[THIN] Re: Hp Universal Driver

Hi Greg,

The HP Universal printer drivers (PCL, PS, x86 or x64) are a replacement for
other HP printer drivers, nothing more. On x86, they are an alternative to
using a whole bunch of bad HP printer drivers. In an x64 environment,
they're a passable but not ideal substitute for older HP printer drivers
that HP will probably never port to x64.

The HP UPDs are big and kind of ugly because they've got to provide every
bit of functionality for every HP printer out there. That means a huge
number of DLLs and an absolute dependence on bidirectional comms to figure
out how to configure themselves with regard to bins etc. But they do work,
and compared to some drivers like the 4500, 4650 etc that can crash a
spooler they're relatively benign.

In a nutshell, the HP UPDs are a big and ugly replacement for HP printer
drivers that are really really ugly, or that haven't been ported to x64. In
the x86 world, HP drivers are one of the major reasons why the PS4 printer
subsystem is still unstable so that's an area where the HP UPDs can at least
help.

Regardless of how stable the Citrix printing subsystem is now, if the
spooler gets hosed by an HP driver, it's not going to do anything for you.
It took Citrix nearly a year to sort out the PS4 printer subsystem, and that
was a year of a lot of pain exascerbated by a flakey patching mechanism. But
the real culprit for unstable printing nowadays is almost always HP.

The HP UPD should *NEVER* be viewed as a replacement for the Citrix UPD
because it doesn't do anything for printing efficiency (compression), TS
printing CPU overhead or anything else we normally associate with a UPD like
Citrix' or ThinPrint. It doesn't replace other manufacturers printer
drivers, it doesn't handle host based printers etc. All it does is give you
a choice when you find that the HP driver that comes with your new HP
printer is crap when you test it with the Citrix Addprinters or
StressPrinter utility.

Once you've replaced all the really bad HP drivers with the HP UPD, you can
start getting some real mileage out of the Citrix UPD.

regards,

Rick

--
Ulrich Mack
Commander Australia










On 5/24/07, Greg Reese <gareese@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


just throwing this out there to see what the rest of you have done.

I have a steadily growing collection of 64 bit servers.  64 bit drivers
for HP printers are pretty scarce. We have a user with a Color LaserJet
6410.  Hp has itanium 64 bit drivers but not ones for AMD.

HP has a universal driver listed.  Has anyone used this and if so, any
trouble from it on 64 bit windows 2003 sp2 servers?

Thanks!

Greg

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