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Windows XP Incompatibility

By BigWazza ·
It seems strange to me that not all hardware that is compatible on previous Windows versions are compatible with Windows XP. I can understand that the push to use the more recent hardware and any "old" equipment would phased out to save time and effort. The line should be drawn somewhere.

What about the new hardware not supported by WinXP?

My Case In Point:

I have a two-year-old Canon A3 printer that works well under WinNT yet is not supported by WinXP. My previous (now dead) printer is supported, but not this one. So I contacted Canon and was told that the way the printer's BIOS talks to the parallel port was incompatible with the way WinXP talks to the port. Strange. Very strange. Very silly too.

The solution was to "use the Win2K driver and it may work with reduced functionality, but there are no guarantees it will work at all." Oh joy. I can use "half" of my printer, maybe.

The other options given were "Copy the document across the network and print locally" (how ridiculous is that?), and "get a new printer". Hmm? Shot himself in the foot there.

Other branded products also have incompatibility problems, it's not just Canon.

Ok, now let's talk turkey?

If the hardware works with previous versions of Windows, and can be shared across a network, then it should be useable. WinXP does not need to talk to the parallel port. The problem has gone away. Good. Get me the driver. Oh, I forgot, it doesn't exist.

Now then, who's at fault?

I don't care. It's not the issue here either.

It matters that the hardware is not supported.

I call on Microsoft AND the hardware manufacturers to address this issue. Get them to provide a valid driver or valid communications. Anything, so long as it suppoted.

How about a driver that said something like "Remote Networked Canon Printer"? I would be happy.

What about you? Where would you draw the line with WinXP?

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Ongoing Issue

by TheChas In reply to Windows XP Incompatibilit ...

While I sympathise with you, this problem is not new to XP.

Every new version of Windows has left a lot of hardware behind.

The only way to improve this situation is to demand that hardware manufactures provide "FULL" support for the same 7 years that many other industries are required to support their products.

What needs to happen, is for state and federal governments to take the entire computer industry to task for not provideing product support for the functional life of their products.

Of course, the root problem is not the functional life, but the technological life of products. At the ever lower prices that we the users are forcing the PC industry sell at, we force the manufactures to trim budgets and staff. They just cannot afford to fully test new products, let alone support non-current products.

For the end user, the lesson is to be very cautious about upgrading software on older hardware.

Let's not forget the memory industry which produces new versions of memory that will not work with older motherboards. There are far too many incedences of SDRAM and even DDR ram DIMMS that will not function in older motherboards.

Chas

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Printer Driver for Canon

by JANETWATTS3 In reply to Ongoing Issue

I have downloaded the printer driver for XP five times since March trying to make my Canon MultiPass C5500 work. I have wasted hours and hours! The printer is only two years old. It is horrible that Microsoft would not consider that when creating new operating systems. I am going to try downloading the 2000 version and see what happens. Anyone have any other ideas, my networking teacher said that HP has a driver that is might be compatible but I'm afraid to anything because I'm not sure.

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Idid download Win2k

by JANETWATTS3 In reply to Windows XP Incompatibilit ...

I downloaded Canon's driver to Win2k and still nothing, but my problem now is that the printer is hooked up to a Win98 printer and is messing up. Did XP do something to the printer?

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