Computer fun
I get a call last night from a friend who's having computer problems. He inherited a computer and printer from my aunt and the printer's gone "wonky" so on the spur of the moment he went out to buy another in this case an Epson all-in-one. Having been relatively well-trained one of the first things he tells me is that the operating system he's using is Windows 98.
"Ah", I say.
"So I put the disc in and it..."
"Tells you that it's the wrong operating system"
"Yeah"
"Ah"
I've just switched on my PS3 so I head over to the Epson site to see what they say, head through support, tap in the model number and find I can go no further because they've neglected to add a "Go" button. Pulling out the laptop and repeating the exercise I discover that's because they're trying to be clever and matching up your text as you type to offer the right model in a floating box, which the PS3 browser apparently doesn't support.
No drivers for 98, but a Google search comes up with a step by step instruction from Epson to install manually. That fails at the first hurdle as the CD doesn't come with the folders suggested and a 'just find it' also fails.
Now I know that for HP you used to be able to install the 550 printer drivers and they'd work with pretty much any HP Printer, but I don't know if there are any generic Epson drivers around. He's got a separate scanner that works so he doesn't need to use that, and like my printer a lot can be done from the printer itself; so all he needs is the ability to print.
Now there is the Epson EasyPrint module but read it carefully. Despite saying in the blurb it supports Win98 when it gets to specifics that gets removed.
Trouble is he doesn't have an internet connection so I'd have to download it for him and courier it across; not really a problem just annoying if the first thing it bleats to me is about not supporting that operating system.
So anyone know?
5 comments:
Most printer manufacturers don't bother making drivers for Linux either, so the Linux guys tend to know quite a bit about how to drive various printers. Linux Printing may or may not have useful data.
For laser printers, most of them will accept PostScript, so Adobe's generic PS driver will drive them. However, the cheap laser printers often use something weirder. For example, the HP LaserJet 1000 uses ZJStream. (Basically the printer driver does all rasterisation, and then JBIG compresses it and sends it down the USB cable. Makes the printer electronics simpler and hence cheaper.)
I'm not sure about Epson; without knowing which model and print technology I couldn't say. Sorry. If you can give me a model number I'll see what I can find out…
It's an SX200; basic print drivers might work, but might not be so hot if it came to photo printing. I'll see what Epson said to him when he rang them up; might find out tonight.
Generally, if you have a PostScript printer, you can use the generic PostScript print driver to print just about anything. What it won't let you do is select different print quality settings, print double-sided, and any other “special features” the particular printer might have. Just writing text and graphics on a page.
I see you're talking about an inkjet printer. Looks like Gutenprint can drive it, but I don't see an easy way to use that under Windoze. (You might be able to do something with RedMon plus GhostScript, but it won't be pretty.)
Let's wait and see what Epson say.
(Realistically, Micro$oft stopped supporting Windows 98 years ago. You can expect ever-increasing numbers of others to do likewise.)
Oh hell yeah, just annoying as Win98 works fine for what he's doing, but 'Hey you should buy the new version, which will run slower on your computer and do a lot more things you don't want to do' just because he needs a new printer.
It's sad, but it's true.
I would mutter something about Linux here, but I'm guessing that would go down like a tonne of bricks. ;-)
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