XP dumbed down drivers

[SimMike2]

While XP has good driver support, the built in support for something like my Epson 740 printer and Umax 2000 USB scanner are very poor compared to the manufacturers drivers. They are the worst kind of dumbed down stuff I have seen. For instance, with the printer, it only includes about half the options of the Epson driver. Fortunately with the printer I can use Win 2000 drivers. I am not so lucky with the scanner. The driver lacks basic things like the ability to turn off the scanner after a period of inactivity. It also lacks a very important feature called "descreen" which allows you to copy magazine and newspaper pictures without horrible blotches.

I know that Microsoft can't take responsibility for all drivers, but I really hate this dumbing down the drivers to the most basic. This means you can't get everything out of your device.

 

[LiekOMG]

I think Microsoft includes as many drivers as possible with new OS'es so that people can get the most compatability out of them during their release, not the most features. If you want your features back, you need to use the drivers from the manufacturer of the product.
Since XP isn't officially released yet you won't see new drivers for a little while.

 

[Nevo]

Actually, Microsoft didn't dumb down the drivers.

Those drivers were written by the vendor and supplied to Microsoft for distribution with the OS.

It's possible that the vendor couldn't pass driver testing with the extra features, so took them out to ship a driver that would pass logo testing and MS would include it on the MS media.