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Printer Driver Bloatware

Started by Fahrenheit451 Nov 28, 2005 at 12:06 PM 5 replies 2.3k views

Original Post

Nov 28, 2005 at 12:06 PM

I haven't purchased a printer for nearly 7 years. That's how long my old HP printer lasted. So being a HP fan, I went picked up a new HP Photosmart all-in-one scanner, copier, and printer at the weekend, and was amazed to find the installation no longer being a simple driver of a few hundred kilobytes, but a whopping install of 1,174Mb - and it took 20 minutes to perform! That's longer than it took to install FarCry or Myst IV. Not only that, but there are up to four additional processes in the active process list, and three new things that start up when Windows boots. Talk about bloatware. Agreed there would be additional software to handle the scanning and copying from your PC, but 1.2Gb of software? That space isn't even accounted for with photo editing/organising software :-( I'm planning on uninstalling it all and finding a way to selectively install what I need to just print and scan. I surely only need to install a printer driver and the (twain?) driver for scanning from my favourite graphics package Fireworks. Has anyone done this? F451

H_o_p_s

Nov 28, 2005 at 12:07 PM

This is why you don't put in their cd. Just plug in the printer, and when it requests for your drivers put in the cd and pull them off your self. I don't ever rely upon their installation programs, because yes, they're bloated.

benryves

Nov 28, 2005 at 12:08 PM

I'd rather not have a printer than have an HP printer. It's a real shame as, like Creative Labs, the hardware is decent but the software is awful. [sad]

bjle

Nov 28, 2005 at 12:20 PM

Actually, I got one of those all-in-one printer/scanner/slicer-and-dicer things from HP, and it does require their crappy software. I tried doing a straight driver installation from winXP, and it would recognize the printer but not print or scan. There are probably workarounds, and I would love to hear some since their software is not only bloated but also pretty buggy (gives random errors while printing). It also doesn't uninstall properly, though I suppose that goes without saying :)

MDI

Nov 28, 2005 at 12:36 PM

Even more asinine is the insistence by printer manufacturers of making sure that both print cartridges, black and colour, are full before allowing any printing to take place. What the level of magenta ink has to do with printing off a black and white document is anybody's guess.

H_o_p_s

Nov 28, 2005 at 12:37 PM

Or my favorite: The printer cartridge has expired. Yup, thats right, they have a time stamp on them now... don't want that ink going bad do we?

mutex

Nov 28, 2005 at 4:14 PM

I've had better results downloading drivers from HP's website. I think to keep download size down they can't bloat up the software much (although 10MB drivers for my printer seems excessive).

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