Screens out!
I find it difficult to recycle old issues of PC Pro – there’s always something of interest to read months later. So I just found myself in complete agreement with Tim Danton in last December’s magazine ( see issue 302, p7), who asks if there’s another solution to the complexities of printer operation.
It’s as if printer engineers want to show off their screens: “I know you’re busy, but just come and have another look at my beautiful LCD screen and confirm that plain paper is loaded.”
In my case, I find constantly having to go to the printer control panel a pain. If I wanted to use my printer in an office situation, it would surely have to form part of an employee’s job description to push its control panel buttons. They’d have to go on a training course!
My suggestion is that printer manufacturers should abandon their LCD screens completely: apart from the on/off switch, put all of the functions on an app instead so that “Confirm that plain paper is loaded” becomes just another click on the controlling computer. Peter Jones
A closed MacBook
After eight years of using it, my wife has finally upgraded her MacBook to a 13in MacBook Pro and, as with all things Apple, it’s an exquisite piece of hardware.
However, this new machine has immediately forced me to look at replacing my old but fully functional Canon Pixma MG6150 printer, as the new MacBook won’t talk to it. To clarify, we can manually connect the MacBook to the IP address of the printer and view the printer’s web page, but the MacBook refuses to print, informing us that the printer failed to respond.
A quick Google suggests that this issue lies in driver compatibility, specifically that the latest version of macOS is all about 64-bit because 32-bit is just so 2019. I understand that hardware has to be upgraded from time to time, and that my MG6150 is now long in the tooth (and hacked to reset the page count), but I note with concern that some people buying Canon hardware released in 2019 are also hitting a macOS no-support issue, as reported in Amazon reviews. David Evans
It would have to form part of an employee’s job description to push the printer’s control panel buttons