Another Vista Victim

seanbear said:
I suggest you blame hp and not microsoft. Microsoft doesnt write the drivers. ;)
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No, Microsoft does not write the drivers. In this case, HP should have. It's HP dropping the ball due to Microsoft's new OS.

My title you quoted was not blaming Microsoft directly. It was more a comment on how a new OS comes along and a bunch of Manufacturers rub their collective hands together saying "ooh, we get to sell all new hardware with a Vista Logo on the box", while landfills collect our perfectly working printers/scanners/other non supported peripherals. Hence the reference to "Windows Vista causes more consumer waste due to lack of driver support. Film at 11". They may not be directly responsible, but it doesn't change the fact that a lot of peripherals are going to be obsoleted unnecessarily.

-E
 
djnes said:
That would surprise me...because my PSC1210, which was made earlier than your 1315 has built in support. I'm thrilled, because I used to have to load a 180 MB drive package.
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Awesome! I have the 1210 and I definitely was not ready to replace it. Plus, my Vista upgrade bill is already way past what I wanted to pay.
 
Agh, man, so not cool. I was never a big fan of HP's mega-huge drivers (all my printers have been Canon for more than a decade. My BJC-600e still functions!).

It's just awesome, that in comparison, Canon writes legacy drivers for a lot of my printers. Could run my S500 on Win9x if necessary, and they also put out beta 64-bit drivers consistently. Nice to have that kinda support.
 
Just another reason why HP sucks.

I have a photosmart 7350 that I was able to get working (very minimally) with Vista RTM. By very minimally I mean printing just words.. Printing power point slide handouts were out of the question. Numbers and images in those slides would become garbled or not even print.

When I looked on HP's site, it seems that they want Vista to use an "alternate driver" to print documents. Maybe it will actually work.
 
In my experience printers aren't fussy about the drivers they use, try installing the nearest HP printer driver you can for your product and you may well find it works.
 
HP did the same thing with a PhotoSmart Printer. I bought it about 2 months before XP came out.

I got the same, Sorry but Tuff email from them.

That is why I will never buy an HP product again. That and the overpriced ink cartridges.
 
I hate HP ever since my 930C back when.
The ink was way overpriced, but the drivers were great.
After that I moved to canon, my IPixma 2000 is still fine and I just got Vista 32bit and 64bit drivers- thats proper support for a 3-4 year old printer!
I have to agree- never buy HP, their customer support is awful and their solution to many problems is : "We'll either rip you off repairing it or you can buy a new one" (obviously this happens once the warranty is over).
 
I did not get the OP message about Vista drivers for my photosmart 1115 printer. I did get a Vista link but nothing but another search when clicked on.

So what does that mean?
 
djnes said:
Heh, Vista has support for my HP LaserJet 4 Plus. This thing might be 10 years old.
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Awesome. I am glad to hear it. That's the printer I have. BTW mine has a manufacturing date of 1995 on the back of it. I've seen some manufacturered as early as 1994. I believe they were discontinued in late 1995 or early 1996. If that's correct than your printer is no less than 11 years old.
 
djnes said:
It's funny how many people think this is amazing behavior...I guess no one remembers over 5 years ago, when XP was released, driver support was lacking. Same when 2000 was released, and so one. There are so many threads with people complaining that driver support is severely lacking, yet this was completely expected.
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Though 9 times out of 10, you could get a Windows 2000 driver to work with XP.
 
spencers said:
Just another reason why HP sucks.

I have a photosmart 7350 that I was able to get working (very minimally) with Vista RTM. By very minimally I mean printing just words.. Printing power point slide handouts were out of the question. Numbers and images in those slides would become garbled or not even print.

When I looked on HP's site, it seems that they want Vista to use an "alternate driver" to print documents. Maybe it will actually work.
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Not sure what's up with this.

Six said:
rule #1, Never by an HP product. Its all cheap.
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Oh and what's better? Lexmark? Canon? Brother? Keep dreaming. I'll take HP's worst printer over most of what the other guys offer. The Lexmark, Brother and Oki-Data printers can't even do Postscript jobs correctly most of the time. Not to mention, some of those are next to impossible to get parts for. How many Laserjet II and III's are out there working today? How many of the competition's printers are still working from back in the day? Oh that's right next to none.

movax said:
Agh, man, so not cool. I was never a big fan of HP's mega-huge drivers (all my printers have been Canon for more than a decade. My BJC-600e still functions!).

It's just awesome, that in comparison, Canon writes legacy drivers for a lot of my printers. Could run my S500 on Win9x if necessary, and they also put out beta 64-bit drivers consistently. Nice to have that kinda support.
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The drivers are mega huge, but they work. Canon's ink jets are FAR behind Epson and HP in terms of design and usually that includes print quality.

smoothmove said:
HP did the same thing with a PhotoSmart Printer. I bought it about 2 months before XP came out.

I got the same, Sorry but Tuff email from them.

That is why I will never buy an HP product again. That and the overpriced ink cartridges.
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Well, the HP printers may get drivers eventually. I don't know why the Photosmart series is getting the shaft here. Especially considering their popularity.

As to the expensive ink cartridges there is a reason. The HP cartridges usually have a print head built into them. In the cases where they don't, they aren't quite as expensive as they could be. What's nice about the ones that don't have print heads is that they are pressurized and self-sealing when removed. They hardly drip any excess ink when removed and they can be re-used easily. Epson can't say the same thing and neither can Canon last time I checked. Also the Canon and Epson ink jet printers are junk because they don't have field replacable or even servicable print heads. Working as a printer technician I've seen far more Epson and Canon printers come in for repair than anything else. Ever run that rediculous print head cleaning cycle on an Epson that never seems to work? Well try running it 30 times and if that doesn't work your screwed. Why? Because the print head system is fixed and can only be serviced wherever Epson refurbs their units.

At least when the HP's came in I could actually replace the print heads (usually by changing the ink cartridges) and those are the most common failure point in an inkjet printer.

The expensive catridge theme continues in the laser printers too. The reason? They have the photosensitive drum and most of the other consumable parts inside the toner catridges. This means that a user can replace them just by replacing the toner cartridge and since these high wear parts are replaced so often (by design) the printer is kept in better working order and the print quality will usually always be at it's best unless you have an untimely failure of something in the cartridge.

malingjc said:
Though 9 times out of 10, you could get a Windows 2000 driver to work with XP.
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Yes you could, but mainly because the driver model was virtually identical. The same is not true of Vista. There is going to be alot of hardware that simply won't work until a driver gets written for them. Drivers for these things are the responsibility of the manufacturer. Microsoft will include virtually any driver as long as it meets certain criteria.
 
I can vouch for what Dan-D is saying, from working for HP for 5.5 years until this past April. Even though I have no employee discount anymore, I'll still only buy HP printers.
 
djnes said:
I can vouch for what Dan-D is saying, from working for HP for 5.5 years until this past April. Even though I have no employee discount anymore, I'll still only buy HP printers.
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I've been a printer tech for 10 years. I can safely say that with the exception of a few specific printers here and there, if it doesn't say HP on it, it's crap.
 
djnes said:
Heh, Vista has support for my HP LaserJet 4 Plus. This thing might be 10 years old.
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I used an HP LaserJet IIIp up until just a couple of years ago, when it finally died. We bought it to print on our 486DX33 machine (to give you an idea about time). Those old HP LaserJet printers are built like tanks. I like it alot better than any of the new HP printers that I've got.
 
Mark305TBI said:
I used an HP LaserJet IIIp up until just a couple of years ago, when it finally died. We bought it to print on our 486DX33 machine (to give you an idea about time). Those old HP LaserJet printers are built like tanks. I like it alot better than any of the new HP printers that I've got.
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Very true. Despite the fact that I think HP's hardware is still vastly superior to the junk put out my most of the other manufacturers (and it is) their older printers are MUCH longer lasting and more reliable than some of their newer ones. The Laserjet 4050/4100/4200 for example can't touch the Laserjet 4 in this category.
 
(edited)

Wow.

Personally having supported printers for a few different very large corproations since the hot item was the IIIp, I can't help but feel a few of the preceeding posts are either knee-jerk reactions to perceived attacks or they are not properly quantified. I want to believe its the latter. I'll quantify my argument:

1) In an enterprise setting the HP choices are phenominal. I have yet to take issue with any of the HP 4050 series we use as departmental printers. I wish I could afford one for home. The 5000 series we currently use in our copy rooms have had zero downtime since they replaced a fleet of Canon "network office imaging systems". Our single lonely Ricoh seems to fall apart 3 to 4 times per month.

2) In regards to photo-inkjets, all reputable review sites, in particular dpreview, printerspot, and photoreview, tout the nuances of each manufacturer's offerings however the manufacturer that is most preferred and recommended in this particular area is Canon. They have consistently been first to market with some amazing technologies (with Epson very close behind) and unfortunately HP's offerings really can't compete. This doesn't insinuate HP's offerings are poor, only that for similar cost Canon (and Epson) are preferred.

3) Home laserjets used to be dominated by HP products but that was back when I forked over 2 weeks wages for a IIIp. My IIIp died in the spring of '05 and never once required any repairs or maintenance besides a special sheet to clean it out periodically. My best friend's IIIp is still going strong - he had the feed system replaced about 5 years ago and it still goes through a toner cartridge almost every month. However presently I would never recommend an HP product for SOHO even to my worst enemy. There is a lot of competition in the $200 to $800 range and HP build quality and TCO is definately worse than that of Samsung. Replacing exec's HP 1100 and HP 1300 printers has become commonplace. Its unfortunate that all printers in this range have become "throw-away".
 
I am not sure what Canon printers you are refering to Dan, but my Canon printer has a consumer replacable printhead. They cost around $60. Also, the reviews I read when l was looking for a new printer showed my Canon to be superior in print quality and cost of ownership over comparable HP's and of course Lexmarks as well. So, while HP does make a good product and I have owned serveral and still do, they are not the only game in town.

The fact that it took them 20 years to finally stop raping their customers on inkjet replacement cartridges says alot.
 
Samung has drivers out for their consumer grade printers... just download ML-1610 drivers this AM.
 
mote21 said:
(edited)

Wow.

Personally having supported printers for a few different very large corproations since the hot item was the IIIp, I can't help but feel a few of the preceeding posts are either knee-jerk reactions to perceived attacks or they are not properly quantified. I want to believe its the latter. I'll quantify my argument:

1) In an enterprise setting the HP choices are phenominal. I have yet to take issue with any of the HP 4050 series we use as departmental printers. I wish I could afford one for home. The 5000 series we currently use in our copy rooms have had zero downtime since they replaced a fleet of Canon "network office imaging systems". Our single lonely Ricoh seems to fall apart 3 to 4 times per month.
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I agree. Their business solutions are simply superior to their competitors for the most part. Their network hardware, remote management features and options are all superior. The only exception is in regard to print quality. The Xerox Phaser series prints far nicer images than the Color Laserjets do. The trade off is the Xerox units have a higher cost of printing per page and they also have a higher cost of ownership. They require what seems like twice as much maintenence compared to HP units. Konica-Minolta color laser printers are a joke and a client of mine had a few of these in use and they were absolute junk.

mote21 said:
2) In regards to photo-inkjets, all reputable review sites, in particular dpreview, printerspot, and photoreview, tout the nuances of each manufacturer's offerings however the manufacturer that is most preferred and recommended in this particular area is Canon. They have consistently been first to market with some amazing technologies (with Epson very close behind) and unfortunately HP's offerings really can't compete. This doesn't insinuate HP's offerings are poor, only that for similar cost Canon (and Epson) are preferred.
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I haven't looked into comparing print quality of recent models, but as far back as a year and a half ago, the HP was second to Epson and the Canon's of the day were unimpressive. Additionally, my main gripe with the Canon and Epson offerings is that the SUCK DONKEY PENIS when it comes to mechanical reliability. The top feed mechanism is a stupid idea and HP abandoned it years ago and rightly so. There is nothing ore annoying than your Epson printer pulling the entire stack of paper in the tray through the paper path because the seperation pad has some wear on it. With an HP, their feed mechanism prevents this from being a possibility. If it jams it will do so with one piece of paper. Not all of them at once.

The next reason why HP is mechanically superior has to do with the print head design. HP offers replacable print heads in the form of new ink cartridges with the print heads built in or replacement print heads that can be purchased seperately. Epson has NEVER done this to my knowledge and Canon stopped doing this some time ago. The print head nozzels are very likely going to get clogged and diminish print quality and eventually, the printer won't be able to print at all. I've seen relatively new Canon and Epson printers exhibit this behavior. Since the print head isn't field replaceable by users or technicians, I consider this aspect of the design unacceptable. The HP's may not print as well, but damnit they'll work everytime, and if they don't, they can be repaired more often than not. (At least when it comes to print head issues.)

Granted there are cases such as the sub-$100 printers where the cost of ink alone makes these things virtually throw away units. In such cases the above statements don't matter as much because the printer isn't worth a crap anyway.

For the record I despise inkjet printers of all brands, models and designs. As a technology it isn't worth a damn. The reliability of all ink jet printers isn't the best and has done nothing but get worse over the last 10 years.

mote21 said:
3) Home laserjets used to be dominated by HP products but that was back when I forked over 2 weeks wages for a IIIp. My IIIp died in the spring of '05 and never once required any repairs or maintenance besides a special sheet to clean it out periodically. My best friend's IIIp is still going strong - he had the feed system replaced about 5 years ago and it still goes through a toner cartridge almost every month. However presently I would never recommend an HP product for SOHO even to my worst enemy. There is a lot of competition in the $200 to $800 range and HP build quality and TCO is definately worse than that of Samsung. Replacing exec's HP 1100 and HP 1300 printers has become commonplace. Its unfortunate that all printers in this range have become "throw-away".
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This is largely true. I would personally purchase a Samsung, Brother or whatever vs. the HP for cost reasons and because the lower end HP offerings have suffered the most decline in quality over the last 3 or 4 years. It is true that all the printers in this category are throwaway jobs like their ink jet brethren. So why pay 30%-50% more for something you'll just have to toss in a year or two anyway?

Right now I am using a Laserjet 4M Plus that was made in 1995 and I'll keep using it until the day it dies.
 
Well my psc 2510 prints wirelessly using the Vista supplied drivers. But it won't scan or read memory cards. Apparently those only work if you plug the printer into a USB port (haven't tried it), which kind of defeats the whole point of getting a wireless printer to start with. For now I have to scan from my XP laptop then copy the files to my Vista machine. I don't use those features enough for this to be a major issue, but it would be nice to have working drivers.

I've been through enough Windows launches that I didn't expect a lot of driver support. But Vista really seems to be the worst so far. Half my hardware devices are using limited generic drivers and the other half are using beta drivers.
 
Glad you guys brought this to my attention. the Officejet 5610v seems to work with the built-in drivers (and they say they will have a full driver package ready later), but the Photosmart 335 Go printer (though not hooked up to the computer just because I use it as a standalone photo printer) is not compatible. Sigh.

HP WHY.....WWWWWWWHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now to see if the Logitech Harmony software works as well as my Linksys network card...looking to be no vista for my mother!
 
jwp27577 said:
Well my psc 2510 prints wirelessly using the Vista supplied drivers. But it won't scan or read memory cards. Apparently those only work if you plug the printer into a USB port (haven't tried it), which kind of defeats the whole point of getting a wireless printer to start with. For now I have to scan from my XP laptop then copy the files to my Vista machine. I don't use those features enough for this to be a major issue, but it would be nice to have working drivers.

I've been through enough Windows launches that I didn't expect a lot of driver support. But Vista really seems to be the worst so far. Half my hardware devices are using limited generic drivers and the other half are using beta drivers.
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Windows ME was bad about this too, as was Windows 2000. Windows XP was great about this because it used the same driver model that Windows 2000 used.

Poor driver availability and compatibility is always a problem whenever the driver model for a new operating system is changed from the way it was done on the last version of the OS.

Windows 95 and 98 and even 98SE generally used the same driver model. Windows ME had a slightly different driver model and there was just very little industry support behind it as it was a rushed release.

Windows 2000 had a different driver model than Windows NT and also a different driver model than what the Windows 9x OSes used. Windows XP shared the 2000 driver model and that's why the transition from 2k to XP was much more painless.

Vista also uses a completely new driver model so expect difficulty because of that.
 
messerchmidt said:
Printer wise, waiting for x64 drivers for my hp 1020, running it off a 2nd pentium 3 comp over the network via generic hp drivers off my vista box.
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That's exactly what I do--I have an ancient P2-266 laptop I use as a print server for my color laserjet 4550. Well, actually it's a 4550N, but it's missing the JetDirect card, and it's on my To Do list to get one.

In my opinion, it's well worth it to have an older machine on the network, or to get a network-enabled printer in the first place.
 
Dan_D said:
Since the print head isn't field replaceable by users or technicians, I consider this aspect of the design unacceptable.
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They are field replacable, in fact they are consumer replacable. You can find them right next to the ink cartridges and places like Walmart.

I can't link to the instructions on Canon's site, but here is a link to some pictures of the printhead removal process from Canon's site:

http://usa.canon.com/app/images/service_ware/LDImages/WSSS/05SJ00142_EN_01/05SJ00142_01_EN.gif

http://usa.canon.com/app/images/service_ware/LDImages/WSSS/05SJ00142_EN_01/03RQ02455_02.gif

http://usa.canon.com/app/images/service_ware/LDImages/SolutionAnswer/MP500/MP_500_ph_contacts.jpg

Knowledge base Link (Type replace printhead in the search field):
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=SuprtKnowledgeBaseAct&fcategoryid=238&modelid=11995
 
Met-AL said:
They are field replacable, in fact they are consumer replacable. You can find them right next to the ink cartridges and places like Walmart.

I can't link to the instructions on Canon's site, but here is a link to some pictures of the printhead removal process from Canon's site:

http://usa.canon.com/app/images/service_ware/LDImages/WSSS/05SJ00142_EN_01/05SJ00142_01_EN.gif

http://usa.canon.com/app/images/service_ware/LDImages/WSSS/05SJ00142_EN_01/03RQ02455_02.gif

http://usa.canon.com/app/images/service_ware/LDImages/SolutionAnswer/MP500/MP_500_ph_contacts.jpg

Knowledge base Link (Type replace printhead in the search field):
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=SuprtKnowledgeBaseAct&fcategoryid=238&modelid=11995
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Well as I said I hadn't looked at any newer models. A little over a year ago when I worked part time at Comp USA for extra cash, none of the Canon models on the shelves had replacable print heads. They were all a fixed design. Canon has had replacable print heads in the past the same as HP has. Unfortunately they quite doing that for awhile (or at least I never saw any models during that period that featured replacable print heads.) and I am glad to see that they are doing it again. Unfortunately from the pictures it looks like they still use a top feeding mechanism for the paper.

I've yet to see an Epson with replacable print heads.
 
My Canon ip4300 has both top and bottom paper feed. It also prints on DVD/CDs a lot better than the Epson IMO.

Back on topic:

I have a HP Scanjet 3970 that I saw had the same message that Vista will not be supported. I grabbed the XP x64 driver and installed it and have the scanner working with the Fax and Scan software that came with Vista. Plus with the x64 driver, I don't get all that HP Share-To-Web and Memories Disk crap installled. RA!
 
I had the same problem with my Lexmark E232 laser printer, but I read somewhere that it works with the HP 1500 series driver that shipped with windows, so I used that and it worked. also worked for ubuntu linux, so maybe just start trying random drivers?
 
Dan_D said:
Unfortunately from the pictures it looks like they still use a top feeding mechanism for the paper.

I've yet to see an Epson with replacable print heads.
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The model I have is the Pixma MP-500. It was a fairly expensive model when I got it at around $300. It has a paper cartridge for the paper under the paper output tray similar to HP and a secondary top feeder for like when you want to just run a few pages of something else thru it such as heavy paper, photo paper, lables, etc...the kind of stuff that doesn't handle bending well thru the bottom feeder.

One of the coolest features is the auto duplexer... simply amazing watching the printer suck a page back in from the output tray and crap it out with printing on the back side.:D

Here at work, we have a HP Laserjet 4000 that is getting up there in some years and a 1200 that is around 5yrs old. They hum right along. The 1200 has printed 39,735 pages with only 22 pages jammed and only 29 mispicked. Not bad at all, especially considering the extreme dust condition that they exist in.
 
I believe the hp printers are quite decent but they sure screwed up with the Laserjet 5l. The top feed mechanism would screw up after only a couple of months of use and would suck up all the paper at once, you would have to feed the paper one at a time . The toner cartridge lasted longer then the printer.
 
Met-AL said:
The model I have is the Pixma MP-500. I was a fairly expensive model when I got it at around $300. It has a paper cartridge for the paper under the paper output tray similar to HP and a secondary top feeder for like when you want to just run a few pages of something else thru it such as heavy paper, photo paper, lables, etc...the kind of stuff that doesn't handle bending well thru the bottom feeder.

One of the coolest features is the auto duplexer... simply amazing watching the printer suck a page back in from the output tray and crap it out with printing on the back side.:D

Here at work, we have a HP Laserjet 4000 that is getting up there in some years and a 1200 that is around 5yrs old. They hum right along. The 1200 has printed 39,735 pages with only 22 pages jammed and only 29 mispicked. Not bad at all, especially considering the extreme dust condition that they exist in.
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I've seen a few more expensive Epson units that have front feed mechanisms. These are nicer than the top feed mechanisms for sure. Still I have yet to see an Epson that didn't have a fixed and non-replacable print head. Until that happens I will always dislike their printers regardless of their print quality and other technical merrits.

roccovw said:
I believe the hp printers are quite decent but they sure screwed up with the Laserjet 5l. The top feed mechanism would screw up after only a couple of months of use and would suck up all the paper at once, you would have to feed the paper one at a time . The toner cartridge lasted longer then the printer.
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This is precisely what I was referring to. The top feed mechanism in the 5L is crappier than most because the seperation pad wears out too quickly. The 6L and 1100 have the same problem. Even so the Canon and Epson printers that use this type of feed mechanism suffer from the same exact problem.

Let me clarify my printer opions. Rather than saying all non-HP printers are junk, I'll say this:

Top feed=Junk
Fixed print head=Junk

Cheap ass laser printers=Acceptable, but still junk.
 
My Brother DCP-7020 works great with the built in drivers.

Those of you with no driver support - have you tried installing XP (or even 2000) drivers? And are you running 32-bit or 64-bit Vista?
 
bsoft said:
My Brother DCP-7020 works great with the built in drivers.

Those of you with no driver support - have you tried installing XP (or even 2000) drivers? And are you running 32-bit or 64-bit Vista?
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XP drivers shouldn't work. The driver model is different.
 
Dan_D said:
Let me clarify my printer opions. Rather than saying all non-HP printers are junk, I'll say this:

Top feed=Junk
Fixed print head=Junk

Cheap ass laser printers=Acceptable, but still junk.
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Ok, now that we got you all fixed up on that subject, let's move onto a more pressing subject: ATi video cards...... :D
 
Met-AL said:
Ok, now that we got you all fixed up on that subject, let's move onto a more pressing subject: ATi video cards...... :D
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I've got no real beef against ATI video cards. I do dislike the Catalyst Control Center (who doesn't?)

Although there is that DVI bug that pisses me off quite a bit.
 
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