Using an Old Printer on Windows 11

A while ago I got a cheap colour printer. I’ve been using it on Windows 10 and it works a treat, but on Windows 11 things are a little bit more complicated. You can install the printer drivers that you can find here and you can print OK. But if you reboot your computer the drivers might vanish (it’s happened to me) and you have to install them again.

Worse, sometimes the install fails with an error about things already being in use. I asked ChatGPT for help and it came up with this which worked for me.

Cheap Surface Clone

I’ve bought another computer. I’ve rationalised this because even after all this time I don’t have a machine running Windows 11. And today someone asked me if some of my code would run that platform. And I rather wanted to give them an answer.

I don’t want to upgrade my present machine from Windows 10 for several reasons. The primary one is that I have no need to. The second is that it would cost a lot of money. The third is that I’d have to replace pretty much everything which would mean a complete reinstall of all the software, some of which I don’t think I have licence keys for any more.

I’d much rather spend my cash on something with just enough power and disk space to do what I want with Windows 11. Which is where I introduce the Geotab 110. For less than the price of a Surface Go type cover I can get a complete tablet with keyboard and pen. I’m not expecting the earth when it arrives, but I am looking forward to discovering what kind of tablet PC you can get for 120 quids.

Windows 11 video output is magic

I’m getting ready for a talk I’m giving tomorrow. In person. Rather exciting. I’m using my super cheap Windows 11 laptop. Just to see if I can. Today I was checking out the video output. I plugged the laptop into my screen and looked for the setting that would enable output. Then I glanced at the external monitor. It was already mirroring the laptop screen. Exactly what I wanted as default behaviour.

I guess there are settings for having multiple screens and whatnot, but I love the way that it did exactly what I wanted without me having to do anything. This is how things should be.

Windows 11 on the cheapest computer I own

Which one is running Windows 11?

When I bought my super-cheap laptop I noticed that xsonly had an even cheaper one that had a processor flagged as Windows 11 compatible. What the heck, it was only sixty quid. So I bought one. True to their word, Microsoft have now released an upgrade for the device and I installed it.

It works. Windows 11 runs perfectly. I’m not sure that I’d recommend the cheaper notebook though. I think it is cheaper for a reason - which is that it only has a dual core processor. The GeoBook 140 has a quad core device. The difference is noticeable when using the laptop, things are a bit more slow to arrive.

I rather like the Windows 11 experience though. Putting the task bar in the middle of the screen makes perfect sense after a while - you don’t have to move the mouse to the corner to do everything. Everything looks like it has had a spring clean and tidied up. Very nice.

If you want to run Windows 11 on a machine that is cheaper than a video game it is still available at the moment.