Ok, not really a MS product, but it looked like this thread was the best place for this.
My Laserjet II died a while back. Yeah, it was pretty slow and only 300 dpi, but I don't print at home very much and the thing did what I wanted to. I finally decided to replace the darn thing. I wanted a printer that would work with Linux, and from reading posts over the years, I knew that I had better make sure I didn't make a lame choice. I figured it wouldn't be too bad, just had to avoid a few crappy brands like Lexmark.
However, that was before I learned about the scourge of ... winprinters.
Yeah. Winprinters.
You remember how modems used to be real modems, with UARTS and all that? Then some knucklehead decided that it would be kewl to make a brain dead modem and have the CPU do all the work? Nevermind that you are basically throwing away all the hardware acceleration, it's CHEAP. And you all know how $%^&ing few of these abomonations work in Linux, because they are all software and very few companies released specs or code for the chips so there could be open source drivers?
Well all the printer manufacturers seem to have jumped on the bandwagon. They are making brain dead printers that have all the rendering done by the CPU, and use heavy bi-directional USB communicaiton in order to have the CPU run the printer. You need a Pentium II's power in order to run a #@$%ing printer (pentium III or better recommended)!
Even HP is making brain dead printers like this. Under printer control language for these units, they list "compatible with windows" (and sometimes "compatible with mac").
These printers will print nicely still (if you run windows), don't get me wrong, but WTF? How cheap and easy is it to make processing power these days? Why in the world would companies take this giant step backwards and THROW AWAY hardware acceleration from the printers, when the general momentum is to add it to everything else (hard disk controllers, graphics cards, Sound cards, etc.).
To be fair, HP has released BSD-licenced drivers for a select few of their win printers, but I'd rather have something that can do PCL or postscript any day.
ALmost all the printers in the city were freaking winprinters.
I finally found one HP laserprinter that wasn't brain dead...
