If by chance you are a photographer, use an Epson Stylus Photo R1800 printer, AND have the joy of “upgrading” to Vista or purchasing a new computer with Vista on it, you are in for a particularly tasty treat. After much (and mostly unpleasurable) wrangling, I conquered the Vista-Epson demon… and you can, too.
- If your Epson installation disk predates Vista, DO NOT under any circumstances, try to run it.
- You can find the necessary Vista (or 64-bit XP) drivers at Epson’s website, but most of the information is going to be useless.
- If you correctly downloaded the driver, started the installation, and it tells you that there is no driver, check to see if your printer is connected to your computer by a FireWire (1394). Epson’s drivers for Vista will not support a 1394 connection. You must use a USB cable.
On the whole, the experience was a pain in the arse… especially since it all came down to the cable that connected the printer to the computer. It might have been nice if Epson (jackasses) had included that on the page about Vista compatibility or on the Vista drivers download page. And yet, I still feel somewhat triumphant.
Filed under: Education, Squirrelly Wrath | Tagged: Drivers, Epson Printers, Microsoft Vista, Tech Support
Holy Crap, I didn’t even know they made firewire printers. This is a great illustration of the reason Vista has such a bad reputation.
In this case, it’s not even necessarily Vista’s fault. Epson could have saved me and a lot of other people time and trouble by just stating on the driver download page that their Vista drivers wouldn’t work with firewire. Fortunately, the printer in question had places for both firewire and USB.
And the firewire is nice if you are printing high quality photographs or proof sheets.