More on software, printers, and operating systems

Last week, we had an old printer in the attic, a black and white laser printer that was never really a favorite and a noisy little all-in-one color printer in our office, and an old flatbed scanner in a cupboard in the cellar. The attic dweller, a delightful little Lexmark laser printer, and the venerable flatbed that's great for scanning 35mm slides, were exiled because our Vista desktop system didn't support them.
So, in an effort to simplify our lives and clean out unused stuff, I :

1. Asked Google what I think of Vista
   
   
2. Optioned the attic printer and office laser to a flea market to be named later.
3. Watched the noisy little all-in-one quietly display Ink System Failure 0xc19a0023 on its status window.
4. Brought the office laser back from the out-going queue.
5. Sent the all-in-one to that wonderful, magic place called Away.
6. Spent an hour in the rag-and-bone shop of Linux device configuration but was rewarded with a working flatbed scanner. (Installation on Vista persistently and unequivocally failed.)
   
7. Bought a new HP all-in-one. 
8. Spent an hour trying to install the HP software on our Vista desktop system, hitting an error because the HP software was trying to configure the Windows Firewall, which isn't running and couldn't start, because I have other anti-virus/firewall software, but no matter because the HP software could only think about the Windows Firewall, and, after the configuration failed, uninstalled itself and put up a useless set of troubleshooting tips.
   
   
9. Spent barely 30 seconds installing the all-in-one as a network printer on my Linux system.
   
10. Re-optioned the office laser printer to the outgoing queue.
11. Printed this picture of Cassie and Sandra on our new all-in-one while sitting at the table by the window downstairs.
    
    

Is my life simpler? You betcha.