This is bound to happen at some point eventually. Since it has happened now, you have the option of "objectively" dealing with the problem by looking at the future or "subjectively" by dwelling in the past - totally your call.
The fact that Windows has been bundling a plethora of drivers within itself & via its update feature has gotten a lot of us spoilt over time, or how else can it be explained since the status quo hasn't always been & perhaps shouldn't be that it is inconceivable to have a hardware with a device driver that is elusive or simply unavailable. C'mon, it hasn't been that long that onus was always on the device manufacturer to make available the applicable device driver for a piece of hardware, however it seems that with Vista the blame is placed squarely at M$' door.
While I agree that an OS holding or (in the case of Vista) gearing up to control majority of the desktop OS instances should support virtually all mainstream hardware excluding precious relics, I don't think the instantly scaling back workaround is really a credible enough solution without first looking to see if there exist an alternate "stop gap" or long term solution addressing the issue.
But if the hardware manufacture is looking to phase out multiple lines of their product, they may be able to exploit type of situation as they have been known to. And this is where you may not have any other option but to upgrade the hardware to be able to make the OS transition, but this is more of the manufacturer's blame & there is very little logic hinging it on the OS.
The quote below may help you with your issue.
"I found a workaround for this, or at least a driver that works for the HP photosmart 1215. The 7200 is very close to being the same printer so I tried manually adding a printer with the printer usb pluged in and printer turned on using the HP Photosmart 7200 Series drivers that Vista provides and it works pretty well! You can use this until if and when the vista driver for your printer is released.Good luck!
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