it". Right. Anyone with 1/4 of a clue about SCSI devices and
operating systems knows very well you don't design a CD Writer for
Windows, you design it for SCSI, then you support it under Windows with
the appropriate piece of software. They're just blowing it off because
they replaced it with a new generation (very likely, a different OEM's
CD-Writer mechanism) a year or so ago, and again just recently.
Now, I have dealt with lots of companies over the years. Even the little
one typically support a thing for a good 3-5 years after it's off the
market. To see this from a "real" and once respected company is just too
much. I will not buy another HP product. With a policy like that, I have
no assurances I won't have to replace my printer, lab equipment, or
whatever long before the life of the product has cycled (ironically,
that same Web site has Windows 98 drivers for the HP printer I bought
years before the CD Writer, relegated to the kids' computer when I
needed a pseudo-photo-quality printer and got Canon's).
--
Dave Haynie | V.P. Technology, Met@box Infonet, AG | http://www.metabox.de
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