Friday, March 21, 2003

Putting Old Printers Out to Pasture
This got me wondering how many other older but still useful printers were being put out to pasture by manufacturers and, to a certain extent, by Windows XP. Older laser printers have turned out to be hearty beasts. Consumers often upgrade to newer, faster computer systems and the latest OSes, but printers that still function have staying power. All they need, typically, is driver updates and replacement consumables.

Data collected by the market research company IDC shows that the majority of laser printers have a three- to five-year lifespan, but there's evidence that people hang on to the printers beyond that point. Says one IDC analyst, "We think it's a little longer than that. There's still a pretty decent percentage who keep their laser printers from five to eight years."

I decided to do a little informal Web survey on various manufacturers' support for old products. I started with Epson and decided to push the legacy envelope. Epson's driver and downloads site listed my 10-year-old Action Laser 1500 (which I threw out just this year when it blew a part for which there was no readily available replacement). But when I got to the actual page, there was no driver—just a bunch of PDFs on use and support. Of course, one can probably forgive Epson for not supporting a decade-old product, even if I was able to use the printer right up through Windows 98 SE.

Scanning other manufacturers' driver support areas, I found that most companies—Brother, HP, Okidata, and the like—were relying on Windows XP's universal driver (unidriver) to support their older printers. Many printer makers worked with Microsoft to deliver printer profiles that could plug into the unidriver and provide support for units like those in the eight-year-old HP LaserJet 5 series. Installing the unidriver profile for a given printer is pretty easy. The OS recognizes Plug-and-Play units and guides you through the installation. Unfortunately, the presence of a universal driver in Windows XP does not equate to universal support for older printers. Windows XP supports the popular Canon BJC 4200, for example, but not the BJC 5000 or 5100.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,932685,00.asp

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