The latest installment of our ongoing discussion about drivers was prompted by my recent Weblog post about Umax. For many models of Umax scanners, drivers for both old and new operating systems that were previously available for free download are no longer accessible online. Customers must instead order a $15 CD and wait for it to arrive in the mail. Many readers expressed the view that such a policy is one that manufacturers adopt at their peril.
"I agree it's very shortsighted for any company to charge for drivers," wrote one reader. "In my mind, that's just a cost of doing business and keeping your customers happy. Failure to do so will simply mean your customer base will migrate to a competitor that is offering such items at no charge -- and there are plenty of 'em out there. It just doesn't make good business sense period to charge for drivers."
A number of readers reported they had had similar experiences with Umax. "Umax has been acting this way for some time," wrote another reader. "When I upgraded from NT4 to Windows 2000, my Umax scanner quit working. It turned out that the firmware it shipped with was incompatible with Win2k. There was a newer firmware that shipped with newer version of the same scanner, however. When contacted, Umax refused to sell me the firmware upgrade because they had chosen not to support the scanner on Win2k. At the time, the device was only a couple of years old. I eventually found a fellow engineer via the Web who had been burning firmware EPROMs at cost for others because he was outraged at how much Umax was charging for the upgrades. Using that, I got my scanner working and still use it today. Umax's suggestion was to buy a newer Umax scanner. I can assure you that that will never happen. Ever."
While customers were frustrated by having to pay for old Umax drivers, many felt that it's reasonable for vendors to charge for new ones. "If Umax charges a customer for the same driver that the customer has already bought, yes, that is unfair," wrote another reader." But if Microsoft changes something in its latest version of Windows that breaks a Umax driver, or if there are conflicts with other (new) devices or drivers that users are starting to use, then there can be very significant costs to Umax to update the driver, and I think they have the right to recover those costs by charging people who want their old products to work in new environments."
Even though whose who are willing to pay for updated drivers can run into problems though. "Earlier this year I found that Umax now offered a software upgrade for my scanner that would work under Windows XP," wrote another reader. "I could not download it so I paid a reasonable cost, $14.95, to have a CD mailed. When I installed the software, it would not work. I contacted Umax support and was then told that it did not support my USB to SCSI adapter. No suggestions, no refund, just 'tough luck.' There was nothing on the Umax site where I ordered the software warning of this!"
Of course, driver issues such as this are not exclusive to Umax, as readers pointed out similar policies from other manufacturers. "I had a similar experience with HP," wrote one reader. "They charged me for a replacement driver CD for a scanner when they could not solve a problem with the installation from the original CD. Needless to say, HP is off my list of vendors."
1:26:02 PM 
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