If I never do PC tech support again, two things I would never miss would be dealing with Microsoft Outlook and HP consumer-based printers or all-in-one scan/print/fax devices. They both are absolute pieces of garbage. I mean, sure, they’re complex and they do a lot so you can’t expect them to be perfect…but it seems to me like the people who create the software are absolute morons.

Exhibit 1: Configuring secure communications within Outlook. How many times have I configured an e-mail account / profile in Outlook, and when scouring through relevant settings, enable SSL + TLS communications with the e-mail server, only to get a call after I leave, where the client is complaining that they are getting a warning in Outlook, ‘something about a security certificate’? And when I look at the problem, How many times do I  fall for “let’s try installing the certificate in the Windows certificate store, then it’ll trust it” card? And when that doesn’t work, I Google others who have the same issue? And how many links do I click before I learn that the common consensus is to simply “Disable SSL / TLS”? Yes, Outlook, the e-mail server hostname doesn’t reflect the certificate CN. I know. This is because it’s a self-signed certificate by the hosting provider. They likely use this cert. as a catch-all for all of their domains. Can I have an option to “Ignore future warnings? for this? There was one article that advised to ‘trick’ Windows into bypassing this by creating a hostname alias in the Windows HOSTS file. That is an ugly hack, thank you very much. Why haven’t they gotten this together yet? Oh I dunno, maybe it’s because their best interest is to promote paying $300/yr for a certificate signed by a cert. authority. Sure, that makes things more secure. Not.

And WTF is up with HP consumer devices being complete pieces of shit? Why do they lose their identity? Why does Windows tag HP printers as “Offline” because of some bullshit HP hiccup in the device’s firmware or drivers, or (more likely) the management software installed in Windows? Why does it not re-check status every once in a while to see if it came back online? Why is the only solution to unplug/re-plug the USB cable?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Why is HP standard issue driver software ~300MB? Do you have any idea how long that takes to download on an AT&T broadband connection? Why do I have to jump through hoops to find the ‘corporate-only’ drivers, which are usually ~5MB in comparison and provide 99% of the functionality my clients need?

I probably wouldn’t be as irritated with this kind of stuff if the companies behind them weren’t total money grubbing gluttons. Sure, pay $300 for MS Office 365, we’ll still ignore the common pitfalls in the software dating back to Outlook 2000. What the fuck. HP is no better with their ‘We’ll use the razor business model – give away the printers and charge up the arse for ink’. It definitely shows that they don’t spend much money on the printer hardware. Of course I have to say it holds up better than their management software.

Tagged with: consumer garbage | hp | outlook

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