If he's an idiot, for trying to be helpful, I guess that makes you an
absolute genius and a saint. It's people like you that make me hope
there is Karma.
I just had a discussion today with the printer division at MS about what
options for older printer owners (that's the printers that are old, not
necessarily the people).
Here's the scoop. Microsoft has tried to offer some basic printer
drivers "in box" with each of their OSs to simplify installation for
people who may not have their driver disks anymore, or for printers than
may have been forgotten by the manufacturers over the years. However,
they do not offer drivers for every printer, and the drivers tend to be
simplified relative to what the manufacturer may have originally
offered. This often means the driver, if it exists will have a limited
feature set.
In terms of how to approach this:
If you are upgrading your OS, first, before doing so, check the
internet, both manufacturer's websites and other private or driver
collection sites to see if a more current driver that will work with the
new OS you are planning to install is available. This involves nay
peripheral, including printers, scanners, video or sound cards, and so on.
Sometimes individuals hack or create newer drivers for newer OSs even if
the manufacturer has not. In cases of things like sound and video cards,
many times the manufacturer has been bought out and you may need to
follow the yellow brick road to find a working driver at a new website
or a legacy site. Sometimes, you will find a driver that works with the
chipset on the card even if it is not designated to the specific
manufacturer. If you find some, download them before migrating to the
new OS, and place them on a floppy if small enough, or CD.
If none can be found, the OS may have "in box" drivers from the OS
provider. They often are more basic. Sadly, with printers, they do
little more than print text, but you won't know until you install them
and try. If the OS finds the device, it usually should allow it to
work, at least in some limited fashion. If you cannot print a test
page, chances are there is either a conflict with a port, IRQ or
something in the CMOS/bios. It may require some testing to get it
working. A common problem is a printer port or parallel port
misconfiguration. Check the CMOS/bios to see how the LPT1 (for
instance) printer port is set up. Port speed, directionality, and type
may all influence how the printer and computer respond to each other.
If you are unable to find a driver to work with the OS printer
combination, there are probably only a few options open to you:
1) You can certainly complain to the manufacturer, although they are not
under legal obligation in most jurisdictions to provide a working
driver, some countries may have time periods that the manufacturer is
required to keep the product functional in new environments.
Even if that isn't the case, sometimes if you press the issue the
manufacturer will inform you of a unofficial updated driver that may not
be fully debugged, but they will allow you to have a copy with the
caveat that it is not considered finalized (and never will be). They
may also know of unofficial hacks, etc.
You can certainly still voice your complaint, or see if they will offer
you a trade up giving you some "good will" discount for your older
printer. You can also threaten not to buy their product anymore if they
don't support their older products.
2) You can use your older computer, if you have one, and network it or
make it your "printing engine" This may allow you to simply transfer
files to it by intra or internet, or by disk swapping, and then print it
using the old drivers on a system using the old OS.
3) You can consider buying a program such as "Virtual PC" which allows
you to run more than one OS under one machine. Depending upon the port
configuration, you might be able to continue to use your older printers
in a virtual environment.
Probably for most people who have standard letter size printers, running
a second system with an old OS may seem overkill in terms of redundancy,
inconvenience, and upkeep, unless you wanted to network them anyway.
However, for larger printers, like the ProXL, as an example, it is both
costly to replace and slow, and having a dedicated system for printing
may make sense if you have the space.
Art
