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BEING MERRY WITH USB

by Tom Cantrell

Start ı Pride Before the Fall ı Universal Sales Booster ı The Mouse that Roared ı Wire Wars ı Kiss the Cook ı Sources and PDF

Longtime readers know I have to continually fight to keep, in the words of Spiro Agnew, "nattering nabob of negativism" tendencies in check. My overall affection for all things computing and silicon is offset by my complete lack of patience for techno-turkeys.

Yes, the PC is a wonderful thing for a writer. At this point, only old timers can recall that era before personal computers, when fixing even the smallest typo required a considerable amount of effort. Does anyone miss that evil-smelling whiteout? I remember having to type papers in college when no corrections were allowed. Make a mistake and youıd have to retype the whole thing. Now, thanks to the PC, changes are a mere whim and a few taps of the backspace away.

Thatıs the good news. The bad news is that PCs are still a hassle to configure, upgrade, and maintain. I learned long ago to minimize frivolous experimentation with my work PC, lest it quit working.

Nevertheless, recently my hand was forced. Iıd been getting by with a kludge setup of an old Apple LaserWriter connected to my PC (donıt ask). Increasingly I was encountering problems with the lashup. The LaserWriter would choke on stuff I needed to print and go into a coma. Exercising diligence, I made a few halfhearted support calls, but as fully expected, none of the parties involved (Compaq, Apple, or Microsoft) could offer much in the way of help or hope.

Having made the token effort hunting for a hackaround, I went to Plan B, which was simply to buy a new PC-pedigree printer. Suspecting all along that the LaserWriter was going down for the count, Plan B was really Plan A, because it also offered me the opportunity (thanks to the latest all-in-one gadgets) to ash heap the old thermal fax and no longer have to run upstairs to use my wifeıs scanner.

I scored the unit I wanted, freed the parallel port by unplugging the color inkjet, connected the cable, installed the drivers, and was ready to try my first printout. Youıre probably expecting a tale of woe, but the new unit did just fine. Hey, that wasnıt hard; maybe the PC is really starting to live up to its "consumer product" pretensions. However, a small problem remained.

I still wanted to use the color inkjet along with the laser all in one. Having both a laser and inkjet is a must for efficiency and cost-effectiveness when handling the widest variety of printing tasks. I must admit that, in my zeal for the new goodies, I ignored the little red flag raised by the prospect of two printers vying for the single parallel port on the PC.

Time to bite the bullet. Toddling over to the local computer store, I picked up a $20 parallel port card, rushed home, hooked up everything, and with fingers crossed, gave it a whirl. Hey, it worked!

NEXT

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