And drivers are from the manufacturer. Is it MS’ fault for the size of HP’s printer drivers?
The stock drivers (generic) that ship with XP or Vista are about the same size - 150-200K. It’s the ones from the manufacturers directly that are huge.
The beef over driver size should be with the device makers, not Microsoft.
Microsoft should provide mostly functional generic drivers for most generic hardware, like network cards, video cards and printers. That's the function of an OS anyway, to be the part between the user and the hardware.
They don't. Instead they require the hardware manufacturers to do it. And since many of the docs detailing how hardware should interface with Windows are contradictory, incomplete or just plain wrong, you get crappy drivers.