A Scanner Darkly
For a long time in college, I thought I was going to be a graphic designer. I was doing a lot of graphics work with my theater company, as well as doing covers for some of the lesser sports at the University of Michigan (lesser only in exposure; they were incredible atheletes who won most of the time). I needed to do a lot of scanning of images, so my parents generously bought me a scanner. I used it all the time; it allowed me to do almost all of my work at home instead of trudging to an office or computer lab. If you've never lived in Michigan in February without a car, trust me: you want to trudge as little as possible.
For Christmas, my parents got me another generous gift: a fantastic camera. I just went and developed my first four rolls of film. There's some nice stuff in there from our vacation with Shannon's business fraternity and some walks I've taken around my apartment complex during an ice storm.
The problem is that the idotic HP software was designed for Windows 98 and only Windows 98. Not 2000, not ME, and certainly not XP, which means I can't use my scanner (I'm running Windows 2000). When you try to install it under another OS, a helpful window pops up informing you that "We're sorry, but this software will only work with Windows 98."
So I, as any semi-intelligent computer consumer would, went to the Hewlett-Packard website to download the Windows 2000 drivers for the scanner. The driver page has a "Windows 2000 Pro Update" download, which I thought would do the trick. As it happens, that seems to update a later version of the software than the one I have. There was nothing I could download from their website to make it work. My only option was to buy another CD for $10.55. I know, I couldn't believe it, either.
Against my better judgement, and resenting it every step of the way, I bought the software, but this is the last time I buy anything from Hewlett Packard.
Which, I guess, is just as well, given their recent troubles.
7:36:57 PM 
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