OT:225Mb !!!!

[Jethro_uk]

Got a new laptop, and have gone to (re)install the HP software for my wireless scanner printer.

The full package is 225Mb !!!!! wtf is that needed for ????

[John Williamson]

10 meg for the drivers, and 200 megabytes of bloatware, if it's anything like what my HP portable printer CD insisted on installing.

Mine even had a picture input and editing program, and it's only a printer.

[fred]

In article , Jethro_uk writes

If it's anything like the all in one printer driver for one of theirs I installed on a network a while back, it is for all the patches. More bugs than a dodgy kebab shop with machine stopping 100% CPU usage for several seconds every minute or so as it tried to poll the printer.

Item relegated to a standalone spare and networked printing/scanning now performed by a proper colour OKI.

[Brian Gaff]

Has it got an ocr or lots of set pieces of graphics, sounds a bit big. Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

probably a full blown postcript interepter/compiler complete with fonts.

[fred]

Oooooh f'ck, take it back now and save yourself much stress and swearing, that is the model I referred to above and which put HP firmly at the bottom of my shit list.

HP really do not give a f'ck about the driver bugs and will probably never get round to fixing them. Did you wonder why they are so cheap?

[Jethro_uk]

to be fair it was much better than the Canon I had.

I might see if I can get it to work from my [Linux] server.

The thing is it prints. But without the solution centre I can't scan. Which I need to do for expenses receipts :(

[michael adams]

The mind boggles.

On Amazon, the OfficeJet 4500 got 221 one star reviews (its impossible to give zero or negative stars) out of a total of 494 reviews

It looks like there's plenty to look forward to.

michael adams

...

[Adrian]

You'll find it a doddle under Linux. Just pick the model from the list, and - bingo. Print and scan drivers installed in zero time and without bloatiness.

[Jethro_uk]

Maybe not ... seems the QT subsystem doesn't like running on a remote display - certainly not under X2Go. So it has to be a console jobbie, and guess what ? The server is tucked away without space for a monitor, or a keyboard.

I used to use TeamViewer in cases like this, but for reasons best known to my IT departments policies, it doesn't seem to want to work under this Laptops windows 7 installation.

Oh well, it makes life interesting ;)

[Clive George]

Take a photo.

[Scott M]

I had (well, still have) an HP printer 10 years ago that wanted to install a similarly stupid amount of stuff where it was a significant proportion of the hard drive size.

However, just by pointing the driver installer at the appropriate directory it would just use the 30k of driver instead :-)

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

It being an all-in-one is a bugger. Have you looked on the install disc for a basic driver-only installation? HP do provide that option, I found. Perhaps not for all machines, but a lot. If you're running it on MS, the bundled HP drivers are usually pretty good, and free of all the extra crap.

[Tim Watts]

Sure it doesn't have scan2email? Many printers do these days.

[fred]

In article , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

My guess is that basic and twain drivers will only work if connected by usb. It might not be a bad experiment though to install basic/twain to usb and then change the scanning port parameters to point at the wireless IP of the printer. It'll need a fixed IP assigned at the router to have any chance of working though.

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Jethro_uk escribió:

We recently bought a OJ8600. It works for printing with the OJ8500 drivers from Windows Update, which are a lot smaller than 250MB.

No scanner functionality tho - I guess we would have to install the bloatware for that.

Can't you install by hand from Device Mangler - Update Driver and point it at the right folder on the CD?

[Andrew Gabriel]

IME, the HP drivers are stuffed full of pop-up adware for the ink cartridges.

We have a photosmart c6180 in the family, and the way I found to install that without all the crap is to start the full install as far as unpacking the archive, and then if you search the unpacked files, you will find a bog standard windows printer driver directory buried in all the crap, and you point windows at just that to install, and abandon the HP setup install.

The printer hardware seems to be very good (i'm told it's one of the last HP's which was), but it's completely let down by terible quality software drivers. We bought one with a sheet feeder to allow scanning of documents, but the software for that never worked - after a few pages, it's leaked all the system's memory away and craps out. The drivers have never been updated to fix any bugs.

[meow2222]

We've just retired a 1990s hp printer, and it still works & prints well. I suspect you're better off buying an old one.

NT

[Tim Watts]

I had a C6180 too with duplexer attachment. Linux drove it very well using the HPIO drivers, including scanning with and without the sheet feeder.

It was replaced due to old age with a Samsung laser with scan to email which solves the scanning issues. Again, printing via CUPS is reliable, though direct printing from Android using the Samsung app is as flakey as f*ck.

It is fascinating to remember how Windows used to be unstable but mostly worked whilst linux was a PITA. How times changed. I can think of very little on linux that is not now a crappier/harder/more expensive experience with MS Windows.

You could say MS are not at fault as it's pretty common for most 3rd party "drivers" to be bloated bits of crap, but MS could have solved it by having "Certified for Windows" mean "basic easy minimalistic setup out of the box, optional crap is optional".

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

I've just (well, recently) bought a 1995 HP LJ5P, and am happy as Larry with it. Just does the job, no pissing around. Windows drivers installed automatically from the W7 repository and it integrates properly with everything that needs it.

No bloat, no crap, just prints.