Motorola: another company I'm not too keen on

I have a Motorola RAZR phone and bought the software to connect it to my PC. This was a few years ago. A while ago I started up the Motorola program and it told me I could update to version 5 for free. So I said yes, it downloaded the new version and rebooted. Then I ran the new software and it said "Your phone is not supported." Gee thanks a lot Motorola. Fortunately I was able to restore version 4 and all was well again.

HP - not so good anymore

Back when I was a student at Caltech in the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard was a respected maker of scientific instruments. Their instruments were first rate and of course, everyone liked their story of starting the company in a garage in Palo Alto. Later, their minicomputers were well-respected, too. The company I had in the '80s, Inner Loop Software, made software that simulated their graphical terminals.

I've bought many HP products over the years. Right now, we have two HP laptops and two HP printers. I have not been happy with the latest three of these. The laptops are both semi-broken and I've never been able to fully free them of the crapware that came installed on them - PC Decrapifier was only able to zap some of it. The latest HP printer I bought is OK but I don't like its software and I've never been able to use all the features. We had a heck of a time trying to use it with Photoshop Elements.

In short, while the current HP equipment is cheap, it's no better than it has to be. The days of HP as a quality brand are over, at least for me. I've had good luck with local PC builder Puget Custom Computers and I think I'll try Canon for my next all-in-one printer.