[Gllug] Grauniad Technology

[Aaron Trevena]

> Indeed. I recently bought an HP printer/scanner/copier/fax (HP
> Officejet 6310) which has been absolutely panned in Amazon reviews due
> to shockingly bad XP and Vista drivers. Yet when I plugged it in to my
> Ubuntu laptop the whole thing worked out of the box. No driver
> downloads or additional software installs required. I was up and
> running with the printer and scanner components in a matter of
> moments. The memory card readers work as mass storage devices when the
> printer is attached via USB, and the printer itself shows up on the
> network when attached via ethernet. If I want I can add a little HP
> app (which is in the repository) which lets me check ink levels and do
> other printer maintenance.
>
> Quite a non-event really, but in a nice way.

I've had much the same experience with the hp psc 2410 3-in-1 job.

Can't scan at all on Win XP or Vista, and the fax/printer combo
confuses windows badly (if you're logged into multiple users it can
sometimes pop up the fax gui in the wrong users screen when you try to
print), the Vista drivers also reset the quality to highest possible
every time windows restarts.

On linux it all just works nicely, and I even get notified of low ink
unobtrusively (vs the 3 or 4 modal dialogs on windows) via the gnome
panel applet.

For added bonus happy joy, MovieMaker doesn't read the video from my
JVC hdd video camera while it JustWorks(TM) with the linux video apps
I have installed.

These days, I do find that 90% of the time peripherals and multimedia
are better supported on Linux.

A.

-- 
http://www.aarontrevena.co.uk
LAMP System Integration, Development and Hosting
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