There is no reason in this day and age that all the software you'd need to operate any piece of hardware should not be available online. Quick Proliferation of Incompatible Devices. In the case of this grievance, I'm mostly concerned about printers and scanners, although there are examples of cameras and other devices that cause incompatibility trouble. However, the printers and scanners present the worst incompatibility trouble. By the time a PC Magazine printer issue is out two months, all the printers reviewed have been replaced by newer models with new incompatibility problems.
Scanners are just as bad.
Years ago, you could rely on the one good scanner or the one good printer from a company. Now we see only short-lived, incompatible products. This has gotten completely out of control. This grievance gets everyone mad, and if someone out there can code a software solution, I'll distribute it for you. There are too many INI parameters and register entries and DLLs in odd places to make this easy.