Tuesday, April 17, 2007
HP's Online Help. Or, How I learned to Say "Fuck this, I'll just handwrite it."
And today, I discovered that my lovely girlfriend's lovely Mac is confused by my HP All-In-One Printer.
I foolishly thought that a printer that boasted being 1,000,000% Mac compatible would be able to print Acrobat PDFs. Silly me.
Well, I assumed it was something I did wrong, so I went to the incredibly helpful HP online technician chat to find out the answer.
Here is the text in its entirety:
You see, unfortunately the All-In-One may be compatible with Macs, but apparently their online help can only be used on Microsoft Explorer.
So, I moved to the other room, and to my PC. The following help helped me thus:
In the end, I just dusted off my old dot matrix printer and let it shit out a spotty reproduction. It just goes to show you: Macs may be the best thing since Jesus invented ice cream, but the world is run by PCs.
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I foolishly thought that a printer that boasted being 1,000,000% Mac compatible would be able to print Acrobat PDFs. Silly me.
Well, I assumed it was something I did wrong, so I went to the incredibly helpful HP online technician chat to find out the answer.
Here is the text in its entirety:
Rumer: Hello Patrick,
Rumer: Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. My name is Rumer. How may I assist you today?
Rumer: What is the nature of your problem?
Rumer: What is the nature of your problem?
Rumer: What is the nature of your problem?
You see, unfortunately the All-In-One may be compatible with Macs, but apparently their online help can only be used on Microsoft Explorer.
So, I moved to the other room, and to my PC. The following help helped me thus:
Rave: Hello Patrick,
Rave: Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. My name is Rave. How may I assist you today?
Patrick Allain: Hello. I had tried to connect from my Mac, but I could not, so now I have moved to my PC.
Patrick Allain: Now then, my problem is that my all in one cannot print Acrobat 6.0 pdfs on my Mac. Why?
Rave: Could you provide me a detailed description of the issue, which would allow me to understand the issue better?
Rave: May I know the version of Operating System ( Windows 98/Me/XP ) you are using?
Patrick Allain: OS X
Patrick Allain: A Mac operating system.
Rave: I understand that you want to print Acrobat 6.0 pdfs on my Mac Operating System. Am I correct?
Patrick Allain: ...
Patrick Allain: Yes
Patrick Allain: The operating system is OS X.
Rave: Patrick, could please let me know on which Operating System you want to print Acrobat 6.0 pdfs?
Patrick Allain: Mac OS X. Operating System 10.
Patrick Allain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X
Rave: I would be glad to help you. However,we do not have chat support for Mac users. HP only offers phone support for Macintosh environment. I am sure you understand our limitations.
Rave: Moreover, the service engineers with phone support team are Macintosh OS specialists and have the expertise to assist you in this regard. You can call at 800-HP-INVENT or 800-474-6836. This support is available at the following timings:
Rave: -- Monday through Friday: 8am-midnight EST
-- Saturday: 10am-6pm EST
-- Sunday: No support
Rave: We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation.
Rave: Here is the link to contact the e-mail specialist:
Rave: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/contact/email_1.html
Patrick Allain: Is there a Canadian help link?
Rave: Yes.
Patrick Allain: And it is?
Rave: Here is the link:
Rave: http://welcome.hp.com/country/ca/en/contact_us.html
Patrick Allain: Thank You. Goodbye.
In the end, I just dusted off my old dot matrix printer and let it shit out a spotty reproduction. It just goes to show you: Macs may be the best thing since Jesus invented ice cream, but the world is run by PCs.
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