Windows 7 has been on the market for more than six months and to date, there are still no updated printer drivers for many older (and not-so-old) printer models. What gives? Why don’t the printer manufacturers produce the correct drivers? After all, how hard can it be?

So Many Printers, So Little Time

Essentially, printer manufacturers may paint themselves into a corner when it comes to hardware drivers for their product lines. Many printers have a number of model variations. For example, one printer may be designed to plug directly into a computer via the USB port, while another may be designed to plug into an Ethernet network. Although the printers are operationally very similar, the printers may require different drivers.

Multi-function devices (e.g., printer/scanner/copier/fax machines) fall into this category, too. These devices may require separate drivers (or sub-drivers) for each function, and getting all of the ducks in a row might be a very challenging operation. Still other printers are designed to work with PostScript, a printer description language made by Adobe, while other printers use a different description language.

Herein lies the challenge: printing has changed a lot over time but old printers soldier on. Printers have a mechanical life that may exceed the average life expectancy of a computer two or three times over. This means that a user may only replace a printer once every 10-15 years, while a computer may get replaced every three or four years. A printer may be mechanically sound but the manufacturer is much less pressured to create drivers for a 10-year-old printer than it is to create drivers for a printer that is currently on the store shelves.

Even printers that are just a few years old could wait indefinitely for driver rehab, if the manufacturer gets bogged down in testing the new driver for incompatibilities with a seemingly endless variety of other hardware and software combinations. Many printer manufacturers throw up their corporate hands and shuffle relatively new printers off to the “unsupported hardware” list.

Ultimately, the manufacturer is responsible for writing a compatible driver for each legacy piece of hardware they’ve built. In most cases, the manufacturer is the only one with enough knowledge about the device to concoct a stable, working driver.

Some manufacturers have modified their approach to writing drivers by attempting to write drivers generically enough to meet the needs of many of their models simultaneously. In other words, they attempt to write a “universal driver” for their models. This approach has some limited success but a universal driver can often shut out the specialty functions that may have made the printer attractive to the buyer in the first place.

If you’re still waiting for your driver update, the best approach is to contact the manufacturer to see if they have an estimate of when a driver will be available. Persistence never hurts, but ultimately, the task of driver creation is left to the device manufacturer.
Photo Credit: Meg Willis, via Flickr

Perhaps you’ve recently upgraded your operating system to Windows 7, or have come across some older hardware that you would like to use, but can’t find the right hardware driver for it. Locating drivers, especially for older hardware can be difficult and time-consuming – there’s no argument from me about that. But you can sometimes find the drivers you need to make your older hardware work just fine with your newer operating system.

Some Windows 7 Users May Be In Luck

For older hardware, finding the correct driver can be difficult. Many manufacturers have elected not to make drivers for Windows 7. That may not automatically mean that you’re out of luck if you’ve already upgraded your operating system to Windows 7.

There are significant similarities between Windows 7 and Windows Vista. If you can’t find a driver that was released for Windows 7, check to see if the manufacturer made a driver for Windows Vista. This doesn’t work in all cases, but often the Vista driver is sufficient for a Windows 7 installation. Be sure to pay attention to the 32-bit v. 64-bit designations. A driver that was designed to work with a 64-bit OS won’t make much headway with a 32-bit system, so don’t waste your time asking your 32-bit OS installation to figure out a 64-bit driver.

You may also find that the manufacturer has created a driver for a newer, similar product in its line. The newer driver may work with your older hardware, so it’s worth a shot if the alternative is getting rid of your older hardware.

Check the manufacturer’s Web site or technical support system to see if they recommend a solution for your problem. Hardware manufacturers aren’t notorious for being sympathetic to users of older hardware, unless the hardware is a specialty item. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get a lot of help from the manufacturer on this issue.

I always recommend that users load a driver management software package like Driver Detective. Driver Detective makes the process of locating, downloading, installing and backing up drivers much, much easier. Driver Detective will check for new drivers each time your computer connects to the Internet. You won’t have to go out looking for any drivers ever again. Simply let Driver Detective do the searching for you. You can also revert your system to an earlier configuration if you don’t like the way a driver performs. You’ll save yourself time in the long run and you can be sure that you’ll always have the most up-to-date drivers available.

Photo Credit: Image by Kevin Dooley under Creative Commons license

For most computer users – at least those of us who use Windows-based PCs – hardware drivers are a part of our lives for the foreseeable future. Google, however, says that when it introduces its Chrome OS at the end of 2010, they won’t be relying on printer drivers to transfer information between computers and printers. Google also says that the architecture of the OS will enable users to print to their “home” printer without being attached to the home network. For example, you could print something from your BlackBerry device to your home printer while you’re out shopping.

What Would A World Without Drivers Look Like?

If Google doesn’t plan do introduce drivers into its OS, how will it supply (and receive) information to (and from) peripherals? Google introduced its “cloud printing” plans earlier this week. The plan is to replace myriad printer drivers that are designed only to work with a specific piece of hardware with a printing infrastructure that can talk to anything from anything, anywhere, anytime.

This sounds like a dream come true for Windows PC users who have valiantly battled stubborn hardware drivers for years. But what exactly is “the Cloud” Google refers to. The applications that operate in the Chrome OS are all Web apps, which means that they don’t reside on the user’s computer in the first place. Essentially, Google will take care of getting it to the right place. The trick for Google will be to identify and deliver the print job to the user’s printer. Google does battle with the printers and users just get their stuff.

Will it work? Cloud computing isn’t new, so there’s a good bet that it will. The question for users becomes one of trust. Do you trust Google with your information? If so, then carry on. If not, you’re probably not likely to be using the Chrome OS much anyway given that you’ll be accessing all of your applications and documents on the Web.

Will the cloud approach extend to everything? That remains to be seen, but there’s no reason it couldn’t. The centralized control of hardware functions would mean less overall work for the end user, but it would also mean less overall control for those in this world who support IT.

Personally, I don’t see a major shift away from Windows anytime in the near future. Businesses simply don’t operate that quickly. I do see that Software as a Service (SaaS) may play a larger role, which may mean that users will need to get much cozier with software publishers in the not-so-distant future.

Photo Credit: Jason Rogers, via Flickr

How important is it to have the right driver software for your computer? Well that depends upon how much you like working with trouble-free computers, I guess. Incorrect drivers aren’t the only source of trouble for a PC, but they do play a major role in determining whether or not your computer hardware functions properly.

Selecting The Correct Driver

In some respects, Apple enjoys a reputation for “trouble-free” computing because it maintains strict control over how hardware (especially third-party hardware) interfaces with the company’s computers. Apple has taken the same approach with software, and the result is a hardware-and-software combination that’s tightly integrated and appears to suffer from fewer problems than its PC counterparts do.

Microsoft has taken a different approach, relying on third-party hardware manufacturers to create as many compatible hardware variations as the market will bear. The result for the consumer is a lower hardware cost, but Microsoft doesn’t exercise the same tight control over the user’s experience that Apple does. PCs running Windows also have a reputation for being difficult to work with.

The inability of some PC hardware to operate compatibly with other PC hardware has fouled up more than one user’s experience and while Microsoft shoulders much of the blame from the consumer’s perspective, the real culprits are more likely to be the hardware manufacturers and the drivers they author. Many hardware manufacturers take their own approach to writing drivers and don’t place a high regard on how their drivers might interoperate with other hardware attached to a user’s computer.

Hardware manufacturers are often slow to come out with compatible drivers and driver updates, which only complicates the user’s overall experience. Saddled on top of this is Microsoft’s somewhat clunky approach to obtaining driver updates. Driver updating at one point was a strictly manual process. Over time, Microsoft has incorporated automatic driver updates into its OS, but some users don’t have this feature configured properly so driver updates are missed, and Microsoft sometimes chooses and/or installs the wrong driver, complicating matters even more. The upshot is that even though Microsoft has automated the process of driver updates, many users are still fearful of the auto-update function due to poor past experiences.

I recommend a driver management program like Driver Detective for reliable, trustworthy driver management. Driver Detective locates, downloads and installs the correct driver and maintains a local backup of the driver. If an installed driver becomes corrupted, damaged or somehow gets deleted or overwritten, Driver Detective can re-install the correct driver instantly, helping the user avoid problems.

Photo Credit: JD Mack, via Flickr