Bloatly HP Drivers ate my disk

Does a printer/scanner really need 355MB of my Windows disk?

I bought a very nice HP Deskjet F4200 series printer, looks neat, cost very little, works well with my Linux PC using the Excellent HP Linux Imaging and Printing (HPLIP) software. The Linux drivers were about a 16MB download, the install downloaded a few small extra pieces of software.

The 355MB Windows install was a frugal install with all the unnecessary related software unchecked (I'm trying to keep this install as clean as possible to avoid a painfull startup time). This is crazy what's going on here, its only a printer driver, Office suites come smaller than that.

Something's badly wrong with the Windows platform if this sort of bloatware is really necessary to make it work.

That's it rant over now.