Do you want coffee? Number.

As I was installing HP's drivers for the new LaserJet 4200 printer in our office, I was presented with a Hebrew installer. Some companies think it's neat, so they check out the default language of the system and use a resource file to translate their software.

At one point, I was asked (in Hebrew of course) a question like "Would you like to install the printer as a local printer?". The printer was a network printer, so the answer to that is No. Surprisingly, the only two answers before me were כן, and מספר. To those readers who can not read Hebrew, I would translate: Yes and Number.

Now, I can see how this could have happened. The translator sat down and saw the resource kit. Seeing two words, "Yes" and "No", he decided to translate Yes as the positive answer to a question, and No as the abbreviation to the word Number. What I fail to understand, however, is how this was bypassed by the Quality Assurance team.

This leads me to two very quick answers. The first, being a consumer of numerous HP products, I already noticed that the company has NO quality assurance team. The second, no-one in HP's Israeli department tried the Hebrew installer.

The latter answer turned out to be correct: The installer was unsuccessful, and re-running it froze my system to a total halt. Only after running the English installation (by picking it specifically from a sub directory in the installation CD) I managed to get the drivers installed correctly and the printer to start printing.

The question I ask now, in this post which is too long anyway: If this is a network printer, having a web page of it's own as an interface for configuring and managing the printer, why doesn't it allow you to download the drivers from the webpage? It would make so much sense, and be so easy for the users. Another answer to this, as I have encountered by using HP's marvolous product NNM is that HP don't care about user interfaces nor about the user being comfortable using it's systems.

All that said, Joah and I use an HP camera, yet it still cannot connect to the computer on the first try.