Hewlett-Packard Company HP Printer Drivers Palo Alto, California

I purchased a HP Deskjet Printer 3950 about 6 years ago and used it on my Desktop computer. I printed or used at least 5 black and 3 color ink cartridges. I bought a laptop and hooked up the printer to the lap top with Win 7 OS. Windows did not have the driver.  I went on the web to hp.com and tried to find the driver for download. HP wanted to charge me support for the driver. I did not need their support I just needed to download the driver. when I tried google, a half dozen companies wanted to sell me applications that would download the exact driver. The average price asked was $30.

When you purchase a printer from a company it does not cost them anything to have several thousand old drivers in a database for download by the customer.This was the standard several years ago. The software does the work and there is no need for refusing me the driver unless I pay a support fee for a service I don't need. If this not a Rip-Off what is it?