[Jason Dunn]

The screenshot above is from my attempt to install the HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP on my HP Mini 1000 running Windows 7. This is an issue I've written about before, but it continues to give me headaches. Why exactly does a printer driverrequire a screen resolution of 1024 x 768? There's no good reason for it, but because HP hard-coded their installer to require this minimum resolution, it's virtually impossible for any netbook owner to get it installed. I managed to get it installed on one of my other netbooks that had 1024 x 600 resolution, but that was only after spending some time fiddling with the compatibility settings. When are the developers who code this stuff going to get on board with the popularity of netbooks? The train has left the station, and it's all aboard for netbooks - companies making drivers and software need to keep this in mind.

[Jason Dunn]

The screenshot above is from my attempt to install the HP Color LaserJet CM1312nfi MFP on my HP Mini 1000 running Windows 7. This is an issue I've written about before, but it continues to give me headaches. Why exactly does a printer driverrequire a screen resolution of 1024 x 768? There's no good reason for it, but because HP hard-coded their installer to require this minimum resolution, it's virtually impossible for any netbook owner to get it installed. I managed to get it installed on one of my other netbooks that had 1024 x 600 resolution, but that was only after spending some time fiddling with the compatibility settings. When are the developers who code this stuff going to get on board with the popularity of netbooks? The train has left the station, and it's all aboard for netbooks - companies making drivers and software need to keep this in mind.

[Felix Torres]

And, of course, HP's own netbooks are among the casualties.
Talk about the right foot not knowing what the left foot is up to...

[leslietroyer]

I've been playing with microsoft healtvault - to monitor weight, BP & Glucose levels. Several input screens are hard coded to size and don't have sliders, so your working blind with the netbook. I check the hardware minimum and yup netbooks don't meet the standard - so it is not a defect, but rather an enhancement... 95% of the site is fine - and there is MORE than enough room for the info being entered...

LEs

[Joel Crane]

There are two kinds of drivers out there.

The first kind is, unfortunately, the most common. They are large and nasty, and run from an EXE file, installing all kinds of useless, memory eating utilities and monitoring programs that take up space in your system tray.

The second and almost never seen type comes in a ZIP file which contains only a few INF and INI files. The operating system asks where the driver files are, and after finding them, installs them quickly and cleanly. They take very little memory to run, require no configuration, and integrate perfectly with Windows.

I never, ever buy HP products because of useless, bloated drivers. Dell, Acer, and many others are guilty as well. They don't seem to understand the speed and reliability advantages of running a vanilla system. Why should a wireless card driver consume 70mb of memory!?

I'm afraid that the only way to escape this problem is to own a Mac or run Linux...