Well, wouldn’t you know it, the day after I publish this rant, HP goes and releases the Vista drivers for the 2600n (thanks to everyone that told me about it). I never knew I had that much juice, to get a response in 24 hours! 😉 They didn’t release network-ready drivers though, so you need to do a little fiddling to get them to work. Here’s the basic steps:
- Download the HP Color LaserJet 2600n Print Driver Package
- Run the installer and it will put the drivers into a folder located here: C:\Program Files\ Hewlett-Packard\ LaserJet 2600 Drivers
- Make sure your 2600n is turned on and connected to your network
- Go into the admin tool for your router and figure out which IP address the printer is using. It will usually be listed under something like “Device Status” or something similar. Copy the IP address to your clipboard
- Go into Control Panel > Printers in Vista
- Click on ADD A PRINTER
- Click on ADD A NETWORK, WIRELESS OR BLUETOOTH PRINTER
- It will scan but you can click THE PRINTER I WANT ISN’T LISTED
- On the next screen, select ADD A PRINTER USING A TCP/IP ADDRESS OR HOSTNAME
- Click NEXT, then on the next screen, select the DEVICE TYPE as TCP/IP DEVICE
- Paste the IP address you got from your router into the HOSTNAME OR IP ADDRESS line
- Leave PORT NAME blank, leave the “QUERY THE PRINTER…” box checked, and click next
- From here on I’m going from memory: it will eventually prompt you for a driver, and you’ll click on HAVE DISK and browse to that C:\Program Files\ folder and it will show you only one file to select
- The install of the driver will happen, and you’ll finally be able to print!
The network management tools are still missing, so you can’t easily find out how much ink the printer has and whatnot, but at least you can print!