Saturday, 09 July 2005, 15:46:53 EDT
Every time I use Windows I hate it just a little bit more; okay, maybe more than a little bit. I recently purchased a wireless print server. I had become frustrated trying to get my Powerbook to use my printer shared via my Ubuntu desktop. For some reason OS X just refused to work with the printer and I was tired of fighting with it. The print server was on sale, actually on sale, no mail in rebates, at CompUSA and my local store had some in stock. The device isn't what I would call quality hardware but it works. I can print to my printer, connected to the print server, via OS X and Ubuntu by using the LPD protocol; each OS uses the Gimp-Print system so I don't have to track down drivers for my printer, they are just there.
So, why does all of this make me dislike Windows even more? Well, the print server is technically designed to work with Windows just like 98% of all the hardware out there. Since it is designed to work with Windows one would assume that it should be insanely easy to set up the printer in Windows, right? Not the case. The print server comes with some software for Windows that is supposed to search the network for the print server and automatically configure a new printer port on the system and then walk the user through configuring the printer drivers. The software does not f ... (view rest)