When I bought my new laptop (HP 6730b), there was one thing that made my eyes glow. It had fingerprint reader. Imagine all possibilities of using it as fancy tool to unlock your laptop by the power of finger. :)
Only problem is that it didn't look cool. It looked like I am little bit disturbed. I pass my finger over sensor - it does not even see that finger exists. I pass it again - cannot read it properly. Again - oh, no, I am sliding my finger too fast. After a while, people around me went betting whether I will be able to logon within three swipes.
I installed Windows 7 and only device without driver is my fingerprint reader. As one can imagine, I didn't miss it so much. But suddenly Windows notified me that there is solution for my problem - you guess it - I got a link to driver. It was not my usual driver - original was from HP - this one was directly from AuthenTec.
What have I lost compared to HP's one? Only thing that seems relevant is connection to TPM which, in security sense, was nice thing to have. However, I cannot believe that there is still same hardware beneath it. Now I really use my fingerprint reader for logging on. Oh, what difference, can a driver make. Not only that, if you uninstall HP's driver and put this one on Vista, same thing happens - it just starts working.
I can only conclude one thing. Works better without HP garbage.
You are better off without HP ProtectSuite that controls TPM chip and fingerprint sensor. It killed credentials manager on several Vista computes. Format and reinstall was the only solution.
I didn’t have such problems, but I must agree that it is badly written.
By sheer luck, Windows 7 has its own fingerprint logic. It does not need clumsy propriatery applications. tested with HP and Lenovo laptops. :)