Things I don't understand: A Rant

1)  I do not understand why an inkjet printer (or a laser printer for that matter) for small business or personal use requires a full CD (sometimes a DVD full) of installation software complete with a menu with a bazillion options you'll never change, connectivity to the internet to verify the latest software is installed on your system and memory resident programs associated with that printer run constantly on the system. 
 
A printer needs a driver.  You need minimal interaction with it to clean and align the print heads.  Why do I need 80G of STUFF loaded on my computer for the printer?  The driver and necessary utility shouldn't come any where near 80G.  unbelievably ridiculous.
 
2) Why does a print job not cancel immediately when I tell it to cancel?  I don't understand this concept.  If it's because it's in the printer's buffer - then clear out the printer buffer.  if the printer is not communicating - then why can't the 80G of computer software loaded on the computer be capable of turning off power to the printer or some other way of completely restarting the printer so that the buffer is clear and the communication is now either open or not, but the print job no longer is relevant?
 
3) Why doesn't an application in windows close immediately when I tell it to close - especially if I've gone to the task manager and killed it there?  with 10^9 cycles per second of instruction, why does it take MINUTES to kill some tasks?  I would think that when I say "KILL THE PROCESS" it should never take more than part of a second to do it.  why does windows allow it to continue to run after I've said STOP RUNNING?  makes NO SENSE to me.
 
I'm sure there are more things that annoy me that I don't understand...but those are the ones on my mind for now. 

I don't understand Mooch. Now this.

4) why does software installed on windows systems require a reboot for installation or uninstallation?  why can't it just be done with windows running?  is windows so blasted screwed up that adding or removing a few registry entries it can't handle it without reboot? 

5) why do people not understand what I don't understand?  are they too bapu to "get it?" 

Beagle


5) why do people not understand what I don't understand?  are they too bapu to "get it?" 

I thought all the questions were asked in the original post.....now this.

bapu


Maybe I don't understand what understand means.

you must be fully bapu'ed by my post then...

Beagle

bapu


Maybe I don't understand what understand means.

you must be fully bapu'ed by my post then...

Ya Yes I Am are sure of that. 

daryl1968


Hewlett Packard are the devil

How in the world did you know which manufacturer I have been fighting with all FRICKIN morning?????

I don't understand why these guys think they're so great.  here at work, these printers are installed in automatic testers (19" rack equipment run by software on a rack mounted computer).  each engineer is responsible for one or more of these testers.  they each get to choose what equipment (within parameters) to put into their testers.  sometimes there are reasons for other engineers to use each others testers.  ALL of the testers (11 different tester types) EXCEPT mine use HP inkjet printers. 
In mine I have a Brother Laser printer.  it works flawlessly.  these blasted HP inkjets we have to replace all the time for one problem or another.    I have no idea why they keep buying the same frickin printers!

Beagle

1)  I do not understand why an inkjet printer (or a laser printer for that matter) for small business or personal use requires a full CD (sometimes a DVD full) of installation software complete with a menu with a bazillion options you'll never change, connectivity to the internet to verify the latest software is installed on your system and memory resident programs associated with that printer run constantly on the system. 
 
A printer needs a driver.  You need minimal interaction with it to clean and align the print heads.  Why do I need 80G of STUFF loaded on my computer for the printer?  The driver and necessary utility shouldn't come any where near 80G.  unbelievably ridiculous.

You can do a manual installation, but the .inf files are well hidden on the CD's. I do a manual installation and skip all that crap that comes on the installation CD's. The head alignment utility is in the driver. Usually there is an option if you do a custom installation, that allows you to install the driver only, but I still prefer to do a manual installation. Another thing I always used to do too is, I would never use the installation CD on a customers network. I would download the latest driver and install that only.

 
2) Why does a print job not cancel immediately when I tell it to cancel?  I don't understand this concept.  If it's because it's in the printer's buffer - then clear out the printer buffer.

Depends on what you are printing. Everything you print goes in to the print spooler. All documents with any kind of graphics, bullets, photo's, charts, etc, must be expanded and converted to a bitmap file, before they can be printed. So depending on how many graphics you have in a file, the file could end up being enormous even though the actual .doc file is relatively small. Think of graphics files as many different types of .zip files. All of them are compressed, and those that aren't usually can't be imported in to a .doc file, or you wouldn't want to in the first place. Nobody likes emailing 20MB .doc files.

Adobe PDF files are the worst for this. The entire file, text, graphics, and all, are compressed and need to be 'inflated' so to speak by the print driver and spooler before they are printed.

If you are having a lot of trouble with large print spools, jobs not printing even though it says they printed, and odd things like that, sometimes the IP port gets corrupted if it's a network printer. You'll have to go in, manually delete the port, and re-add it. This happens on USB printers too, but very rarely, and then all you do is just move your cable to a different port so your PC has to rediscover the printer again.

 
3) Why doesn't an application in windows close immediately when I tell it to close - especially if I've gone to the task manager and killed it there?  with 10^9 cycles per second of instruction, why does it take MINUTES to kill some tasks?  I would think that when I say "KILL THE PROCESS" it should never take more than part of a second to do it.  why does windows allow it to continue to run after I've said STOP RUNNING?  makes NO SENSE to me.

There's software out there to forcefully stop a program when it's stuck like that. Bad thing is, you have to have it running in the background as far as I can tell, and I don't want it running in the background while I'm running Sonar anything else.

trimph1

HP are unlike any other printer out there...my silly little Canon PIXMA series thing had an install disc as well...but nary any issue at all.

I had HP for a computer one time..that was a disaster!!!!

Canon makes HP printers.

Parts numbers, with the exception of model specific items such as PCB's, lasers, laser motors, etc, are the same except they have an extra letter at the end sometimes to signify it's going in to an HP printer rather than a Canon printer or copier. HP's higher end printers are Canon and Konica Minolta.

Mesh

Beagle


   I have no idea why they keep buying the same frickin printers!

You must be working for the Gov. or you're contracted by them.....if yes, I know what you're going through.

yes, government contractor.  but we as engineers can choose what to use.  I chose Brother laser for my testers - these other guys all chose these stupid HP inkjets.

Beagle

I don't understand why it's not an option from the frickin printer mfgs.  I don't need gigs of crap software for photo printing and webtools for uploading images to facebook or yada yada yada crap!  I just want the driver and minimal utilities - why can't I choose to install just that?

Unless things have changed, I have been out of the business now for almost 3 years and things do change rapidly in this business, there is an option to just install the driver without any of the other crap. It's usually hidden somewhere in the 'Custom Installation' option. They hide it because the want you to install all this 'lite' software crap and then upgrade to the 'full' versions.

... I've been trying to print is a simple word document (no graphics) and simple text files (ASCII text files only - nothing fancy).  those things should kill easily.

.txt files should hit the print spooler and print in less than a second after clicking 'Print'. If not, something is wrong with your printer, cable, or software.

this printer is connected directly to the computer via USB, no network connection.

Try a different USB port.

I didn't know about the software to forcefully stop a program when you tell it.  However, why doesn't windows do that without a 3rd party software to do its job for it????

Excellent question we all would like an answer to. :)

just a rant...nothing to see here.  move along...

Will do. Heading in to town to get some lunch on my forced day off (OT reduction).

It sounds like you should just turn that thing off Reece.  To do that you'll need to go to Start...