Random pixels

I recently got a new printer/scanner device, a HP Photosmart C4280. I tried to call HP Sweden to find out if it would work on my Ubuntu system or not but only got the answer “No idea really…did you try Google?” from the friendly salesman. *

Anyway, I got it in the post and decided to install it on WinXP, OS X and Ubuntu.

On Windows

1. Do not plug the printer into the usb port! (yes, this is a actual step)
2. Locate the cd **
3. Go through a wizard of some kind in several steps.
4. Plug the printer in
5. Wait a while for it to install.

On Mac OS X

1. Plug the printer into the usb port.
2. Locate the cd **
3. Go through some wizard of some kind in several steps.
4. Wait a while for it to install.

On Ubuntu

1. Plug the printer into the usb port.

Yes, that was the only step required. I was positively surprised. It worked right out of the box! Yay, free software wins again!

* Interesting that HP is totally unaware of its own HPLIP project.
** remember what pain this usually is a year later or so when you have to do a reinstall of your OS?

Denis Kortunov of Turbomilk posted a nice article called 10 Mistakes in Icon Design

Certainly a good read.