i dont understand whats the need for

[kf10]

various printer drivers, can microsoft make a universal driver which will work with every printer wether inkjet or laser etc.

the same can be said about dvdrom, audio n lan etc

 

[zigzag3143]

various printer drivers, can microsoft make a universal driver which will work with every printer wether inkjet or laser etc.

the same can be said about dvdrom, audio n lan etc

Never going to happen. Untill every printer is made identical the will be no universal driver. Same holds true for dvds, audio, lan, video drivers, etc.



Ken J

 

[Bill2]

Actually Universal printer drivers (UPDs) are not such an alien concept- theres one from Xerox available, another from HP. Problem is they are not completely universal. Different printers use different formats E.g. HP's PCL format or postscript format etc. So HP UPDs work only with HP branded printers, Xerox's only with PS and so on.

Another flipside to UPDs is as with all generic drivers, some of the printer's features (advanced features or fax/scan with multifunctional devices) may not be available. Those will be available only from the manufacturer specific drivers.

So, unless you are a frequent traveller or a company that uses printers of various vintages and brands, you'd be loosing by using UPDs.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

In principle it could be done very easily -- say all Windows or other OS would have to do would be to produce some "meta" type output according to a defined standard -- Postcript for example or a similar concept in Linux called Ghostscript.

However the hardware's firmware or "Microcode" would still have to interpret the Postscript metadata to perform the actual device output.

I've been a long time advocate of common interfaces -- if we could leave all the actual hardware instructions to the firmware we could have Universal drivers for almost every possible hardware device in existence.

I'm really surprised why MS hasn't at least got together with EPSON, CANON and HP at least to propose something like this -- it makes Windows development easier while still maintaining the Intellectual Property rights of EPSON etc.

Maybe Windows 8 will start looking at this type of approach.

Cheers

jimbo