More loving/hating of my Printer/Scanner/Fax

After spending the past 3-4 hours troubleshooting a problem with the scanner, I'm deciding that although I like my Printer/Scanner/Fax, I really, really, really don't like the software developers and the people who put together the online help.

For those who haven't read the following post, you should at this time (because although I never intended to write af follow-on posting, circumstances compelled me to do so)

So, here I am, trying to scan something into my computer, and I am getting all sorts of errors that the computer can't find the device. I think "okay... I know I can print to this device, so why can't it find it?" I print a test page to make sure, and it prints fine (hmmm....)

Take 1:

So, I wonder if the problem is that I changed the hostname of the device from the factory defaults (I remembered doing it through the embedded web server in the device, but I didn't do anything locally).

So, I start looking for how I can set the hostname on the software installed on my computer. After going through the documentation and all the menus on the programs installed on my computer, I realized that there was no way to do this without getting really deep and dirty (such as looking for registry settings).

So, Idecide to try a different tack. I realized that during the installation process, the program was smart enough to find the device on the network to configure it. Perhaps if I reinstall the software and have it find the device already configured, it would pick up the appropriate host name. So, I run the uninstaller and reboot my machine. I then re-install the software, and in hangs halfway through (it does such a good job of hanging the machine that I couldn't even get task manager to come up). So, I wonder if my antivirus software is causing an issue (not sure why it didn't cause the issue the first time, but it was worth a try). I disable the antivirus and am finally able to get the software installed again (one reboot later).

Take 2:

So, I print my test page. Try to scan (or access the embedded web browser), and the software still cannot find the device on the network. So, I look a little farther in the company's online support pages. It then tells me that perhaps the programs and ports are blocked by my computer's firewall software. I go through the recommended steps, which took me close to an hour. I try to scan again... No luck.

Take 3:

So, I'm back to square 1. I decide to see if changing the hostname on the device back to the factory settings would make a difference. The fact that the scanning software on the computer was part of a larger package that used the embedded web page on the printer to do advanced configuration (and that it couldn't find the page) told me that perhaps that was still the root of the problem. So, I hit the IP address of the web page (versus the hostname) and reconfigure the hostname back to the factory setting, and viola! I could scan.

Okay. Now I'm really mad. I wasted all this time due to sloppy software development, poor diagnostics, and poor support. There were many opportunities for the software team to do small things that didn't either waste my time or limit the product unecessarily (you see, it ended up taking me 4 hours to learn that I cannot put more than 1 of these devices on my network, because I'm stuck with the factory-delivered hostname, which will be the same for every device).

• Probably the easiest solution from a development perspective is to allow me to configure the hostname in the software on my PC. This would still limit me to 1 device (but would at least give me control over how it shows up on my network). Better yet would be to have it periodically look for devices and if there's more than one, to ask me which one I want to use.


• Another option is to address it at installation time. The installer could already look on the network for the device and find it, even after I had changed the hostname. It should have been able to do one of the following:
• Keep track of the hostname, MAC address, or IP Address of the device it found (it does this for printing)
• Keep track of a change to the hostname when the user made it (although the change was made by the embedded web server in the device, due to the automatic navigation, it would take a pretty savvy user to even know what was being done where).

This comes down to a failure in both organization and process

• The fact that the device allows you to make a setting that cannot be used by a computer that uses the device is probably an artifact that one group of folks wrote the firmware on the device and another wrote the software on the PC (and yet another wrote the installation programs).


• The fact that networking works differently for printing than for scanning or faxing also illustrates a breakdown in the design and development process. Ever heard of Encapsulation? There really is no need to write the same thing twice.


• The lack of documentation of this setting also illustrates a breakdown (if there was more thought given to it, there would have been more for the doc writer to include). That should have been my cue from the start, I guess.


• Finally, the online help and support had both misleading and incorrect information with respect to this problem (which wasted my time, and ended up being the source of most of my frustration).

Lesson for configuring devices from this manufacturer: DON'T CHANGE FROM THE FACTORY DEFAULT SETTINGS. THEY DON'T TEST THEM.

Okay... Enough on the Hate side...

On a positive note, once I did get the scanning to work, it did a great job of capturing exactly what I wanted to capture and make it easy for me to do so. It has lots of nice features for saving the file in different formats as well as setting the scan settings as well.

So far I haven't tried the device-driven scanning (in other words, pressing a button on the device and having it pick which PC the scan results would show up at), but the PC-driven scanning seems to work well (again, once you get it set up properly).