Just bought myself a new laptop boasting Windows 8. Printers are becoming cheap enough now and ive wanted one for long enough but many ive looked at dont support Windows 8.

 

Can  download a driver from somewhere? Theres one on sale atm HP 1000 which is as basic as they come but its all im after, HP website offer a driver, will solve my problem? On the box it supports from windows 7, Vista and XP

More than likely the printer and its box were made before/early in Windows 8 life. From what I have seen 8 offers the same printer support as 7 and if the included drivers won't work then Windows update should search online for them or like you said, failing that, download them from the HP website

With most HP printers, you can use their generic drivers anyway.

 

I've yet to come across an HP printer that isn't compatible with 8 in some way, even an ancient Laserjet 1200 which was released in 1999...

HP 1000 is pants, dont go near it, slow, noisy and terrible print quality, and designed for the Chinese market (I had one in China).

 

Most newer HP printers come with a disk, or you can download the latest version of the drivers from their support site, but be warned !! They still suffer a little from the bloat of 5 years ago, when they insisted on installing 1GB of crappy apps alongside the driver.

 

Older HP printers were never given updated drivers, even if the new OS came out only months later; I have an expensive DJ6890 that came out 6 - 8 months before Win7 was launched, yet can only use the basic built in Win drivers for Win7 as HP couldnt be bothered to issue an updated version, even though Vista is virtually the same OS.

i'm still on w7 ,but dual boot to XP as I can't find drivers for an old Apple Laserwriter .

Remember XP is defunct as of April 2014..... Will be as secure as opening your front door.... 

 

Compatibility mode is another way forward for installing drivers in windows 8. My laptop was not compatible for windows 8....yeah right dream on.... i managed to sort my lappy out eventually though i will say the wireless card does give it a blue screen every so often. Also i have an old printer which was compatible with windows 7 and before. Managed to get that to work and haven't had much of a prob since.

Its not fully reliable if I am honest but gets you out of a hole until you eventually upgrade the printer.

XP, vista, 7 & 8 are all as secure as an open front door; that is what 3rd party security programs are for.

Well of course but then XP wont be fully updated as of April 2014.... If im honest the only safe way around is pen and paper.....but we live in a world where technology rules our lives.... Think about how encryption works and the fact it still can be broken....