The second most annoying thing about HP printers to me for the past 6 years has been their horrible 600mb driver software packages. (The first simply being the price of ink).

You want the HP Universal Print Driver: http://h20271.www2.hp.com/SMB-AP/cache/380442-0-0-14-121.htm...

Thanks for the tip. But, hey, it's HP ... can't change the spots on that cat. Drill down two not-so-obvious links to the download page, and there are SEVEN choices of "universal" driver:

    Select your product
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows - PCL 5
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows - PCL 6
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows - Postscript
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows 64-bit PCL 5
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows 64-bit PCL 6
    » HP Universal Print Driver for Windows 64-bit PS

[ http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/ProductList... ]

Thankfully they forgave us the usual split in NA, EMEA, AP1, AP2, etc, geographic versions, with the only clue being in the cryptic codename in the link.

It's still better than seven separate installers per printer each of which is 10 times bigger :)

A polished turd is still a turd. The point is other printer mfrs get it right, so why can't HP?

If my newish hp printer is anything to go on, their core competency is requiring me to agree to the printer's terms of service. Seems to happen every single time I want to do anything with the printer.

I've had good hp printers (laserjet3, original deskwriter), and one decent one (hp555), but this one is pretty crappy. The software isn't very good, the wifi on it sucks, the ink cartridges are always low. What's more, it came from the apple store, with a new macbook. It works better with my ubuntu boxes.

Meh. They're not focusing on software as in printer drivers. They're focusing on software as in enterprise architecture and professional services. There, 600 MB is the basic client demo you put together in half a day.

You're clicking on the wrong link. They offer the bare driver on the same page...just a few lines below.

> "We're going to concentrate on our core competency, software."

And we're going to do it by dropping the premiere retail project that contains software we wrote ourselves.

It's worth remembering that Microsoft did exactly what you've described. They decided that the video game market was where the money was, and pursued it with aplomb.

It's worth noting though, that they didn't dump their profitable business in their pursuit of a new market. On the other hand, they also had a huge pile of money to throw at building the xbox.

Microsoft had slowly moved their way into the video game business. The PC had become a popular gaming platform by 1995, and Microsoft made a commitment to building a first-class video game platform/SDK, DirectX.

Microsoft eventually decided to basically build a PC dedicated to gaming (XBox) that would leverage the legion of game developers already building on PCs. They also would be able to compete against Sony and Playstation because their platform was arguably easier to develop for and more well-known.

Microsoft was slowly moving onto consoles even before the Xbox. The Dreamcast ran Windows CE, and Microsoft approached SEGA at one point about building a Dreamcast 2, IIRC.

HP focusing on software is like Google focusing on social.

Uh oh.

Meaning that it's a means to an end?