Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 vs HP Officejet 8500, Fight!

I am perhaps the biggest Linux geek left in Springfield (Mike, you suck for leaving), so I can't turn down a chance to boast about my OS of choice.

I've spent the last week working with an HP Officejet 8500 on a wireless network with two Windows 7 Pro PCs. When the printer is connected via USB to either PC all of it's features work just fine. When the PC is only connected via the wireless network it can print from both machines, but it's faxing and scanning features are a bust. HPs software can't detect the printer.

Let me be clear. Windows 7 can detect the printer and can install the drivers. It can print anything I send at it. The problem lies in HP's software.

This printer was originally designed to work with Windows XP. It's software was updated to work with Windows Vista, but that was a headache. It is supposed to work with Windows 7, but apparently quite a few people are having problems. Google HP Officejet 8500 scanning and you will find forums replete with people begging for help and getting very few answers from HP officials or Microsoft officials. HP did finally release an update on December 15th. (It didn't work in this instance.)

To troubleshoot I've followed the standard steps: uninstall and reinstall the drivers, install drivers from the manufacturer, uninstall and reinstall hp's software, install the latest versions of the software and all patches, reconfigure the network, blah, blah, blah. In the end, I even connected the printer to the router with Cat5e. HP's software still would not detect the printer. I finally connected it via USB directly to one of the PCs. That was the only thing I could do to make the software work in Windows 7. The second PC can only print, but HP's software still doesn't detect the printer.

Any honest Linux aficionado will admit that getting all of the features of a lot of printers to work is about as fun as wrestling with porcupines naked. With enough patience it can be done, but you can also move all of Mt. Everest to Texas with enough patience. That's why I was pleasantly surprised when all of the printer's functions worked wirelessly with Ubuntu without any headaches, especially after all of the frustration in Windows.

I turned on my laptop, booted to Ubuntu. It was a second's work to connect to the network. I then opened the print manager (similar to "add a printer" in Windows). It found the printer right away. I was printing a test page in less than two minutes from booting up. Then, on a lark, I opened the simple scanning program. This is a Linux native program, no one at HP had anything to do with it. It started scanning on the first click of the scan button, without configuring anything. It just worked, which was honestly a frustrating moment.

If I were going to pick between Windows and Ubuntu for losing to this printer, I would have assumed getting the printer to work wirelessly in Linux should have been ridiculously difficult, but it was simple. I still can't get it work wirelessly in Windows. It's frustrating, because I can't migrate him and his office to Linux. He doesn't have the know-how, and I don't have the time to hand-hold him. Additionally, he has software that only works in Windows that is essential to what he's doing. I also can't solve his problem if he wants to keep this printer.

The take away is that its not a hardware issue. The hardware works flawlessly with an operating system that has less than 5% market share, and is more often found in server rooms than on desktops. Its a software issue. It's a crap situation, and it's been extremely frustrating for both myself and the person I'm helping. My guy tells me he's also spent several hours on the phone with HP tech support, and that they can't figure it out either. They've offered to send him a warranty replacement printer. The short term fix for him is going to be to use the printer with a USB connection on his main computer for scanning and faxing, and wirelessly to print from the other. My honest recommendation is a new printer that has been released in the last year.