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Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#101

Post by poofsoda »

dylan604 wrote: post #88
turtlebits wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get an old brother laser printer, they are rock solid. Better yet, setup Airprint as well. The novelty of printing from my phone never wears off. (coming from an old head).

I really feel like the brother laser printer recommendations should all come with model numbers as not all brother laser printers are created equal. i have a DCP-L2550DW, and i'm not sure i'd recommend it.

Interesting—out of curiosity, what is your primary complaint with the DCP-L2550DW? I have one too and use it seamlessly for printing and scanning on Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. My third party toner refills have worked great and the machine itself was rather inexpensive. Not invalidating your experience, as I may have just gotten lucky, but would be interested to know what issues it’s created for you.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#102

Post by zamadatix »

skykooler wrote: post #64
gerdesj wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally your printer advertises itself via Bonjour/Avahi/SLP or whatevs. Ideally Windows receives these adverts and connects you to your printer. One or the other gets it wrong, with monotonous regularity. IPP is print anywhere and it sounds like its been branded "Mopria". I ditched a thing called HPLIP at home at least five years ago which used to be the cutting edge for Linux printing on HP printers. The bloke that…

Of course, not all routers (particularly combo router/modems provided by your ISP) support multicast DNS, so often this isn't an option.

The router doesn't really need to support anything, the mDNS packets just flood the bridge domain directly between clients like any other flooded packet.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#103

Post by kjs3 »

daft_pink wrote: post #6

This is solely because HP is so terrible at updating their drivers for new operating systems. Every HP printer I've owned eventually didn't support the next version of windows. No brother printer I've ever owned has had this problem.

Every operating system in the house supports my nearly 20 year old HP 1022n (which I probably print to weekly) out of the box. The last time I used my 30 year old LJ4 probably 3 years ago, it worked fine (for Win7 and IOS). I bet I can still print to an LJ-II if I still had one. Did they remove PCL and Postscript from HP printers in the last decade?

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#104

Post by Cheyana »

cpncrunch wrote: post #12

Article says they are just preventing updates to the drivers, not killing them off entirely.

I wonder if this is in response to the ongoing headaches caused by their PrintNightmare fix? Namely, an inability for customers using server deployed printers to print every time a driver needs to update but can’t due to lack of admin rights.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#105

Post by kjs3 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #8
daft_pink wrote: post #6

This is solely because HP is so terrible at updating their drivers for new operating systems. Every HP printer I've owned eventually didn't support the next version of windows. No brother printer I've ever owned has had this problem.

I’ve been able to print to the newest HP Officejet 8000 series from Windows 7 Embedded by just picking the 6000 series driver from the list. If all you wish to do is “print” there is quite a bit of backwards compatibility in the printer. Other features like scanning may be less so, and the phoning-home ink-pestering notifications aren’t there which seems like a win.

Unless you need something like duplex or multiple paper trays (or as you say scanning), you should be able to pick 'PCL5' or other generic 'HP' driver and it'll work in a pinch. Agreed that an older, well supported printer that doesn't DRM me to death is one less thing to annoy me in life.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#106

Post by glimshe »

phkahler wrote: post #81

My Epson printer came with a disk for Windows and MacOS. I Put it on my network and Linux and Apple machines worked out of the box with no driver disk needed. I haven't tried Windows because I just don't run that nonsense at home.

My Brother wifi printer behaved just like you describe with Windows 10 and 11... No install, "it just works".

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#107

Post by kjs3 »

Cheyana wrote: post #104
cpncrunch wrote: post #12

Article says they are just preventing updates to the drivers, not killing them off entirely.

I wonder if this is in response to the ongoing headaches caused by their PrintNightmare fix? Namely, an inability for customers using server deployed printers to print every time a driver needs to update but can’t due to lack of admin rights.

Drivers and lack of admin rights isn't limited to printers, so I doubt that's it. I get why they do it, but it can be annoying.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#108

Post by moribvndvs »

24 years ago I worked at a library and had to manage public printers (inkjets, smaller attached lasers, large networked lasers, thermal, dot matrix, you name it). Printing and Windows then was an unmitigated nightmare, like chasing a toddler around because if you glanced away from it for a second it would stick its fingers in an electrical socket. I’d rather deal with restoring workstations, bricked by old men surfing for porn, as horrified mothers looked on. Since then I categorically refused to buy printers. I’ll do anything to avoid printing.

Then my wife bought one for her business and now it’s my fucking problem again. Wonderful to see that the printing experience has barely changed at all. Networked printing across different devices and platforms is a fucking coin toss if it’s going to work, without changing a thing, static or dynamic IP, hardwired or Wi-Fi, and connecting via USB is barely better. Every few print jobs you have to monkey with it, reinstall or reset something. It lies to you and fights with you about toner or ink, even when you have it fresh and straight from the manufacturer. I’d rather quit my job and press her customers’ receipts into clay fucking tablets than touch the damned things.

So, I hope this makes things better. I won’t hold my breath, though.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#109

Post by acdha »

numpad0 wrote: post #78
acdha wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Buy a Brother laser printer 2. Put it on your Wi-Fi 3. There is no step three This is basically like when people say dishwashers don’t do a good job because they’ve only bought ones designed by American MBAs. HP and Epson made good products in the previous century but are now customer-milking operations and it’s better to pretend they don’t exist.

Problem is high powered industrial dishwashers can't handle decorated plates ... pardon me, I meant to say color lasers can't handle photos well. If you're primarily printing texts and diagrams on A4 copier paper, this is total non-issue. But if you're looking to print nice colors, not necessarily.

True - color laser printers aren’t great photo quality but I stopped making home prints a decade or so back because the economics were brutal and when I do want to make prints I want them to be larger which just made it worse. Outsourcing that to Costco was much cheaper and easier than fussing around with ink cartridges, clogs or smears, etc.

Re: Microsoft to kill off third-party printer drivers in Windows

#110

Post by dylan604 »

poofsoda wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel like the brother laser printer recommendations should all come with model numbers as not all brother laser printers are created equal. i have a DCP-L2550DW, and i'm not sure i'd recommend it.

Interesting—out of curiosity, what is your primary complaint with the DCP-L2550DW? I have one too and use it seamlessly for printing and scanning on Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. My third party toner refills have worked great and the machine itself was rather inexpensive. Not invalidating your experience, as I may have just gotten lucky, but would be interested to know what issues it’s created for you.

the main complaint is that the feeder never pulls paper in the same orientation twice. i've tried printing on labels with various levels of not success. while the print quality is fine (no complaints there), if you are printing with pre-cut media, getting it to align is tough. i've used Avery media and then used their templates as well as measuring and making my own templates. the top rows will be with in the pre-cut, but they start to "drift" off so that by the end of the page they are off a full 1/16" meaning each row is not off by the same distance. if i select all items and then "squeeze" by pushing the bottom up 1/16" in illustrator, this seems to work. if i use that modified file on other printers, they won't print the same way.

i've also tried making cards by printing on both sides. creating a 2-page file with the mirrored offset like normal print would use, they don't line up. if i remove the mirrored offset (not a professional DTP, so whatever this called), it still doesn't line up. so i had to fiddle with it to get double sided prints to line up. on a different printer, the normal mirrored offset works as expected. i can then put the print on the guillotine and cut on the crop marks, and it all works. not with the 2550.

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