HP USA Customer Service at it's best!

My HP Laptop adapter wire started to fray and then the adapter went bust in less than 10 months of ownership. And then the laptop just shutdown and would not boot up at all. Here is my (scary) experience getting it fixed.

I had a very harrowing experience with HP Support/Customer Service here in the US. Due to the adapter going bust, I suspect that the MoBo & RAM was fried on my laptop which was still under warranty. I called the Customer Support who sent me a pre-paid box to mail in the laptop. I mailed in my laptop & adapter and when called in to check the status, I was told that the adapter was bust due to my mishandling and so I would need to buy a new adapter myself. Also, since the laptop did not boot up with the adapter that I had sent in, it was being sent back to me as nothing could be done! And while we are discussing this, would you like to buy an original HP Adapter?

I just could not believe my ears and was really angry at them for this action. Couldn't they just use one of their adapters and confirm whether that was the only problem? They said that they would use only the items supplied and did not have any other "good" adapters with them. I talked to a few other guys and most of them told the same thing - but a few others did not have any idea at all and just read out the problem statement that I had mentioned in my initial call!

To top it all, all this was happening just a week before I was scheduled to take a 3 week vacation to India and 2 weeks before the warranty was going to expire - arrrggghhh!!!

At this point, I just lost all hope and left it to HIM to perform a miracle. And I was in for a pleasant surprise on Christmas eve - I received the repaired laptop with a brand new adapter in mail! The sheet accompanying laptop mentioned that the MoBo & RAM had indeed been replaced, HDD formatted & re-imaged and a new power adapter had been supplied :D

So, even though the Support/Customer Service did not have much clue, the Tech Service guys did a really good job. They did exactly what they should have done - replaced the busted parts as the laptop was still under warranty!

This is in sharp contrast to my experience with Dell Customer Service where-in everyone consistently told the same (correct) thing and the resolution was spot-on. I had a problem with the keyboard once and the adapter once and both times I was mailed in the replacement parts with clear details on what to do next.

Thankfully all's well - that end's well (atleast for now)!

Brother MFC-240C Scanner & xsane problems on Ubuntu

I have Ubuntu 9.04 running on a Dell Vostro 1000 and some time back, had configured Brother MFC-240C to scan & print. However, when I tried to scan some pictures yesterday, I was not getting any images at all! I tried with different pictures just to be sure and sometimes I got strange blobs. As I was qorking on solving this issue, I faced a set of problems and here's how I solved them ...


I tried to plug-in the MFC to different ports to check if it was a specific USB port problem but that did not help. On the contrary, I got the errors:

• Failed to start scanner: Error during device I/O
• Bus XXX Device XXX: Device not found
• Failed to start scanner: Invalid Argument

These were resolved when I powered down the MFC before unplugging it and then powered it back up after plugging it in to another port.


After a while of playing around, I got the error:
Error during CMS conversion. could not open scanner ICM profile.
I realised that while playing with the scanner settings, I had inadvertantly enabled "Color Management". Unchecking "Preferences > Enable Color Management" resolved this issue but that does not end the story yet!


A search on ubuntu forums and google in general showed that many people had faced these same problems before and so I was flabbergasted when even after trying all this, the scanner was working but again I was not getting any images at all?!


After a bit of poking around, it just struck me to check whether the temp space had finished. And lo behold - I had used up almost all the available space in /tmp as well as root - the usage was 100%! Due to this, xsane was not able to save the image data sent by the scanner. Clearing up space in root and tmp finally resolved the problem and I got the scanned images perfectly now!



Check out the specs & reviews of Brother MFC-240C on Amazon:

Brother MFC 240c on Ubuntu 9.04

My Dell Vostro 1000 now runs Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). When the time came for me to print & scan a few things using my multi-function device Brother MFC 240c - I realized that I had missed to set it up. Now Google came to my rescue and here's how I did it. It required the follwing three steps:

1. Setup the Printer,
2. Setup the Scanner and
3. Setup the MFC Front Panel buttons Tool - this is optional

Printer Setup
Open Synaptic Package Manager and search for & install the packages along with any dependencies that it may show:

1. brother-cups-wrapper-bh7
2. brother-lpr-drivers-bh7.

This should setup your printer!


Scanner Setup
Go to Brother site and follow the instructions based on the way you connect your printer to your computer. Mostly it should be through a USB connection to your laptop/desktop and for that, use this link.

Here is a list of steps to Install the Scanner:

1. Download the appropriate scanner driver from this link. Note that you need to download the appropriate (32 or 64 bit) brcan2 deb package
2. Connect MFC to computer and switch it on
3. Open a terminal and cd to the folder where the drivers have been downloaded
4. Install the driver using the command:
   sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan2-0.2.4-4.i386.deb
   
5. Grant permissions to the scanner using the command:
   sudo vi /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules
   
6. Search for the line containing libusb device nodes
   
7. Change MODE="0664" to MODE="0666"
8. Restart your computer and the scanner should work now.
9. Use XSane or any of your favorite scanning app to scan something & verify that everything is good

MFC front Panel buttons Tool Setup
If you want to use the buttons on the Scanner panel to scan, then you need to install the scan-key-tool as follows:

1. Download the scanner driver from this link. Note that you need to download the appropriate (32 or 64 bit) scan-key-tool deb package
2. Connect MFC to computer and switch it on
3. Open a terminal and cd to the folder where the drivers have been downloaded
4. Install the driver using the command:
   sudo dpkg -i --force-all brscan-skey-0.2.1-3.i386.deb
   
5. Run the brscan-skey tool using the command:
   brscan-skey
   
6. Confirm that it is running, using the command: brscan-skey -l
   
7. Press the scan button, select user, select destination, press START on the MFC
8. You should see the output on the console similar to the following:
   
   # scan from SCANNER(brother2:net1;dev0) to /root/brscan/brscan.sP7525
   scanimage: rounded value of br-x from 215.9 to 215.88
   scanimage: rounded value of br-y from 355.6 to 355.567
   
   

Note:

1. Ensure that you enter the correct file names in the dpkg commands. I have given the ones that I used and currently see on the Brother website
2. I have not installed the brscan-skey as I don't (yet) intend to use the MFC panel to scan!
   

Check out the specs & reviews of Brother MFC-240C on Amazon: