Comment 0 for bug 1311697

When an HP Officejet Pro K550 is connected, by default CUPS picks hpcups as a driver.

Unfortunately, hpcups is broken for this printer, and it has been for a long time.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/981473

It was first broken in 11.04 and has been broken since. It has been reported since 2011 and no progress has been made on the bug report.

This printer is also considered to be "End of Support" by the HPLIP project, and it is likely no resources will ever be committed to fix the real bug:
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/models/officejet/officejet_pro_k550.html
"The HP product has reached the end of support life, meaning the HPLIP solution is considered “As-is”. No further HPLIP code changes will be implemented by HP. While monitoring of Launchpad posts by HP personnel will continue, follow-up by HP personnel on these products will be extremely limited. Community members are encouraged to assist others with issues on these printers."

The very simple workaround is to pick hpijs instead of hpcups. This should be done by default, as it is very hard to find this bug report googling around (I thought I had a broken printer, and only after several hours spent debugging, wasting ink and paper did I find the bug report). It doesn't help that this is not a linux-only issue, as there are many people on windows having this issue so googling gets filled with bogus windows info.

Thank you.