“Installing my printer drivers was a real chore”
Yep.
I have a Canon all-in-one printer and I had to choose the ‘closest’ compatible driver to make it work.
But the problem was, I didn’t know which one was the most compatible and spent hours on the internet trying to find someone with the same printer and find out which driver would work.
Unless you have a lot of patience, most people just aren’t going to go through all that trouble.
But the problem was, I didn’t know which one was the most compatible and spent hours on the internet trying to find someone with the same printer and find out which driver would work.
I have two printers; An Epson Stylux NX415 wired to the 13 mos old laptop through USB, and a Canon Pixma MP495 wireless. I had problems with both.
I found the appropriate drivers for both from a search at their websites. But the terminal installation routine, unpacking layered zipped files, figuring out at what point in the unpackage routine one runs the terminal command, having two packages to download for the Canon printer; one for the printer drivers, another for the scanner drivers. Sheesh!
Then, I got the printers to work. But I still couldn't access the scanners on both. Was able to get through that after several hours of frustration, but needed two different programs installed because one would work with the Epson but not the Canon, and vice versa (the default scan module for the Canon through GIMP, XSane for the Epson...although that might be backwards, it's been too long ago). Unbelievable.
I think having a Live DVD of Mint is a good idea if problems develop with a Windows installation. It allows you to boot from the DVD and see all the drives on your PC, allowing you to save files to an external drive before troubleshooting your problems. But beyond that, it's just too frustrating to deal with.