Personally, I think I responded more to the manner of QED’s attack than to the attack itself.
It is immensely insulting to the user, when instead of true technical support all that is proffered is a glib shit-bomb of worthless hyperlinks. Sure, it happens a lot around here, but since QED is not a computer support professional, I make every effort to give him a pass. I let it slide because while he might not always be right, he usually seems to have the best intentions.
This time, his style was just offensive, and to me represents a cardinal sin of technical support: laziness. Not only was QED unfamiliar with the thread, he couldn’t even be bothered to research the links in my earlier post!
The capper, though, is that he is apparently incapable of admitting his mistakes or apologizing without adding copious excuses for his actions. Sadly, coupled with his earlier offense, this makes me question his intentions.
It’s also symptomatic of the classic Dementia- Degenerative Googlemania. Anything easily searched, is and quickly posted. I’ve seen some manage to reverse the course.
Allow me to add my kudos to the OP for a stunning perfect 10 of a rant.
However, I must quibble with one tiny little bit: I simply adore the way my Lexmark intones, “Printing…has…started!” I also love the way it announces, “Problem…communicating…with…the…printer!” which is so much more tasteful than the more blunt, “Hey, turn the printer on, ya dumbass!”
However, those are the ONLY things I adore about my Lexmark printer, and when it mercifully gives up the ghost, hopefully sometime soon, I will throw it away without a backwards glance and buy another HP.
In all fairness to QED he was responding to an exchange between you and Teaelle that revolved around TeaElle’s general assertion that these sorts of problems did not occur with non-MS OSes.
Your retort to TeaElle’s broad and sloppy assertion about the crappiness MS OSes could have reasonably been taken either way as a challenge to produce any alternative OS Lexmark drivers, not just ones specific to the OP’s printer.
What “attack”? You call a couple links and a bit of sarcasm an attack? If you’re referring to the “dumbass” remark - that wasn’t an attack, that was a response to your insult, pal.
Oh, bullshit. Even disregarding the fact that “copious” is gross hyperbole, there are plenty of times I’ve owned up to errors without excuse. If you can’t play nice, at least be honest.
As for the rest, I see astro has summed it up nicely.
There was no exchange. I know this particular printer/fax/scanner will simply not function unless there’s Microsoft. Therefore, and with no defense, TeaElle’s post is a drive-by cow pie. Too bad she forgot to roll down the window.
Some poster called QED chose to defend someone covered with bullshit.
The mess we’re in sucks ass, but if it weren’t for the immense driver library afforded by the incomparable resources of Microsoft, Lexmark would not be in business. Same with Canon. Same with HP/Compaq. Same with Dell. Fact of life, just like the Bush Administration.
How about this for an aside: if this were MacWorld, we’d be pitting one flimsy inkjet printer that fails because your Chooser is “mixed up”. And if it were LinuxWorld, we’d be bitterly arguing about USB overhead and no one would ever print onto paper without first schlepping files to Kinko’s.
In the context of this thread, I don’t see how you can arrive at this conclusion. I respect your opinion, but why would you say this?
I HAD a Lexmark printer-and to replace the two ink cartridges (color and black) cost MORE that the printer itself! So the last time I needed ink, I bought a new Epson printer-with the rebate, I got a new printer for $5.00 more than two Lexmark ink cartridges.
However, I’m finding out about EPSON…their ink cartridges are cheap (about $7.00), but they don’t print too many pages!
Regarding refilling ink cartridges…I have done it! But it is not easy(you have to drill a hole), and you must do it as soon as the old ink is exhausted-if you wait too long, the felt wick dries out and the ting will never work properly.
PS: Why fo HP printers always feed a balnk page at the start of a print job? Do they have a deal with the paper mfgs?
Jurph: A most excellent rant, and, more importantly, a warning.
Until I read this post, I’d merely heard a few uncomplimentary things about Lexmark’s wares.
Now I will make a point of never, never, never buying anything from these people. Word of mouth MEANS something in the cyber community… and life is too short to spend it dinking with software guts and stopping occasionally to spout plumes of profanity.
Why don’t you shut the fuck up? You pull this crap every time someone calls you on your bullshit. In deference to Jurph, I will “drop it” as you put it, but don’t think for a moment that has anything to do with you.
I agree and disagree on the Lexmark. I carried a bag for IBM for a few years and have had to service these things. Lexmark made one or two good inkjet models that cost a small fortune and were geared to be a cheap plotter. Then came the home market. Those printers are best used as boat anchors.
Their lasers, however, are a different story. I haven’t worked on any of the newer laser printers, but I have completely rebuilt many of the Optra S series as well as some of the older models. These things are built like tanks and last almost forever. I bought a S when it was new and it still prints like it. Generic drivers work in windows and Linux. The best part, you can still get them on E-Bay.
I use an Optra 1625 at work. Other than a recent incident in which that little foam strip that wipes off the copy as it comes out coming loose and getting chewed up inside the printer, the thing can’t be killed.
Excellent rant. Remind me to do my rant about all minor and peripheral software that think that installation gives them permission to;
reorganise your system
place crud on your desktop
add links to your browser
reassociate file types that are only barely related to its function.
create a lame and childish ‘My Computer Files’ directory in the documents directory.
surplant existing system software with crappy singing/dancing, “user friendly” propriety software that’s 3 times as slow, twice as bloated and breaks everything else.
install a startup service that takes up memory and taskbar space just so I can see an stupid animated icon that gives up-to-the-second status reports for something I use maybe once a month
connect up to the internet whenever the fancy takes it to hassle you about upgrades and ‘other software you may be interested in’.
You spend 5 minutes installing it and another 30 clearing up the mess its made making itself at home on your computer.
