K0D3 W4RR10RZ

Macintosh users are a 3% minority in the U.S. computer user market. To look at any given movie or tv program, you would think it was more like 60%. But that's just because the computers are so purty. Anyways, three percent. That means lots of software and peripheral developers generally don't like to be bothered with catering to that measely population beyond some token effort. So we get to deal with peripherals that stop working when the Mac OS gets updated (I'm talking OS 10.1 to 10.2 here) and the people who make the peripherals are like "Update our drivers? No. We have no plans to do that." ... "No?" ... "No." ... "So, uh, that means I need to go out and buy a different brand of your product to get something that works?" ... "Yeah, it looks like that's what you'll have to do." That's a pretty accurate transcription of a recent conversation.

Then a couple weeks ago at work, we got a new monster color laser printer from HP to replace a busted up 5 year old Tektronix that was wheezing it's last dying breaths. Like the Tektronix printer, we got this particular HP model because it can print sheets larger than 11" x 17". It goes 12.27" x 18.5" to be precise. Excellent. We print that size on a daily basis. Except, we haven't been able to since we got the new printer. That's because the Mac OS X print driver, with it's mondo page-size list of 20 exotic sizes, including JB4, 16K, and ooooh, double-postcard size, does NOT include an option for the maximum paper size the printer can handle. What the? I went to their website and downloaded the latest drivers, installed them, and got exactly the same fluffy list. :PPP

So I called up HP, and fiddled around during the 20 minutes it took to get transferred from their computer help desk to their printer help desk to their print driver help desk to their switchboard and then to their Mac department, which I'm sure consisted of one lonely guy stuck in a 4' by 4' cubicle in the basement next to the HVAC equipment anxiously guarding his stapler. During that time, I went into the printer description file folders, uncompressed the HP5500 file, opened it in text editor and started perusing the code. About the time the guy came on the phone, I had found the pertinent parts of the file. The connection was so bad, due to the basement rats chewing on his phone line, that I had to use interpolation to fill in the voice gaps. I think I got most of it right, and it came down to, if I've downloaded the latest drivers and the max paper size is not on there, well...then...it's not on there.

He said I could 'still put the large size paper in the manual feed.' Oh for joy. Then I could enjoy gazing at the useless extra-wide margins as a 10.5" x 16.5" image prints on a 12.3" x 18.5" sheet. Oh, you want a full-bleed 11x17 sheet? Sorry folks, we reserve that luxury for the Windows population. So I told him, "Oh well, I just wanted to be sure you guys didn't already have something set up with that size. I just didn't want to have to hack the printer description files if I didn't have to." To which he says, "Heh, if your editing those files, you should be working for us, heheh..." Sorry pal, I'm a one-trick pony.

So there you have it. We are now printing at the max size on my hackjobbed system files, I say, as I toot my own wimpy horn. Necessity is the mother of duct tape and baling wire.

Sincerest regards,
J

[edit]
Oh boohoo. I'm soooo oppressed. :P