Technology Sucks

I would like to take this opportunity to discuss (ok, rant about) a few things. Why do I spend everyday surrounded by mostly non-functioning technology? I live in a veritable graveyard of good ideas gone bad.

Case in Point:
My wireless HP color printer.

I know what you are thinking. You're thinking, "Laura, why did you buy an HP printer? What were you THINKING?!"

True, and I'll admit I really can't argue that point. HP printers are known worldwide for their suckiness. I've had an HP printer before, and it sucked. Nevertheless, it was such a good idea. A wireless networked printer! I could print to it from my laptop, from anywhere in the apartment! And it had a higher resolution than my old craptastic HP printer, so I could use it to print out my digital photos.

But the real reason why I bought THIS printer was because of the great deal. Since I was already buying a laptop from Apple, they had this deal where you could get the printer for just $49 after the hundred dollar mail-in rebate. I figure even if it sucked, I'd only be out 50 bucks and could probably resell it for close to that.

Well, as it turns out, I never got that $100 rebate. Why not, you ask? Because I sent the form in a day or 2 too late. Why was I too late? Did I forget about the rebate? No, my dear friend, I did not forget. I was hesitating because during the 30 day period I STILL HADN'T GOTTEN THE STUPID PRINTER TO WORK CORRECTLY. I finally got it working, cut out the UPCs and mailed in the rebate form. Apple sent me a sickenly polite letter informing me that they could not process the rebate. Meanwhile, I'm stuck w/ a lame-@$$ printer that I now CANNOT RETURN because I already cut out the UPC symbols. You can imagine how thrilled I was with that.

I'd like to give the printer a little bit of credit at this point. It did in fact, join up with my wireless network the first time I tried to get it to right away, with no problem. The only thing wrong with it at the time was that it printed photos with nasty black streaks in them. It was fine for my usual printing needs (e.g. boarding passes, directions to a restaurant, etc).

Well, after fruitless efforts to get tech support from their online chat (a friendly but totally unhelpful HP representative whom I was certain was a robot until she mispelled something... then again, that might've just been a clever little twist in the algorithm used...) I finally found time to call up HP tech support during the brief window of time after work during which Mac support is available. THe lucky thing about Mac support is I'm pretty sure it starts at Level 2. Ie, the person on the other end of the phone line not only had a pulse, but there was actual brain wave activity as well.

After an hour and a half of jumping through hoops to reinstall the drivers (incidentally, removing the bad drivers required an arcane sequence of file removals from odd hidden places, since the uninstaller apparently doesn't do ANYTHING), I finally had the printer correctly printing out pictures. I was overjoyed! I was still reasonably upset about getting screwed out of the rebate, but at least I now had a printer that didn't suck.

Well, in the time since then I've been in and out of some other wireless networks. In the in-between time, the printer has somehow managed to get itself into a totally fubar'd state, wherein it insists its IP address is something ridiculous (think 179.13.1.666). (Ok, I know that's not really a possible IPv4 address). The printer refuses adamantly to join my home network. A while ago, before I had the wifi set up, I had managed to get the printer to work for me by hooking it directly to my laptop via crossover ethernet. (Of course, it behaved suckily- I was attempting to print some nice classy invitations to a wedding shower but the printer flat-out refused. In the end I had to make an extra trip to another store to buy regular-sized paper, not as classy, and YET ANOTHER trip to the original store to return the nice invitations. I just love paying all this gas money, ya know?).

Anyways, now that I have the wifi setup, it would be kind of nice to actually get the printer on there. after all, that is the WHOLE POINT of owning a wireless networked printer. But no, it insists on its ridiculous IP address. So I finally found a USB cable and hooked it up w/ that. I had discovered from my lengthy tutorial with tech support that most of the printer's configuration utilities can only be accessed when you're connected via USB. However, at some point, the drivers must have become screwed up again because I couldn't talk to it over USB at all. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers, but since I dont' remember the voodoo-like rituals which the Tech support person had walked me through, there's little chance I'll ever succeed with that.

So my only hope of ever getting this thing working again is another long phone conversation with HP tech support. However, I have to be at home, with the printer and the computer right there to talk to them. And wouldn't ya know it- my piece of junk LG mobile phone doesn't work at the house I just moved into. In fact, the phone is getting more and more finicky each day about whether it will work ANYWHERE.

Anyone know of any Amish farms looking for another pair of hands?