Written in anger?
A typo here and there suggests a degree of hidden rage being tapped...
"I TOLD you, I HATE working on printers!" I seethe at the Boss. "It's just a bit of configuration," he wheedles, trying to make me feel better. "It's not a bit of bloody configuration, it's translation - from IT into printer manufacturer speak." The Boss is in a pickle. The printer company cretin came crawling around and …
" either that or a live mains cable hanging from the open ceiling tile."
Yep. I was surprised this was a ladder incident. When I got to the part of the story where the BOFH grabbed the cables the PFY was handing down from the ceiling, I expected either electrocution or hanging for the smug little printer rep. The ladder was...unexpected.
Yep. I was surprised this was a ladder incident. When I got to the part of the story where the BOFH grabbed the cables the PFY was handing down from the ceiling, I expected either electrocution or hanging for the smug little printer rep. The ladder was...unexpected.
It shows good planning. Had the end been electrocution or hanging they would have had a body to deal with, and lifting it to throw out the window would have been more effort. Using the defenestration technique means that someone else has to clear up the mess.
I have a super duper multi function job sat next to me with everything mentioned included - except none of it works when connected to a network, ethernet or wireless; only when it is connected to a single PC by a USB cable.
For scans I have reverted to using my old camera and cropping the image!!
I've even got the email from Apple where they admitted it.
Well, "admit" is the wrong word. "Stated" that they deliberately reimplemented USB in a a different way to every other system, that while not explicitly disallowed by the standard, is the exact opposite of the technical books on the subject.
No, not bitter. We wanted to do firmware updates anyway. Especially ones that required a Windows machine to apply the firmware update that makes it work again on the Mac.
Every generation of those things is bigger and has more features, but is also more complicated and fragile. The latest generation in my office comes with an entire mini-ITX PC running Windows 7 to run the print server, but it needs the original Java-based OS to run scanning and email. So, I need 2 network ports where 1 once worked, one for the built-in Java OS, one for the new mini-ITX PC.
Also, in some situations, the PC silently discards print jobs. A Ricoh technician was here for hours, and he couldn’t figured it out.
The pc running windows 7 is normally only used for 'pro' machines and is over £5k extra for the basic version, please tell me it's for printing high quality jobs with colour matching and that someone had training on calibration with the photospectrometer ?
Silently discarding jobs usually happens when usage tracking is turned on, BW has no restrictions and colour requires a pin that has to be entered into the print driver. If you don't put the correct code in the job will vanish but you can see it in the printer log. Yeah it's a bit crap. Another reason can be that the copier will only accept print jobs from the print server, configured by ip or host name. It's to help enforce the authentication on the print server and prevent people bypassing it.
The worst thing about Ricoh is the new tablet interface with no physical buttons and a 'new and improved experience' according to BLI. Yeah we turn that crap off and thank god you can set up the old interface that Ricoh have been using for a decade.
/Rant off. I'm back in work Monday/ Ricoh tech lol
I remember when I was a lowly help desk bod. We bought new printers from a well known company which has a large research arm in America somewhere
New printers! Scan, fax, print, fast, A3, A4 and A5! Yummy!
After the engineer attempted to install the first printer, I told him I wasn't going to allow him to install the rest and risk leaving the company with no high capacity printing, and that I would do it instead. I un-boxed every machine, wheeled them around the buildings, opened every machine and connected the power supply board to the rest of the printer, upgrade the BIOS, faff around with drivers, and then get them all working with our fax software (which wasn't fun)
They worked OK after that
We bought new printers from a well known company which has a large research arm in America somewhere
New printers! Scan, fax, print, fast, A3, A4 and A5! Yummy!
Bet they all defaulted to 'Letter', because that was hard coded into the printer firmware and drivers - I kid not. For a well known US printer manufacturer, several years back, who's printers and drivers had exactly this feature, I went as far as creating my own set of (unsigned) drivers, just so that when users installed the drivers on their PC/laptop their printer preferences had been preset to A4 and thus avoid 'error messages' about the printers having the wrong paper loaded...
Mind you just had another problem with another well know printer manufacturer; change the paper setting in the printer from 'plain' to any other and the user will get an error telling them the printer is loaded with the wrong size of paper!
"'PC LOAD LETTER'? What the *fuck* does that mean?"
Paper Cassette, Load letter-size paper. Easy when you speak HP Pringlish. You have to remember this was the days when a single-line LED display was all the rage.
On a slightly related tangent:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers
and scroll down to "Error Messages"
Paper Cassette, Load letter-size paper. Easy when you speak HP Pringlish. You have to remember this was the days when a single-line LED display was all the rage.
Those were fun days..
<ESC>%-12345X@PJL
@PJL RDYMSG DISPLAY = Insert coin
<ESC>%-12345X
Or extra fun lock the keys with @PJL DEFAULT CPLOCK = ON
This post has been deleted by its author
A while back, I was involved in testing Open Office. This was running the programme and seeing what was wrong with the interface etc. It was sometimes reporting things as silly as a missing full stop in a dialogue box.
I came across someone in the USA who was about to report that it was defaulting to "non-existent or imaginary" paper sizes and units of measure, They did indeed exist and were not imaginary, Yes, the paper sizes were things like A4 and the units of measure were mm...
There is a difference between ignorance, which can be excusable, and planned ignorance which is not.