I.E 7 problem

[suein56]

[quote user="Deimos"]

HP PSC printers have "major issues" with IE7. HP were told about this last spring (by me, but they already knew about the problems). Since then they have successfully "sat on their hands", not even trying to resolve the issues.

... that said, most people have problems with the scanning software rather than the printing side.

Ian [/quote]

Ian - can you advise me, please? I have an all-in-one HP Photosmart 2575 - do you think it will it work OK with IE7?

Sue

 

[AnOther]

[quote user="Pierre ZFP"]

I just can't see why people stick with Internet Exploder when there is a much better and FREE alternative.

Just download Mozilla Firefox and watch all your troubles disappear, easy!

[/quote]Not bad advice. Firefox is very good and doesn't take too much getting used to but it's not perfect and it's increasing popularity has made it a target for the hackers, a situation I can only see worsening rather than abating.

For those who have resisted the "upgrade" to IE7 and would like to stick with the familiar IE6 but would also like some of the nice bits, like tabbed browsing and mouse gestures for instance, then give Maxthon a whirl www.maxthon.com 

It's free and is basically just an overlay on IE6 but with a slew of useful facilities such as a Popup blocker, Ad hunter, RSS feed, history & cache cleaner, and so it goes on. Best of all. if you don't like it (but you will) just don't use it, no need to even unistall it as IE6 itself stays exactly as it was before.

Of all the features of Maxthon, Firefox, Opera or IE7 tabbed browsing is probably the killer "must have" and I guarantee that once you've experienced it you will never want to be without it again. Think of it like your mouse wheel, could you live without that, forever clicking on those minature Up/Down arrows or dragging th bar up & down?

Mouse gestures are pretty neat also, in a nutshell you can programme the mouse to do just about anything but perhaps the most useful is the "go back a page" gesture. Instead of having to move all the way up to the top left of the screen and hit that tiny Back button you hold down the right mouse button and slightly move the mouse to the left, that's it. There are about a dozen other preset actions you can select.

I'm have nothing to do with Maxthon BTW, just a converted fan preaching it's virtues.

[tenniswitch]

Not only that, but the photo printing quality is much higher with separate color tanks. 

[Deimos]

I cannot recommend a printer from personal experience. With my HP printer I have now found a magic sequence of key presses that sort of allows me to scan (involving control and alt keys and pop-up menus for windows that do not appear). It may be a hassle and I will never again buy anything HP/Compaq but so far I cannot justify spending my money on another printer given the level of use and that I can get it to work !!

Ian

[Deimos]

[quote user="Spg"][quote user="Deimos"]

HP PSC printers have "major issues" with IE7. HP were told about this last spring (by me, but they already knew about the problems). Since then they have successfully "sat on their hands", not even trying to resolve the issues.

... that said, most people have problems with the scanning software rather than the printing side.

Ian [/quote]

Ian - can you advise me, please? I have an all-in-one HP Photosmart 2575 - do you think it will it work OK with IE7?

Sue

 

[/quote]

See the following post - bugs in the forum software cause a previous post to be duplicated when I post and quote !!

Ian

[Deimos]

This bug ridden forum software is doing it again. I had the same problem a months or so ago. Every post I make just posts the same message !!!!

I'll try again:

I cannot speak from personal experience but I believe that the Photosmart range uses a different set of software drivers and utilities from the PSC range. It is possible that you might be OK. If not and if you also have loads and loads of spare time you can contact HP support. They will respond quite quickly, though you are unlikely to get anything helpful or useful from them.

Ian

[suein56]

Thanks Ian, I'll give IE7 a  go. Though I am plucking up the courage to download Firefox as I tried it out on my son's laptop over Xmas and was very favourably impressed.

Sue

 

[Dick Smith]

I don't understand why you need to pluck up your courage to try Firefox! It is perfectly safe and far, far better than IE in any flavour.

[Russethouse]

I'm on Firefox at present and it was installed to copy all my IE settings - easy ! Believe me if I can use it, anyone can !

[suein56]

[quote user="Jean-Luc Picard"]I don't understand why you need to pluck up your courage to try Firefox! It is perfectly safe and far, far better than IE in any flavour.
[/quote]

Sheer terror, Dick. I am the only person my son knows who could ever have managed to completely delete a programme from his Amiga 500 when he had set it up expressly so that I couldn't muck it up - but I did.

Russethouse; thanks for the encouragement. I will give it a go. At least I have a friendly forum to consult if I get it wrong.

Sue

[AnOther]

[quote user="Spg"]I am the only person my son knows who could ever have managed to completely delete a programme from his Amiga 500 when he had set it up expressly so that I couldn't muck it up - but I did.[/quote]You're not alone Sue. I've been working and playing (that's fiddling not playing games) with computers since the late 70's and have built and modified more PC's than I can possibly recall so, whilst by no means the worlds expert, not exactly a newbie either.

Currently I look after a network of some 20 PC's with about 50 users and it just never ceases to amaze me what some of them seem to be able to do with a couple of innocent clicks of a mouse. I've sometimes spent hours on another machine trying to simulate what they've done and failed completely...!

Don't let this put you off installing Firefox though. As Jean-Luc said, it's dead easy and although it will undoubtedly seem a bit alien initially once you get used to it you won't go back.

[Pierre ZFP]

I liked Homer Simpson when his PC said  'Press Any Key to continue'

'Any Key?? Where's the Any Key??? I've got Alt Ctl and PrtSc but no Any key!!!!'

[Deimos]

Truth about IE7 and Firefox is that they both have their good and bad points. Some people prefer one over the other for personal reasons. I would not say one is better or worse, just (slightly) different.

Personally I prefer IE7 (used to love Firefox). However, on my PC Firefox takes ages to start-up (really ages, the wait gets boring !) whereas IE7 is pretty quick. Also, I prefer the pop-up/auto-disappearing "sidebar" for favourites (good use of screen space as it only takes space whilst you are actually using it then it automatically disappears). However, others might not like such features and may prefer Firefox).

Security use they are much of a muchness these days. Firefox has it vulnerabilities as does IE7 (and both are quite slow to address them these days). However, they are both a lot more secure than they used to be.

I'd just find one you like and use that - after all, for most people its about browsing the web and not playing with different programs that do pretty much the same.

Ian

[Baz]

[quote user="Deimos"]

 I prefer the pop-up/auto-disappearing "sidebar" for favourites (good use of screen space as it only takes space whilst you are actually using it then it automatically disappears). However, others might not like such features and may prefer Firefox).

Ian

[/quote]

Ian, I agree with you comment. However, for people who do not like the disappearing favourites, all you need do when the favourite bar is showing click the green arrow at the top right corner and the bar remains.

Baz

[Will]

Not wishing to appear confrontational but why is it that some people seem to have so many problems, whatever they do (and I am not talking solely about computing) whereas the rest of us seem to be able to bumble along quite happily. Maybe these things are less of an issue for us.

I have had no problems whatsoever with IE7 and HP (and other) equipment. IE7 is a bit different from its predecessors, but it didn't take long to get used to it, and having done so the improvements are really worth while and any problems have been easily overcome.

One bit of advice, though. Never contact HP support by phone - or not unless they have moved the operation back out of India. The only way to get any sense whatsoever is by e-mail.

 

[cooperlola]

Agreed, Will.  IE7 has worked hiccup free since I installed it!  Mr C tried Firefox but got really frustrated with the speed of the thing.  Odd.

[Deimos]

An excerpt from an e-mail from HP:

"Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

1. HP Director does not open after updating IE to 7-All Models

I am afraid to inform you that the issue here is with the Internet Explorer version 7 installed on your computer. However, uninstalling this version of Internet Explorer from your computer will resolve this issue.

Also, I wish to inform you that HP is working on it to release a software update for our customers who want to use both Internet Explorer 7.0 and HP Software. "

Then a bit later

" I appreciate your efforts to troubleshoot the issue. I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you.

We(HP) still working on this issue. Internet Explorer 7.0 full feature version is just released and we are in touch with Microsoft for further development. We will let you know when there is an update on this issue. And I recommend you to keep checking the HP Software updates from the below web link ...."

etc., etc.

It is a real problem affecting PSC printers. I wish it was my finger trouble as I could then sort it out myself - but I'm afraid it's not.

Ian

[Clair]

[quote user="ErnieY"]... give Maxthon a whirl www.maxthon.com. It's free and is basically just an overlay on IE6 but with a slew of useful facilities such as a Popup blocker, Ad hunter, RSS feed, history & cache cleaner, and so it goes on. Best of all. if you don't like it (but you will) just don't use it, no need to even unistall it as IE6 itself stays exactly as it was before.[/quote]

Ernie, I've looked at maxthon and I like the sound of it, if I can revert to IE6 by removing IE7. Is this possible?

[Cat]

There's an interesting thread here that suggests some workarounds for HP printers and IE7.  They also say that downloading and installing the HP Solution Centre will cure the problem (near the bottom of the thread).

I can't say myself, as I don't have an HP printer.

[AnOther]

Clair, according to MS http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/support/default.mspx you can uninstall IE7 so assuming this works then you're set to go with Maxthon.

Let us know how you get on because it seems quite a few people are unhappy with it and would like to go back.

Like your revised Avatar BTW, can see the car better.

[Clair]

Thanks Cathy and Ernie.

I have tried the Alt+Spacebar trick and it did bring the HP Director up, although to be totally frank, I would not even have noticed it would not come up had Ian not mentioned it, as I have only tried printing, not scanning so far...

I am downloading the Solution Centre discussed here as per Cathy's suggestion and I will post the result.

[Rjpfrancais]

Just to add a little spice into the IE 7/IE 6 vs Firefox debate. The following story caught my eye today;

"Chaos Computer Club explodes Adobe PDF security bomb"

 Apparently yet another browser security flaw has been found that potentially affects PDF documents but guess what, it doesn't affect IE7, just Firefox and IE6. Food for thought don't you think for all those people that think the answer to all your browser problems is to download Firefox and avoid IE7!!!

For those who care to, you can see the fiull story at;

http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/editorial-blogs/davey-winder/2550/chaos-computer-club-explodes-adobe-pdf-security-bomb.thtml#comments

 

[Will]

Ian - glad to see that HP recognises the problem. At least you got an answer by e-mail - had you tried the tech support number they would certainly have got you to go through a diagnostic process because they are not allowed to comment until you have run the tests. The process takes a couple of hours, so you have to ring back. Then you get a different Indian and have to do it again. They won't give you the number of the tech support people in Britain who actually know what they are talking about because, again, they are not allowed to until they have exhausted all their tests. I am not exaggerating - I even took the equipment back to the shop, knowing that HP insist on doing all their own warranty repairs, and the guy in the shop had exactly the same experience.

I repeat, NEVER use HP's phone support system - at least until you hear that it is not outsourced any more. A pity, they used to be a good, professional company.

[AnOther]

[quote user="Rjpfrancais"]

Just to add a little spice into the IE 7/IE 6 vs Firefox debate. The following story caught my eye today;

"Chaos Computer Club explodes Adobe PDF security bomb"

 Apparently yet another browser security flaw has been found that potentially affects PDF documents but guess what, it doesn't affect IE7, just Firefox and IE6. Food for thought don't you think for all those people that think the answer to all your browser problems is to download Firefox and avoid IE7!!!

For those who care to, you can see the fiull story at;

http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/editorial-blogs/davey-winder/2550/chaos-computer-club-explodes-adobe-pdf-security-bomb.thtml#comments

[/quote]Scary stuff sure enough but easily negated by disabling the Adobe Reader BHO and downloading the PDF instead of opening it online as the article says. It also serves to highlight the oft given but oft ignored advice to never open files from an unknown source, just that for now, you have to add PDF to the list...!

Hardly a compelling reason to dump Firefox or "upgrade" IE7 though and if it's as big a threat as made out then there's sure to be a patch along very soon.

I for one will not be "upgrading" any time in the forseeable future (nor will I be rushing out to buy Vista but that's a whole different jar of worms for another day & thread!)

[Clair]

[quote user="Clair"]Thanks Cathy and Ernie. I have tried the Alt+Spacebar trick and it did bring the HP Director up, although to be totally frank, I would not even have noticed it would not come up had Ian not mentioned it, as I have only tried printing, not scanning so far... I am downloading the Solution Centre discussed here as per Cathy's suggestion and I will post the result. [/quote]

Right, I did a restore point before installing the Solution Centre software recommended by HP, did a few restarts, updated online and it installed a newer version of the HP Director (now called HP Solutions Centre, so no getting lost here!) alongside the old software.

The system is fooled into thinking the more recent software is the one to use when you open the HP Director.

I managed to order a copy job, but it still refuses to print from Word or Excel...

I'm begining to think I may have been barking at the wrong tree, and it could be that my Office 2000 copy just doesn't work with IE7... [img]http://www.clicksmilies.com/s1106/fragend/confused-smiley-012.gif[/img]