Tuesday, June 29 12:00 AM ET

Technical Difficulties

If you own a Lexmark, you know the depth of my hell. I've owned two. The first one came free with a large order of PCs I made. I hated it, it never worked right, and so I gave it to my mom. At this point a normal person would learn a valuable lesson and avoided Lexmark.

I don't need to remind you I'm not a normal person.

A hardware manager friend of mine was getting rid of a pair of brand new Lexmark X73s. He said they had a tendency to not work with XP and if I understood the risk he'd give me a good price. I was lulled by the idea of All-In-One (I didn't realize at the time that this simply combined the problems of all the products) and bought one.

I have never once been able to get the damn thing to work by any conventional method. I've tried the included software, I've tried letting Windows find the best drivers, I've downloaded the drivers and driver patches off of their website. I even went so far as to call their technical support. I could always get one or two aspects of the X73 working, but never all at once. Generally, before I would give up, I'd try one last bizarre thing, like use a scanner driver for a different model, or try the 98 drivers... and as if the X73 knew I was about to launch it forcibly from my window, would begin to work.

I'm pretty sure Lexmark knows this, and they don't sell them anymore. I even think the driver page allows you to download an apology in PDF that you can print out provided you ever get the printer working.

Later today I'll be picking up an HP.

I'll see you guys in 2 weeks. I'll be taking the 4th of July off.

More Fuzzy Logic

Recommend this Comic to a Friend