How hard can it be to produce a few lines of code to make every aspect of an all-in-one HP gizmo play friendly with a computer? It isn't so much hard as bloody impossible for them nitwits at one of the so-say top computer companies in the world. In fact on the question of worldwide scanner woes, just leave it to one guy to focus on an issue and produce a solution 10 times better than the combined brains of a whole sector of megalithic corporations.

Mr Hamrick 500, HP& co still scratching their asses.

While Mr Hamrick ploughs a lone furrow making sure 500 different scanners work on any old Windows, Mac or Linux box, HP can't even get a driver together for a PSC 1510 all-in-one apparatus sold to a certain Mac user. Remember, HP manufacture these scanner,/copier/printer pieces of plastic wastes of space. They should know how to harness their own product capabilities, surely? Afterall, Mr Hamrick has nothing to work on except a few hand-me-down diagrams. Embarrassingly he still produces better scans than HP, or many scanner manufacturers. Stunning.

Mr Hamrick fair, HP, not!

How many people read the crap on the box, see Works on Windows, Mac and scans, copies and prints and organises photos and dissects text and... They buy the product, but after hours at home unable to do what it says on the box, they wish they hadn't bought a thing. The cause of this rage and impotence is the crap you read on the box. That list is a classic case of a graphically pleasant but content deficient, disorganised list.

The true list is more specific: feature a, b and F work on Windows, product b works with feature c but not f and e... At this stage you realise your error, and wish you had left the source of anguish in the store. But HP have made a sale and own your sorry ass till you, like 95% of consumers, get sick and tired of the pleasant but unhelpful help they dish out.

HP service policy: clueless, or plain headless?

Strange why they go to such lengths for pre, during and after sales service. Why don't they simply invest those customer service millions in the development of software that works in harmony with their pretty decent hardware?

Mr Hamrick has a better approach to life.

The best way to find out for sure if VueScan works with your scanner, operating system and interface is to download a trial version from www.hamrick.com.

How simple is that! Sit at home and press a button to see if your spanky new scanning hardware works. He knows it will, unlike the plebs at H~P who will their well-made hardware to work with drivers produced at HQ. (The cleaners' toddler work groups were the best thing to come out of HQ, but were disbanded when they humiliated the crack developers in a driver-writing shown down.)

HP, please be like Mr Hamrick and banish the need for irate consumers to drive to a store, queue, explain, wait some more, only to return home with a newer version of the same box running the same crap drivers. Your hardware is OK, but you need to work really hard at stopping your driver range from sucking.

And thanks for the lack of reply to a request for an in-house solution to scanner issues.