• Windows 8 Finally Works Towards Simplifying Printer Drivers
    60 replies, posted
Very slimmed down version, alot more stuff in source: [QUOTE]One of the big benefits that Windows provides to apps is that it abstracts the specific printer from the app, so that the app's programmer doesn’t have to worry about what printer you've installed. Windows supports tens of thousands of printer models in total, including printers that are supported by drivers available via Windows Update or the manufacturer’s website. When we see printers that don’t work, this is often because the manufacturer has chosen to block the installation if they don’t recognize the version of Windows that their software is being installed on. We work with printer manufacturers to get these packages updated, but this does take some time. Ideally, when you plug a new printer into Windows, it just works, without your needing to go off and find drivers. So how do we make that happen? In the past we've shipped a lot of printer drivers in Windows. Vista contained about 4500 drivers, and Windows 7 contained about 2100 drivers. Even though Windows 7 had half as many drivers as Vista, it provided better market coverage, by which I mean that there was a better chance that it had a driver for the more popular printers. Why is this? There is an incredible diversity of printers in use. In Vista, we supported a lot of devices that were old and no longer in popular use, and so the relevance of the set of devices supported was not as good as in Windows 7. As an aside, the other thing we do when we release a new version of Windows is to take the drivers that were in the previous version and post them to Windows Update, so that even though these devices may be dropping in popularity, it’s still possible for people to automatically get the device working by just plugging it in. Here's a photo I took of one of the benches in one of the printer labs (we have several) where we test that this all works. You can see several small inkjets and laser printers from different manufacturers. Luckily for my ears, we don’t test with dot matrix printers very often these days.[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/2843.Printer_2D00_testing_5F00_69ED9272.png[/IMG] [QUOTE]People tend to keep printers for 5-7 years on average, so when we want to add support, we have to think "what devices are people using? Which were the most popular devices over the past several years, and what will be the most popular in the future?" This last part is tricky because, pretty soon after we release Windows, the printer manufacturers will release devices that we didn’t know anything about. This means that over time, the set of devices that we support in any particular version of Windows becomes stale. [QUOTE]We know that at any given moment, about 100 specific printer models make up about 50% of the installed base. If we want to support 75% of the models being used today, then we need to support about 300 models. The diagram below illustrates this.[/QUOTE] To get to 95%, we need over 1000 models supported. But the problem is even harder because the printers that make up this set of 100, or 300, or 1000 changes all the time. The 100 printers that represent 50% of the market today are not the same 100 printers that will represent 50% next week, or next month, and especially not next year. Every day, many people buy and install new printers. As I mentioned above, we basically took a brute-force approach to solving this in the past. We have representatives from the major printer manufacturers working directly with Microsoft, sitting in offices in Redmond, working to check their source code into Windows. They would create a completely new set of in-box drivers for each new release of Windows. This just isn’t very efficient. In Windows 8, we took a radically different approach, and have stopped shipping lots of printer drivers with Windows. Instead, we built a print class driver framework. This framework is extensible, as it supports printing to existing devices, but it also allows manufacturers to include support for new devices, even those that have not yet been designed. With a print class driver framework, we can get closer to giving you an experience like driverless printing, where you don't have to actually go and find a driver, but instead the printer just works with the Windows printing system. A true driverless printing experience requires changes to how most printers are designed, and the print class driver framework provides support for this idea, but we also feel that it’s very important to provide as much support for existing devices as possible. With the ability to support new and planned printers, the number of printers that are supported by the Windows 8 print class driver framework will actually increase over time. Besides the great progress in increasing the number of devices covered, we have also been able to reduce the resources that we use to achieve this coverage. First, we reduced the amount of disk space needed to support printers and imaging devices from 768MB in Windows Vista, to about 184MB in Windows 8. This number is an average across different editions and architectures of Windows 8. The following graphic illustrates the reduction in space used since Windows Vista.[/QUOTE] [IMG]http://blogs.msdn.com/cfs-file.ashx/__key/communityserver-blogs-components-weblogfiles/00-00-01-29-43-metablogapi/3326.Printing_2D00_preferences_5F00_2D5593D5.png[/IMG] [url]http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/07/25/simplifying-printing-in-windows-8.aspx[/url]
I fucking hate it when the manufacturer packs the CD/DVD that has the driver on it with more than 200MB of useless applications that no-one needs. Oh, and you can't choose if you want to install them or not with the drivers.
windows 8 is shaping up to be the best rendition of windows yet
[QUOTE=VistaPOWA;37015744]I fucking hate it when the manufacturer packs the CD/DVD that has the driver on it with more than 200MB of useless applications that no-one needs. Oh, and you can't choose if you want to install them or not with the drivers.[/QUOTE] It gets worse when you have two printers. I had to install a virtual machine because one driver would conflict with another and bad things would happen.
[QUOTE]When you plug a new printer into Windows, it just works, without your needing to go off and find drivers.[/QUOTE] This is something OSX has had for over a decade now But I'm glad Windows is finally joining the party :v:
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37015799]This is something OSX has had for over a decade now But I'm glad Windows is finally joining the party :v:[/QUOTE] Windows has had viruses for over a decade now. But I'm glad OSX is joining the party :v:
But is it going to stop printers from demanding more ink when it clearly has enough?
[QUOTE=itisjuly;37015812]Windows has had viruses for over a decade now. But I'm glad OSX is joining the party :v:[/QUOTE] You're glad that people are getting a computer virus?
I still use a printer from the 90's
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37015847]You're glad that people are getting a computer virus?[/QUOTE] He's glad that they have to deal with the same shit we've had to deal with for fucking ever.
Now only if somebody made a printer that doesn't suck dick.
Yeah, but my old printer was also a scanner and I needed a program for this.
All our printers work pretty damn well with Win7 already. I have yet to encounter a printer that isn't using a damn COM port that is not working with Win7
Printers and their drivers are the spawn of the devil.
The thing that pisses me off about printers is needing to find the drivers online, this is welcoming.
Slightly better than keeping the universal print drivers for different major brands on hand.
So this is the 3rd printer subsystem in Windows now? I wonder if they're still using XPS or if they "scrapped" that as well.
-snip, bad joke-
Funny, people have been working on simplifying printing ever since the damned things came into existence. Hell, Microsoft has been working on it for as long as I can remember. You shoulda seen printing before Windows came around, it was absolute [I]hell.[/I] Compiling this and that, building this based off of that and lots of guess and check here and there, took hours, days even.
We'll still be having the problems of expensive as fuck printer inks. Sigh.
[QUOTE=TheDecryptor;37016568]So this is the 3rd printer subsystem in Windows now? I wonder if they're still using XPS or if they "scrapped" that as well.[/QUOTE] They're focusing on using Direct2D to produce the print jobs as it shares the same language that XPS is written in, so printers will be capable of understanding the datastream. Direct2D is the system in use to procude the text as an image on screen, this can also be used to produce the text on paper which is pretty cool thanks to the shared coding language with XPS. [editline]31st July 2012[/editline] [QUOTE=S31-Syntax;37016694]Funny, people have been working on simplifying printing ever since the damned things came into existence. Hell, Microsoft has been working on it for as long as I can remember. You shoulda seen printing before Windows came around, it was absolute [I]hell.[/I] Compiling this and that, building this based off of that and lots of guess and check here and there, took hours, days even.[/QUOTE] In my job we still have to configure writers and queues for the old IBM AS400.. Now [i]THAT[/i] is hell! Especially as the AS400 doesn't like to communicate over fibre optics so remote printing from different sides of buildings can be a nightmare. And by different sides I mean hundreds of metres, beyond the capability of CAT5.
[QUOTE=kaukassus;37016045]Printers and their drivers are the spawn of the devil.[/QUOTE] I feel this is fitting: [url]http://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers[/url]
I don't understand why people complain about printing being difficult and all. The only things you really need to print are: -Blood of a virgin -A goat's head -Candles placed on a pentagram of your own blood Then you offer the printer some sheets of paper along with these ingredients and hope it accepts your pitiful offer. But seriously, i can't remember how many times printers have abandoned me just before an exam or a paper that was due for that day because they just don't fucking want to work!
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37015799]This is something OSX has had for over a decade now But I'm glad Windows is finally joining the party :v:[/QUOTE] OSX has 4GB of printer drivers: [img]http://www.alobbs.com/images/OSX_printer_drivers_madness.jpg[/img]
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;37015799]This is something OSX has had for over a decade now But I'm glad Windows is finally joining the party :v:[/QUOTE] The situation on OSx is pretty much the same as the situation on windows as far as printers go. Might actually be worse in some consumer grade printers.
-already said-
Stop complaining about printers sucking ink when you buy cheap inkjets and get a goddamn laser printer for general jobs guys christ My toner cartridges usually last a year or so of printing every day [editline]f[/editline] Although they are still occasionally a bitch to get working with networks
[QUOTE=Mabus;37015857]I still use a printer from the 90's[/QUOTE] I miss my dot matrix printer, seemed to never run out of ink. I used to print cheats for GTA Vice City and The Sims and other games.
[QUOTE=Canary;37018207]I miss my dot matrix printer, seemed to never run out of ink. I used to print cheats for GTA Vice City and The Sims and other games.[/QUOTE] I printed every map for Wolfenstein 3D. 60 of them. Each in full color.
[QUOTE=Elecbullet;37019736]I printed every map for Wolfenstein 3D. 60 of them. Each in full color.[/QUOTE] And who can forget the sound. Aw man that is something I miss about those printers.
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