Why is it so hard to print? I have a bog standard HP Photosmart C4180 here running on an XP machine. It is shared as a windows printer.

• Jaunty works 95% of the time. Sometimes it just stops and wants a restart before coming back to life.
• Windows 7. Works about 50% of the time. Sometimes just nothing happens. The Windows 7 machine will sometimes think everything is fine but nothing appears on the XP machine. Sometimes it will just hang. Sometimes it will print. Usually a reboot will help.
• Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Had to resort to the CUPS interface (http://localhost:631) just to get it to see the printer. Now seems to be working. Seems to be.
• Son’s XP machine. Prints around 70% of the time. Same symptoms as the Windows 7 machine when it doesn’t print.

If you want to blame the XP machine, last week it was being driven off a Samba machine instead with the same issues. Everywhere I go I have the same experience. Just walking into our office and hitting the print button and having something print out feels like an extraordinary experience. I have no idea how it feels if you manage it two days in a row.