I gave away a perfectly good HP scanner

Don’t you just hate device drivers — particularly when major hardware vendors decide to support only certain operating systems, and don’t update drivers to support newer operating systems? Thanks to driver issues, I just gave away a perfectly good scanner, and had to buy a new one.

The story starts a few years ago. At the time, I picked up a good-quality scanner: HP ScanJet 6250CSe, a mid-range scanner with document feeder. Nice scanner. I used it for years on Windows XP, but then, my need for a scanner fell. After a while, I put the ScanJet into a closet.

Fast forward to this past weekend. Suddenly, I had a scanning project. So, I grabbed the ScanJet, and connected it via USB cable to my MacBook Pro. None of my software could see it, so I went to Hewlett-Packard’s driver support Web site to grab the Mac TWAIN drivers.

There aren’t any.

As with many HP products, the Mac is not supported.

So, would it work with my Windows PC, which now runs Windows Vista? Nope. If you click the Windows Vista link on the driver download page, you see the message,

We are sorry to inform you that there will be no Windows Vista support available for your HP product. Therefore your product will not work with Windows Vista.

If you are using the Windows Vista operating system on your computer, please consider upgrading to a newer HP product that is supported on Windows Vista. HP has numerous products on the market that support Windows Vista.

In other words, if you use a current operating system, you’re hosed. Thanks, HP, for supporting your customers.

To end the story, I gave the HP ScanJet to a friend who runs Windows XP, and he’s happy as a clam. For my project, I bought a nice new scanner: a Canon CanoScan 4400F. It works great. Why Canon? Because I won’t reward HP for obsoleting a perfectly good piece of equipment.