Another Vista Annoyance!

November 2, 2007

I can’t believe we just did a show on Vista Annoyances and what happens this week but I find a NEW Vista Annoyance!

If you read one of my earlier posts on transitioning to Vista, you may remember that I was very happy that my Konica Minolta Magicolor 2300W color laser printer made the transition with only a few minor annoyances. First of all, there wasn’t (and still isn’t) an updated driver so I had to use the one for XP and secondly, Vista pops up a window that my printer has stopped working whenever it goes to sleep. Well, today, the minor irritations surrounding my beloved printer (well, I like it a lot….) blossomed into a full blown ANNOYANCE!

I’ve been watching my yellow toner cartridge for quite some time now. The last time I changed it out, I mistakenly entered the capacity as 4500 pages instead of 1500 pages and it’s been telling me the cartridge is empty for a long time, even though I knew it wasn’t. Well, here in the last few weeks, I’ve noticed that my bee-yoo-ti-ful 2 Smart Chix logo has lost it’s chicken yellow color so I bit the bullet and bought a new toner cartridge. I say bit the bullet because they’re so expensive….this one was $78 w/tax (after a $10 off coupon). I can’t really complain, though, because this is only the second yellow cartridge I’ve ever bought and I’ve had this printer for about 4 years.

Today, I finally decided to install the new cartridge and followed the procedure I’ve followed in the past to change one out (remembering that the capacity is 1500, not 4500). I have to start the process from the Magicolor Printer Status window on my computer ( my VISTA computer) by using the “Change Toner” feature and choosing the color I want to replace (black, cyan, yellow or magenta). Once I’ve chosen the correct color and the correct capacity, the software communicates with the printer and instructs it to move the correct toner cartridge into position so I can replace it. I picked ‘yellow’ and ‘1500′ then clicked OK and waited….and waited…and waited. Nothing happened. I knew I didn’t hear any noise from the printer indicating that there was some toner cartridge movement going on inside and sure enough, when I opened up the side to access the toner cartridges, the cyan cartridge was in place ready to be changed, NOT the yellow one. Being stubborn and having a tendency to try the same thing over and over expecting to get different results (I think they call that the definition of insanity), I finally had to admit that the correct toner cartridge wasn’t going to move into position so I could change it. At that point, I threw up my hands and went with my mom, Gwen, to meet our friend, Dottye, at a local Subway for lunch. I knew I’d just get madder and more annoyed if I kept trying to get the software to communicate with the printer. It obviously wasn’t going to do it.

It’s amazing what a pleasant lunch with Mom and Dottye can do for me. By the time lunch was over, I knew what I was going to have to do. When I got back home, I disconnected the USB cable from my Vista PC and connected it to my XP laptop (where I also have the same printer installed). When the Printer Status window opened, I clicked on ‘change toner’ then picked yellow and 1500. This time, the printer started making noise! Before I knew it, the yellow toner cartridge had moved into place and I was able to replace it, then I disconnected the printer from my XP laptop and reconnected to my Vista PC and was back in business. SUCCESS!!

So, that’s my newest Vista Annoyance story. I have to admit, it’s not really Vista’s fault. I knew going in that I might have some hardware incompatibility issues and felt truly lucky when I was able to continue using my printer, especially when I found out that Konica Minolta didn’t have an updated driver for Vista. It really pays to check out hardware compatibility. I was lucky. My moderately expensive color laser printer actually works with Windows’ newest OS. If it hadn’t, I’d have been stuck shelling out more bucks for a new one, which would have (to put it bluntly) SUCKED.

Ah, well, you live and learn. Hopefully all of your own Vista Annoyances have been of the minor variety and you haven’t spent a lot of money on a new printer or other peripheral that simply won’t work on your new Vista PC. I’d still love to hear about your experiences. Kim and I especially like to share our listeners’ stories on the podcast. We won’t mention your name (unless you want us to) so send us your gripes! Hey, if you’ve found something you about Vista that thrills you, share that with us, too! OK, I’m going to go and print a brand new chicken logo out that actually has YELLOW chickens instead of BEIGE ones….

Posted in Annoyances, Tech Tips, Views From The Coop, Vista, Windows, XP