PcPro editor Jon Honeyball says that many printer manufacturers should be “hung, drawn and quartered” for releasing poor-quality printer drivers for Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system.
He called the installation instructions for many printers and scanners “scary.”
Honeyball says some instruction manuals tell users to unnecessarily install several drivers, when Windows 7 came with those drivers built-in. Other printer companies told customers to find and download an additional installation program.
He heavily criticized Dymo, a company that specializes in label printers. He says that for his printer, the company’s website lists drivers to run the printer on Windows XP, Vista and even Windows 2000, but lists nothing for Windows 7.
“It’s almost as if these vendors had no idea that Windows 7 was going to be released, and the whole thing had come as a huge shock,” he says.
Honeyball says that many PC vendors have recently announced they will no longer support computers using older operating systems, like Windows XP, as a way to get consumers to upgrade.
For example, Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 9 will only run on Windows 7 or Vista.
