HP Fail

I tried helping a neighbour install his new Hewlett Packard print/fax/scan/copy machine today, but it did not go well. The person who set up Windows for this neighbour (not me, I swear) decided to letter the root drive as E: instead of the regular standard of C:. The HP drivers didn't quite like this, and refused to install on drive E:, meaning my neighbour has now gone out to return the HP and buy a Canon machine. It's surprising that HP can't write software that allows one to install their software on any old drive. It's not like it came up with a box saying "where is Windows? Perhaps we can recover from this...", instead it plain old failed, and decided to uninstall everything it had done up to that point. Quite unfortunate, seeing as how I've had pretty good support for HP on my Linux box. Of course, changing the drive lettering is out of the question, since that will just mess up every other program on the system.

Lesson 1: Use the industry standard of installing Windows to drive C:, and don't invent your own standard.

Lesson 2: Don't assume that the customer's computer will be exactly like your own. Allow your software to be installed to any place possible. It's okay to have C:/Program Files/... as a default, but forcing that on users is a bad idea.

Update (2009/01/07): HP responded, with the following excerpt:
"I would like to inform you that the HP Software is designed to install in C: drive by default. It will look for the C: drive automatically during the installation and we will not be able to install the software to any other drive. So in order to resolve the issue I request you to change drive letter on your computer to C: drive."
Thank you HP. Thanks a lot.