Going 64-Bit: A Cautionary Tale
Recently a customer of mine who makes a living testing patient's hearing and troubleshooting issues with their hearing aides bought a new laptop to take out on call. The laptop he bought was an HP Pavilion TV5, a powerful system with a very reasonable price. Last night I stopped at his office to configure his diagnostic software and devices on the new laptop, and ran into a major issue that was anything but surprising.
The Pavilion TV5 comes with Vista Home Premium 64-bit Edition preinstalled. Niche industries such as my client's are often years behind in operating system and platform support, and 64-bit architecture is no exception. None of my client's hardware or software were supported by his new system. So what's a geek to do?
HP will not provide or support a 32-bit operating system for this laptop. Microsoft will not allow us to exchange the operating system for the 32-bit equivalent. Best Buy will exchange the laptop but the only replacements they offer running Vista 32-bit are, for lack of a better word, crap.
Did manufacturers jump the gun with the switch to 64-bit?
Update: Apparently this post caused some controversy both here on my blog as well as on my submission over on DZone. In an effort to keep the discussion going, I replied to some reader comments in a separate entry, called Going 64-Bit, Revisited.
Using a Canon MultiPass F50 on Windows Vista
The bad news is Canon no longer supports the Canon MultiPass F50 (and I assume it's brethren in the MultiPass product line) and has no intentions of making MultiPass drivers for any version of Windows Vista or for the 64-bit version of Windows XP.
The good news is you can still make the printing feature of this multifunction device work with newer versions of Windows by using a simple work-around.
Step 1: Put the MultiPass F50 into "Printer Mode"
The MultiPass has a hidden feature which allows it to run in a printer-only mode which emulates the same feature-set as a Canon InkJet S630 printer. Don't give me credit for the discovery: I picked this up from a user named GregD on Internet.com's WinDriver's forum.
To put your MultiPass in Printer Mode, push the following buttons in the order they are listed: Menu / Scan / Copy / Set / Set. The LED display should now say "Printer Mode". If you later want to scan or fax, I simply reboot the printer (if there is a better way, hopefully someone leave a comment about it). Be sure to do this before you connect the printer to your computer, or Vista will try and fail to install it as a MultiPass.
Step 2 : Connect the printer to your PC
As I mentioned, Canon doesn't have a MultiPass driver for Vista or for Windows XP 64-bit Edition. But by using the above key combination your printer will emulate a Canon InkJet S630. If you connect the printer via USB Vista should automatically detect it as an InkJet S630. If your MultiPass is connected via parallel, you may have to manually add the printer. Be sure to select the Canon InkJet S630 driver when you do!
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