Ted Ashton writes:

>  Truly said.  Moreover, I don't buy the conclusion.  I would like someone to
>explain to me how it is *possible* to create a printer which will only work
>with Windows.

It's certainly possible, but that's not what HP has done. What they have
done is to move the formatting tasks into the PC, and use their Windows
drivers to take over the job that was formerly done by the formatter
inside the printer. This saves a few dollars, at the cost of giving the
user a less responsive PC (and making their printer essentially unusable
with operating systems that are irrelevant, like Linux and MPE). It makes
it much harder to write drivers, since the drivers must adopt the
poorly-engineered and idiosyncratic Windows imaging model.

3Com (formerly US Robotics) does the same thing with their "WinModem",
which uses an 8-bit processor instead of the usual 16-bit processor and
has the PC do the error correction and protocol management. That product,
too, is essentially unusable except with Windows. The user saves a couple
of dollars on the modem, which must then be spent on a faster PC. But
while the user certainly associates the price of the modem with the modem
itself, the slower PC is just part of progress and doesn't seem to have
anything to do with the modem. It's the same principle as payroll
withholding.

Sorry. I'm facing yet another full day of fighting PC "engineering", and
I'm beginning to think that Sisyphus had it easy.

-- Bruce


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