Sunshyn:
I have finally tried your method, and the 9800 driver seems to work at home on XP with my original old 8500. When I get a chance, I'll try it in our new mini-office on Win 7 Pro 64-bit with the new 8600, which will be the important test.
I see that the 9800 driver also has manual color adjustments, which HP had removed from both our original 8500 and the new 8600 - that's also nice.
Well - the 9800 features look real swanky. Is there any other driver that has even more swanky features that will work on the 8500 in XP and/or the 8600 in Win 7 Pro 64-bit?
Also - my guess (only a guess) is that the Deskjet 9800 driver that appears in the dropdown list in "Add Printer" in our Win 7 machine is a 32-bit driver package. Would you recommend a different driver that is 64-bit and has the same features as the 9800 and already appears in the dropdown list in "Add Printer" in our Win 7 machine?
As you work for HP, would you please ask some questions in HP: Since the 9800 driver package works on the 8500 (and I hope the 8600), that means all the programming code already exists. All HP had to do was to copy and paste this code into the drivers for the 8600 (or even the 8500). Why did HP NOT do this?
Thanks. I'll let you know when I get a chance to try this on the 8600 in Win 7 Pro - the real test.