Update: I have tried to address many of these questions in my most recent post: Universal Print Driver continues to improve LaserJet printing with Vista.

People who have adopted or are considering using Microsoft Windows Vista are trying to determine whether their printers are supported. While I touched on this subject in a previous blog, Universal Adoption of Vista and Office 2007, I believe that people now want to know whether the printers they already have in-use or are considering are currently supported with Vista print drivers (and, if not, when they will be).

The great news is that the new HP Universal Print Driver 3.1 for Windows takes care of the headaches involved with deploying Microsoft Windows Vista print drivers throughout your organization! To download the free Universal Print Driver software (UPD 3.1), click here. This means that every HP device supported by UPD 3.1 will have a single easily deployable print driver that works within the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.

You can verify whether your particular LaserJet is supported within UPD 3.1 by visiting this site. At last count there were 74 different LaserJet series devices supported by UPD, so there’s a high likelihood your's is supported by UPD 3.1. The primary benefits of using the HP Universal Print Driver still apply to UPD 3.1. Beyond working with Vista, you’ll find that adopting UPD 3.1 will:

• Make Printing Easier—providing one driver and one interface for users, improving satisfaction with the printing process and making it easier to print to almost any HP LaserJet in the office or on the road
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Save Time for IT departments—by freeing up staff, enabling broad device compatibility and helping to control color usage
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Reduce calls to the help desk and support—with real time print job, device and supplies status, end users can print without assistance

UPD 3.1 also supports Microsoft Windows--XP, XP Professional x64, 2000; 2003 Server (32/64 bit); Terminal Services and Citrix Presentation Server Environments. Installation of UPD 3.1 on any Windows PC is rather easy. A download and a few clicks will enable people to print to almost every HP printing device with HP PCL6, HP PCL5 or HP postscript level 2 and 3 emulation.

This is a lot easier than searching for whether your printer has a specific Vista driver available and downloading, testing and certifying a separate driver for each device you have. Adopting UPD 3.1 is much more streamlined than this legacy process!

For the enterprise, the HP UPD 3.1 supports tools that enable IT administrators to assign individual, group and job attributes. The HP Managed Printing Administrator or Active Directory templates allow IT administrators to easily define printing and device discovery privileges for users. You can manage printing by users or user group by identifying which printers they can use based on location or features, or who can print in color.

UPD 3.1 remains an excellent tool for business users to easily print to virtually any HP printing device with a few clicks, which is also especially advantageous for mobile users. IT staff can configure and designate printers for simple access by corporate and mobile users using the Managed Print Administration tool or Active Directory templates.

I know that this Windows Vista print driver picture has been stressful and I hope this clears up the confusion, at least for HP LaserJets. It will be interesting to see how quickly people adopt UPD 3.1, relative to Help Desk calls on Vista.

Feel free to leave me a comment on your experience with printing within Vista and how UPD 3.1 helped with this process . . .