win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Wed, 8/6/08, Christofer C. Bell <christofer.c.bell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I bought an incredibly awesome printer from 
> MicroCenter that is wireless, has a scanner, 
> full color printing, has a remote administration 
> webpage, and works great in Windows, Mac OS X, 
> and Linux, and it was $120.

Among the many reasons I do not own a Mac is that I am distrustful of "all-in-one" technology.  Printers need only print.  More "options" provide additional things which can break, sometimes before other options resulting in (for example) a printer which has a broken scanner, necessitating purchase of a separate scanner anyway or disposal of a perfectly good printer.  Integration often results in horrible mistakes like the entire line of Windows OSes after v3.11.

Yes I was annoyed about motherboards coming with on-board <anything>.  I don't buy any motherboard which has on-board technology (such as networking, video, sound, modem, hard drive controller, floppy controller, etc.) which cannot be switched off and replaced with an add-on card.