Foo Theory

As strange as it might sound, I've avoided installing my HP Officejet 7310 All-in-One printer on my Vista laptop until now without any pain (goes to show how much I actually print at home).  Since I am home though on new-daddy duty I figured I'd get a few things done (finished painting Matthew's new room, ceiling fan, new garbage disposal, ya-da-ya-da).  So, even though I don't really use it much and since I'm in the mood, I went out to the HP site to download the Vista driver.  There is no "downloadable full-feature Windows Vista driver solution available" but HP does provide instructions on using the Vista (vanilla) driver to get basic function (good enough for now).  One catch though: I use my printer attached to the wireless network router so I can access it around the house without connecting to it directly. 

Here's what I did to get it working

1. Plug the printer into the wireless router using standard network cable.  Note: your printer must be network ready.  Higher-end printers will have this built-in.
2. Go to Start --> Printers.
3. From the Printers dialog menu choose Add a printer.
4. From the Add printer dialog choose Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer.  This will start a search for the printer on the network.
5. Once the network printer is found select it and choose Next.
6. Choose the default printer name, set the printer as default or not (checkbox) and choose Next.  This will start the printer install.
7. Once the installation process completes choose Print a test page and confirm that it installed correctly.

Voila!  It was that easy.  Now to me this is a big deal: I remember having to download this huge file (seriously) from HP when installing the printer on XP and the install took literally in the tens of minutes.  I'm now able to print (in full color or black and white), control the scanner from vista and use the built-in memory card reader to view and import photos.  Now I know I don't have full-featured functionality but this was a much better experience than with XP. 

I'll test the photo printing functionality and post a comment or update.  I'd love it if I could avoid installing all that HP fluff-ware and start-up crap.