At any rate, If any forum member using Win 7 has recently purchased a jet printer, I would appreciate information on the brand and any problems found.
I generally won't argue with someone else's brand preferences, except for HP. I recommend staying far away from HP if you can. Unfortunately, that's becoming less and less practical because everybody else is following HP's lead anyway, so if you need Win7 support your options may be limited.
HP has started going to an online-only requirement in several models, whereby the user is required to connect the printer to the internet, is required to create an online HP account, and drivers are not downloadable and can only be installed over the internet. (It wouldn't be a surprise to me if someday HP starts remotely bricking printers if the owner hasn't re-upped some subscription or other.)
Our local neighborhood association used to print the neighborhood newsletter by paying a local commercial printing service. Three years ago they thought they could save on printing costs by buying a cheap laser printer and simply using it as a stand-alone copier, so they bought a HP MFP m234. Unfortunately, it wouldn't get past the introductory "Setup" phase.
Our organization mainly wanted to use it as a stand-alone copier, but they couldn’t even do that because it was stuck in step-by-step Setup mode until the mandatory "installation" steps were completed. They turned to me for help, so I created a fake HP acct and completed "installation" of the printer in a virtual machine. Then we could delete the VM, and the printer, now having completed the Setup phase, would work as intended.
Upon further research, we discovered there was no user-downloadable driver for a traditional installation. (There is now, but at the time there was no such option.) One had to use either the "HP Smart app" or the "Easy Start" setup program, which will find and download the driver from the internet for you — but only if you first create a mandatory user account at hp.com and then connect the printer to the internet. And all the while, dark patterns will keep trying to trick you into HP's subscription toner program. (Don't fall for it! Others have reported that when they eventually cancelled their subscription, the DRM chips in their supply of unopened, genuine HP cartridges were revoked!)
I relate this story merely as an illustration of the depths to which HP has fallen. Whatever printer you end up choosing, you may want to be prepared to jump through similar hoops.
First, I would buy locally (Staples, Office Depot, et al) so you can readily return it if you can't get it working in Win7. Perhaps HP's Universal Print Driver will work, but you want to be prepared if it doesn't.
Next, I would do a trial install in a VM if possible. If not, I would at least make a backup image of your OS partition so you can restore your unfettered Win7 after you're done wrestling with the trial install.
If you can get the trial install to work, then you should be able to use something like the
Double Driver utility to backup the Win7 printer driver from the trial install. Return to your unfettered Win7 installation and "restore" the Double Driver backup, and you should be able to have the Win7 driver while avoiding all the extra garbage programs HP crammed onto the trial install.
I used to recommend HP laser printers, but because of shenanigans like these, I no longer do. These days I use Brother lasers and Epson ink-jets.
Aside: Yes, Epson inkjets have long used DRM chips in their ink cartridges, but for me it's a moot point. IME third-party cartridges produced unsatisfactory results, so I only use genuine Epson cartridges anyway. As for lasers, it's been reported Brother has recently adopted the DRM chip strategy ... sigh. However, I don't think they're (yet) as iron-fisted as HP about requiring an acct and online connection ... so Brother may not be as good as it used to be, but it's still better than HP. Unfortunately, I don't know how Brother's support for Win7 is with their current crop of printers.
