Attack of the Printer Driver

While printing a set of documents today, I realized that automated duplex printing wasn't working. I suspected a driver issue since I was pretty sure I was using the default Vista driver. After a brief search on the HP website, I found the download link for my printer and was mildly surprised that the install package was 163MB.

Since I have a multi-function printer, I attributed the package size to the bundled HP scanning/faxing/imaging applications. I only wanted the printer driver, so I was annoyed that there wasn't a separate driver-only download, but I got past it.

After the download finished, I launched the setup program, waded through a bunch of screens, selected the custom install option, and was confronted with this screen:

Nearly 800MB for the whole shebang! No thanks. So I quickly unchecked everything except for the drivers and was left with the following:

Huh? 600MB just for the drivers? Entire operating systems take less space! I know that hard drive space is pretty plentiful these days, but this kind of bloat is simply unconscionable.

Many PC peripherals today have general purpose CPUs, RAM, and internal storage. A fair share even have their own operating systems. You would think this would allow them to do more on their own and require less software to be installed on the user's PC. This would be a win-win for both companies and end-users. Companies can focus their resources on specific system configurations, rather than trying to ensure compatibility with the huge range of user PCs and their various flavors of Microsoft and Apple OSes. This translates into more streamlined engineering efforts and less customer support calls. And end-users get simpler and more reliable products that don't install bloated, invasive, and bug-infested software onto their systems.