[alansky]

Multifunction Printer = Jack of all trades, master of none

[BrianChen]

@helmdall & derekm

Are you two saying the Watergate story was a violation of the code of ethics? I know getting Lexmark to update a driver isn't anywhere near as large as Watergate, but it's the most obvious example.

Maybe I should've worded this better. Perhaps not the duty of a journalist, but an idealistic goal. We report on things that aren't necessarily "good" to the public, and in a perfect world the people being reported on will improve their ways.

[lee_sf]

context said:

This sort of interaction between reviewer and manufacturer is ill-advised, if not downright unethical.

Product reviewers for software or hardware end up in a defacto QA role by the nature of the review process- asking questions of the manufacturer, getting drivers or updates to solve problems, whatever. That's fine, especially when the reviewer documents the process. Actually, there's probably an ethical requirement to document the back-and-forth when something doesn't work out of the box, as useful information to consumers. I don't see a problem with that, appreciate the additional info, and benefit from the improvements.

I agree that there's a problem with "product improvement through direct interaction with the manufacturer" as a line-item goal of a review, even an idealistic goal. The reviewer ends up too much a part of the product grooming, marketing, and publicity process, working with the manufacturer to polish the product image before public presentation and discussion. That's even more true if there's no follow-up article like this one, revealing the otherwise-private hassles of getting a review to a minimal three mice.

If a manufacturer is OK with presenting a product to the public with crappy documentation and drivers, they should be equally tolerant of having said crappiness discussed and resolved in public.

This should probably have been a two-mice review three weeks ago, with this article as a three-mice update now.

[deasys]

"As an experiment, the technician asked a Mac user at Lexmark’s headquarters to try to set up the X560n's scanner using the included instruction manual. To our favor, that Lexmark employee failed. Lexmark was then kind of enough to write a new set of instructions that were more Mac friendly. We followed them and were able to set up the scanner. Eureka."
Fascinating...and how sloppy of Lexmark!
So, has Lexmark followed through and corrected the erroneous instructions in its shipping product? What about the hapless owners of devices already shipped?
I believe you let them off too easy.

[Dan Frakes]

lee_sf said:

This should probably have been a two-mice review three weeks ago, with this article as a three-mice update now.

As a reviewer, this can be a tricky situation. Before you can say that a product "doesn't work with the Mac" (or something similar), you have to make sure what you're saying is accurate. Sometimes that involves interacting with the manufacturer to verify your problems. If, during the course of that interaction, the vendor discovers an issue and fixes it, making that fix available to all consumers (in this case, by posting updated drivers to the company's Web site) before your publication date, do you still review the product based on the original, non-working drivers, knowing that anyone who buys the product at the time of publication has working drivers available? My personal opinion is that you publish the review based on the current product, disclosing the issues you previously experienced (which Brian did here).

[heimdall]

BrianChen,
Not sure how you're bringing Watergate into this. Are you saying that Woodward and Bernstein corresponded with Nixon, et al, asking them to reconsider their actions for the better? In what way does investigating a break-in at the DNC headquarters and the subsequent cover up related to advocacy?

[lee_sf]

Dan Frakes said:

Sometimes that involves interacting with the manufacturer to verify your problems.

Understood and agreed re the driver issue. However, to extract a particular narrative from the article-

Quote

The X560n sat in my cubicle for three weeks, requiring multiple extensions of my deadlines because of the number of issues I encountered. ... I could not set up the X560n's scanner to work ... So I downgraded to OS Tiger ... I tried again, and so did Jim?to no avail. ... I had a multifunction device with an entire function not working?and a company unwilling to admit it. ... I had to leave an entire portion of our test results blank for the X560n?the scanner results, of course, because I couldn?t get the bleeping thing to work! ... So along with Jim and senior editor Roman Loyola, we contacted Lexmark again. ... Lexmark was then kind of enough to write a new set of instructions that were more Mac friendly. We followed them and were able to set up the scanner.

So Brian and Jim escalated the issue to senior editorial at MacWorld (Roman), who made the decision that the review could not run with the missing functionality and two mice (I'm guessing here), and took the time to apply sufficient pressure to Lexmark that they paid attention.

With all due respect, that's not "interacting with the manufacturer to verify your problems," that's pressuring the manufacturer to solve a problem so you don't have to run a negative review, however accurate it might be. That's just weird. Where was Lexmark marketing / PR and why didn't they care about a grossly negative review potentially being posted and deal with it on their side?

At the same time, MacWorld gets points for Brian's follow-up article explaining the process, which has been more interesting than the original review.

[Martian]

There is nothing wrong with saying something like,
“After going through the all too common, painful, frustrating, back and forth, time wasting tech (non)support uncooperative denials, we finally ironed out the problem…etc.”
The two messages would be
1…The problem is fixed, therefore not an issue for future purchasers. This is really what Mac users need to know.
2…But expect the usual crappy tech support from this company. This is also what users need to know.
However, the limited/crippled scanning to Mac problem remains, so this particular machine sucks and is a no-go for Macs.
Note: I have no anti-Lexmark prejudices as my fairly old E322n network laser printer workhorse has spanned from OS9.something through to yesterday’s Leopard update without a problem pumping out 5000-6000 copies per cartridge.

[heimdall]

I'm curious about a particular point that has not quite been clarified: did Lexmark know it was Macworld calling for support, or did they think it to just be a regular retail customer?

I think the answer has a particular bearing on an evaluation of Lexmark support.

[BrianChen]

@heimdall
To clarify, we were not dealing with Lexmark tech support. This was Lexmark HQ's PR and technicians.

[Xenu]

I wish MacWorld would take other manufacturers to task for lying about driver compatibility. When I upgraded to Leopard, the driver for my Epson Perfection 1260 scanner stopped working entirely. Epson swears that the driver works on Leopard (the current driver has a release date of 08/09/06), but numerous contacts with Epson tech support and visits to the Apple Genius Bar have proven the opposite. Now I'm stuck with a scanner that works great on XP, but not at all on OS X 10.5+. Is this what they call planned obsolescence?