[NBLUG/talk] hsf softmodem trouble

[Bob Blick]

Dave Sisley said:
> I gave up.
> This whole experience has left me a bit frustrated with Linux
> Is there a better way?

Hi Dave,

My experiences with Windows have led me to believe that frustrating stuff
happens there too.

And I've had some experiences with Linux that were truly plug'n'play. I
got a new usb flatbed scanner a couple of weeks ago, plugged it into my
SuSE 8.1 box at home. Up pops a window "you've got a new Epson 1250
Perfection Scanner. Install it?" "Yes," I answered gleefully. Another
window pops up with a button "Test Scan" which I pressed. Up pops a nice
scanner application and I did a test scan. Afterwards another window
popped up that told me what applications were installed already that could
use my scanner. It also put a scanner icon on the desktop.

The same scanner installation on my wife's Windows machine took much
longer, and every half hour or so a window pops up, as if you'd just
pressed a button on the scanner. It took me a week of Googling and
emailing customer support before I gave up trying to get a working driver,
and finally I needed to uninstall one of the 7 applications it had
installed.

I have a 6-color photo printer. Installation on the linux box was equally
smooth.

So what can I say? Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and SuSE is
clearly the most user-friendly and pulled-together distro.

And a winmodem is a windows modem...

Cheers,

Bob