Web portal requires Vista?

[Bobblehead]

Our reception has been using Purolator E-Ship Online to print shipping labels for a long time.

Purolator changed their portal recently and suddenly the printer wouldn't print the bar code. Calling Purolator, they said the solution was to upgrade to Vista.

WTF?

Has anyone run across situations like this before?

There's gotta be a hack - they don't mandate a specific printer, but a specific OS is strange.

(then again, they are 91% owned by Canada Post)

[photon]

That's dumb, there should be no reason..

What kind of system is it when you log in? Does it use Java? Flash? ActiveX?

[Rathji]

I have limited experience in this area, so don't take this as anything but a slightly uneducated guess. The only reason I am aware of that that you require Vista to run anything is if it requires Direct X 10.

This does not mean there are no other DLL's that are soley supported by Vista, but I have no idea what they woudl be.

[psicodude]

That is really stupid, and I would bet a lot of money that it's totally made up. Why would they require an operating system that probably less than 1/4 of their customers use?

Anyway, try changing your printer driver to a postscript version. All major printer manufacturers put out both a PS and PCL version of their drivers. PS seems to handle graphics (read:the barcode) better.

[Bobblehead]

The only thing I have been able to dig up (well, asking a smart person off of Ars Technica) would be that Vista uses XPS and the bar code uses DRM that requires XPS.

However, I think that should be able to be fixed with .Net 3.0 or perhaps the XPS Essentials Pack

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/viewxps.mspx

This issue wasn't brought to me directly, but I seem to be the one that people come to with the "Have you heard anything about _________" questions.