Why are printers such a hbuttle

Why is it that every printer comes with a CD-Rom containing it's driver?

Why doesn't ANSI just come up with some standards for ways printers are to behave, then you just write one driver for each OS to handle that standard, and then you can use any printer you want from any manufacturer that conforms to that standard?

I just had to buy a new printer because my old one died. I went to a giant electronics store, they had at least a dozen printers under $100, and I looked them all up in the SuSE hardware database and NONE of them were explicitly supported.

The store had the HP Photosmart 7450. The SuSE database said both the 7350 and 7550 were supported, so I gambled and bought it (the store is really good about taking stuff back if it doesn't work). I bought separate ink cartridges so I can return the printer with the original ink cartridges unopened.

My previous printer was an HP, so I already had hpijs installed. I went through the instructions on the HP linux printer website about how to install a printer. The instructions didn't match the behavior of my SuSE, maybe it's because I'm SuSE 9.0 and perhaps the instructions are describing a different SuSE release. I did the best I could, telling the OS the printer was a 7350 (it's really a 7450). The printer finally started working, text and graphics mode. Then, after a reboot, lpq keeps saying "printer is not ready" (see post "printer trouble" yesterday). I've rebooted several times, I've powered down, the queue just keeps coming back saying "printer is not ready".