To people of a certain age the babel fish is one of the many wonderful inventions of Douglas Adams to a younger generation it probably is the service that you use to translate different languages. In computing the device driver is a the babel fish that allows all manner of hardware to work with one another. It translates the signals coming from the device into a language that the computer understands and vice versa. They usually work fine and you think nothing of them. When they don't they become the bane of your life.
Most modern operating systems automatically search out the latest version of the driver on your system and install without you doing a thing. Then you have Microsoft Vista which says one thing and does another. The case in point was the eye one colour monitor that I use to calibrate my monitor. This would not work with my 64 bit operating system. I would install it, vista would say that the driver was installed then I would find it wouldn't work. I was seriously thinking about buying a different colour calibration monitor, I even had to listen to the patronising sales man at Focus on Imaging telling me that, well, if I was such an idiot not to use Apple then what should I expect. He didn't use those exact words but that was the general feeling I got. He might be right but my computer is part of a wider system which would not easily transfer to an Apple environment.
So I was stuck with a piece of equipment that wouldn't work. There wasn't anything else to do but get my hands dirty but start to ferret around under the bonnet of Windows. And guess what I found. Whilst Vista was telling me that the driver had installed it actually hadn't. I quickly sorted this problem out and the colour calibrator works.
And the morale of this story? Well there isn't one other than the usual one of smug satisfaction of the Apple fan boys who told you so. At one level they are right of course but at another there is so many things wrong with Apple and its approach.
Simon Marchini LRPS
Web: http://WWW.simonmarchini.co.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/@simonmarchini
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