>This reminded me of a comment from a friend that works at HP. At least he worked there a few months ago. Seems that at least one HP printer line dissolved its QC department. No incoming parts are tested and no printers are tested. All manufactured printers are boxed and sent to stores. The customer is the QC department. If your printer fails you are allowed to exercise your warranty and obtain a new printer.

Hi Tom - bummer! I have a bone to pick with HP too, though we use their network printers/servers here, and for the most part they function quite well, and the support isn't bad.

But, SET RANT ON:

However, I have a personal PSC500 (a "multi" - prints, scans, and copies in color), purchased less than 2 years ago. Well, shortly after that purchase I moved to XP Pro. And guess what, the PSC500 scanning software will not run at all on XP (confirmed by HP). Very nice software, too. Grumble...

So why HP did not make a scan-software update for XP is a $64K question - there was plenty of time, and especially considering that the model continued (and may still be to this day) on sale in all local computer hardware stores, long after XP rolled out.

So you buy your nice PSC, go home, find the software doesn't work, scour the HP site for information, which finally tells you the software simply won't work under XP, and there are no plans to fix it. Jeez! Who made this decision?

I doubt I will ever buy another HP item for home use after that experience. HP does seem to care about corporate clients (and that's where the moola is, of course), as I deal with them as part of my job. But when it comes to home users, it's like they're giving us the old "finger."

Okay, RANT now OFF.