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