In this case, HP stands for both Hewlett-Packard, and "Holy Proprietary". I happen to own an HP Officejet 6310 All-in-One, which does fax, print, scan, and copy. The reason I bought it was because I needed a printer and a scanner, and this one had the right price. But also, this machine happens to have pretty good Linux support, as well as being Mac compatible. I try to support the Linux community (which I'm not really a part of anymore) when I buy hardware, especially hardware that will attach to the PC.
So, it is installed on the Mac, which took about 20 minutes. The Windows installation turned out to be like 25 minutes plus a restart (if you have to end system-level processes just to install a printer, something's not right). This would be a ridiculously long time if all you are installing are drivers. But as you probably know already, you're not just installing drivers. You're actually installing a pile of proprietary control programs, most of which are absolute shit. On the Mac, with a complete install, there are 10 programs and 9 utilities. For Windows, with a minimal install, there are 12 items added to the Start Menu - god only knows what all kind of stuff is lurking in various sub-folders of the Program Files directory.
Is any of this stuff useful? Frankly, no. The scan interface on the Mac is particularly awful, capable of crashing any program that called it, and usually requiring the printer power to be cycled. The printer interface, which is for the most part handed off to the requesting application, is still kinda pathetic. Adobe's Acrobat Distiller is much better - and that's a virtual printer - it's not even real! 6 of the Mac programs have the word PhotoSmart in them, which means they will never ever be used - I have Photoshop and iPhoto and Gimp, why would I need 6 more photo editing programs? But there they are. The uninstaller and the update engine are also separate applications, and the registration wizard is its own utility - I'd call that piss-poor design.
Is any of this stuff necessary? Unequivocally, no. Consider that the Linux package features no Photosmart software, no update program, no registration utility, requires no installation beyond untarring, no scanner frontend, no device manager, no fax frontend, no printer ink level monitor, none of that. According to net reports, it doesn't fax very well, but otherwise delivers outstanding performance. It does all of that with under 5MB of stuff. Compare that to a Windows MINIMUM install, which uses 384MB.
And just because my finger is pointed at HP right now, don't think they're the only jackasses playing this proprietary grandma-wizard nightmare game. There's hundreds of others out there who are doing the same crack. I have seen computers ground to a halt by multi-GB Kodak camera support software, and it's not pretty. What's really sick though is that Kodak digital cameras connect to the computer just like a USB drive, and you can drag and drop your pictures in Windows Explorer. That is, if you can wait for all the pop-up wizards and "Hey, you're doing something you've done before!" daemons to finish.
Just think - if HP didn't have to spend millions of dollars writing this crappy software, they could make better printers, give discounts to law enforcement agencies and university labs who use their thousands of other proprietary products (that can't be found at WalMart), and maybe even take home a little more cash.
But maybe there are a bunch of grandmas and pseudo-luddites and generally simple people out there who can't figure out how to print a document without some "Hold my hand, dammit!" wizard showing them the way. Maybe HP is actually making more money by handing out these terrible programs that insult all but the daftest end user. Okay. Make and distribute the software, if you think it will help. In that case, though, can I please have the option of not fucking installing all that crap just to get my printer to work? Can you just hand me a driver and let me take care of everything else? Or better yet, hand the driver to Apple and Microsoft so this shit will plug and play all by itself. Look, you're clearly not impressing me with this crap, and the level of control you are attempting to exert goes far beyond the protection of your intellectual property assets. So let it go already!
For the record, the scan quality and print quality of the Officejet 6310 All-in-One are excellent, considering it is a networkable printer that costs less than $100.
