The mystery and challenge of computers, even Apple ones

Sometimes I think the number of computer challenges that you face goes up geometrically with the number of computers that you use.

I know that this is not just an Apple problem.  There are plenty of problems over in the Windows world. 

I spent most of my time on three Macs and two Windows machines so I see it all.

I have gotten to the point that I try not to upgrade anything unless absolutely necessary. 

I did not even seriously consider Leopard, because aside from the Time Machine backup utility, I really do not see anything in it that I need.

My one Windows XP machine will likely die as a XP machine.  I have no intention of trying to upgrade it.  Everything works just fine on it except of course my Linux partition that I can't access.

The new Vista machine is coming along nicely.  I continue to find things that I like about Picasa which is now serving as my main repository of photos.

Though I really like the Picasa user interface, storing the photos in Windows is mainly due to lack of hard drive space on my MacBook which will also never make it to Leopard.

I have seen some interesting problems on computers, but my latest one on my MacBook is one that has me stumped.  When I do the traditional OS X screen shot capture on the MacBook, I always get nothing but a black screen when I open the image.

My first thought was that it was browser related, but so far that has not turned out to be the case.  I know Apple has not done anything since my other Macs continue to work fine.

I suspect something that I installed caused the problem, but it is not a big enough problem for me to devote a lot of energy to solving.  It is one of those things that I can live with because I have four other computers that will take screen snapshots.

Often the little problems that drive you crazy have little or nothing to do with operating systems.  The ones that cause me the most pain are the ones where they have very specific instructions which do not work.

I have been starting to pay some attention to Plaxo Pulse.  I just noticed this neat "Lifestream Widget" that they had.  It shows on your web page the latest posts that you have done which are hooked to Plaxo Pulse.

They had specific instructions for how to do it with WordPress.  I have a WordPress Ocracokewaves blog so I tried it, but I could not get it to work. I spent more time that I should have trying to figure a solution.

I did get a couple of other widgets working, the one for Flickr and another one which does a blog roll.

The lack of success with the widget on WordPress is one of those user errors which will I never figure out unless I corner some other user who has figured it out.

Most times one of the biggest warning flags is a set of special instructions on how to do something.

The "lifestream widget" actually works really well.  I know that to be the case since it was a piece of cake to install on my Ocracokewaves Blogger site.  If you scroll down a ways you will see it under the title of "Check my Pulse."

I guess one of the things that makes the web such a powerful environment these days is that you can play around with things like a lifestream widget and not screw up your computer.

So much of the stuff we hook to our computers these days is so sophisticated that it does not take much to give them heartburn.  I know that well from the battles that I have had recently getting my Epson 4000 printer to work reliably on Mac OSX 10.4.10.

It was almost as bad as my experience with my Epson 2200 and Tiger which caused me to write a post, The Epson 2200 Saga.

Today I hooked the same Epson 2200 up to my Windows Vista machine.  It actually worked without any problems once I installed the driver.

Perhaps Epson's drivers for the Mac are particularly bad, but I know from experience that HP's are not much better since I have had a few challenges with my HP AIO Photosmart C6180 and Mac OSX.

It occurs to me that in spite of the dire warning about print drivers, I have had no problems with print drivers and Vista.  In fact my HP printers seem to work a little better with my HP laptop than they do with my MacBook. 

I will not try any other HP software on either platform since the other HP software I have tried is pretty scary.

That brings me to an interesting thought, it would be really neat if Apple made a few printers these days.

I think it would be great to know that a printer works really well with a Mac because the printer came from Apple which one would assume would mean that it might also work really well after system upgrades.

I know Apple is busy doing other stuff, but a big part of my computing experience is printers, and if making the whole widget works as a theory for improving the user experience (computer and operating system), I do not know why it would not work for the operating system, computer and printers.

It certainly used to be one of the joys of using Apple products. You could plug all those items with an Apple logo on them together and they would function flawlessly.

Maybe if Apple will not consider coming out with an Apple produced line of printers, we could convince them to do just one printer, a fantastic AIO that scans, faxes, prints, and does copies.

I would be really happy with that, and I bet they would sell a boat load of them. 

I wonder if Apple cut a deal to not produce printers so HP and Epson would write drivers for the Mac?

I suspect any loss of printer drivers would be a huge blow to Apple.

Comments

[John Rowe]

I recommend a Canon printer. Not only to they seem to be the most reliable (in my statistically insignificant sample) but they seem to have really good OS X drivers. Their Windows drivers tend to get the job done but trip over themselves on my Vista machine.

Also, Leopard isn't worth upgrading to for the big features - they a wash. It's the little things that make the difference - iCal is finally not ball-less, Mail is an organisational powerhouse and the memory usage of all apps is knocked down by a half. There's tonnes of other little things sprinkled throughout the system that don't make bullet points but just smooth over the OS experience that little bit more...

Good luck!

[TRS-80]

Linux printing is rapidly approaching the it just works point: http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2007/11/12/i-love-it-when-things-just-work/ . OS X uses the same printing backend as Linux (CUPS - in fact they bought it and hired the lead developer) so I can't imagine there's a deal with HP stopping Apple from making their own printers.