Yeah, XP will work better with older hardware, especially something like a printer, and expecially on laptops that came with it originally.
Printer, scanner and sound card manufactureres are LAZY B*STARDS when it comes to supporting old hardware on new OSes. There really aught to be a law...
It's almost ok with internal hardware but external... Printers and scanners can last for a decade or more. The manufacturer should have to support it for at least that long. HP won't support anything across new OSes. I've had them fail to update a driver on a one year old printer! I wonder why I'll never buy another HP printer now