Plug and Play Printers - Printers with built-in drivers.
By
Staten Island, NY Posted: 4/16/2015 1:00:00 AM
Why the heck do printers still ship with driver CDs? That's totally stupid on so many levels.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Back in 1994, Microsoft announced their upcoming Windows 95 would finally eliminate complicated drivers and switches for some devices by introducing what they called "Plug and Play". I had high hopes that this concept would eventually not only eliminate configuration switches and jumpers on cards, keyboards and mice, but eliminate drivers for common devices like printers. It's been 21 years, and I still haven't seen much progress when it comes to eliminating printer drivers.
Printer drivers are a pain in the neck.
As a tech guy, I help a lot of people with their computer problems. The strange thing is that most of the tech calls I get are from people struggling to get their printers to work. Now that many computers don't even come with CD drives to install the drivers, people are having and even harder time finding and installing printer drivers.
There's no reason people should have to search for drivers online when companies can simply embed the drivers right inside the printer itself. Here's 4 ways manufacturers can make this happen.
1. For USB printers, printer makers can easily store the drivers in flash memory. Once a printer is plugged in for the first time, newer operating systems can simply request the correct driver. This method insures that the correct driver is always installed. People with older operating systems would see the printer's flash storage as a drive, then simply open it to launch the driver installer. While it's not as automatic as it could be in newer operating systems, they wouldn't waste time looking for the driver online.
2. For networked / wireless printers, they would use their control panel to select "Add Printer" as they normally would, except instead of the system looking for a driver CD, it would request the driver from the printer, just like the USB step outlined above. Once again, this would involve adding a Printer Plug and Play feature to the operating system. For older operating systems, they would see the printer as a shared network folder, and simply run the installer.
3. Storing the drivers in the cloud. As an alternative to storing the drivers inside the printer's flash memory in the first two methods, the drivers could still be stored online, but the user wouldn't need to search for it. When installing a new printer, the operating system would ask the printer itself for the driver, the printer would send back the exact URL for the driver and it could download and install itself without even opening a browser.
In a nutshell, what all three of these methods do is make the operating system simply ask the printer for the driver and the printer would respond by either storing the driver in flash memory, or sending back a URL where the computer would find the driver online. In all cases, the user wouldn't need to find the right driver.
4. Eliminate drivers entirely. This last option is my favorite. Why should every printer have it's own driver to tell the operating system how to use it? Wouldn't it be easier if the operating system just sets up the rules, and the printer companies simply followed their rules?
That's basically what Apple did with AirPlay. They love breaking all the rules.
Instead of every printer having their own protocol, which requires them to have a driver, they said "iPhones and iPads don't have drivers. Here's how to make your printers compatible with our devices." That's all it took. This means that any iPhone or iPad can print to countless printer models, without ever installing a single driver. Wouldn't it be easier if our desktop and laptop computers did that too? It wouldn't matter if it was wired or wireless. All they would have to do is establish a protocol, and everyone would have to follow it.
As a tech guy, I'm aware that one of the key reasons drivers exist is because there are a lot of printers with unique characteristics like 2-sided printing, multiple trays, collators, staplers, etc... there's still no reason those features can't be embedded into the operating system's built-in drivers. All it would need to do is quickly request a list of supported options from the printer itself, and then allow people to configure the supported options when they print.
The key here is that the operating system would set the standards, and the printer companies would follow it.
Joe Crescenzi, Founder
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