Filed under: Peripherals, Switchers, Mac 101
Mac 101: Get a PC printer running on a Mac. There's a driver for that!
More Mac 101, tips and tricks for new Mac users. While this tip may be old news to tech-savvy folk, I think it might help a lot of recent Mac switchers who want to leverage their existing investment in their Windows-compatible peripherals.
I have a friend who has been on Windows forever. He finally had his fill, and after some incessant nagging on my part, he made the switch. What I expected to happen, did happen -- he's thrilled being on a Mac. He's yet to see a crash, and as most of us know, it generally 'just works.'
He did have one problem though. He had a Dell USB printer sitting on his desk. When he plugged it into his MacBook it wasn't recognized, and there was a scrolling list of lots of printers, but nothing from Dell.
A quick web search revealed the printer was actually a rebranded Samsung ML-1710. The Samsung driver page for this printer didn't show any Mac drivers. Searching a bit deeper on Google, we found that an unsupported Mac driver was hiding on the Australian Samsung website.
We downloaded and installed the driver, and what do you know? The printer came up, and printed just fine.
The reality is that there are a lot more printer brands than there are original equipment manufacturers, and it's pretty easy to find out who actually makes a particular printer. If it's a USB printer, chances are good you can find a driver and be quickly printing away. For a wide-ranging solution, the Gutenprint (formerly Gimp-Print) open source project provides drivers for hundreds of older or unsupported printers.
The moral: Don't give up on your PC printer if you feel like it still has life in it; a little bit of online research may turn up a way forward for your Mac. If you have similar happy endings, or unpleasant ones, let us know in the comments. Your fellow readers can learn from your experiences.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
cjmal said 6:04PM on 7-31-2009
I've got a crappy Lexmark x3430 - i've yet to find a compatible driver for it.
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codeman38 said 8:04PM on 7-31-2009
Ohh, yes, Lexmark is notorious for not having up-to-date Mac drivers. I have a Lexmark P6350 for which there was no Leopard driver for several months after Leopard was released. (One was released, finally, but the same thing will probably happen with Snow Leopard...)
DA623 said 6:20PM on 7-31-2009
Thankfully I got a Canon MX700 and Canon fully supports OS X, and I just have the printer connected strait to the network, so no going though my desktop PC ^^;. It scans and prints just fine on my MacBook Pro =3.
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Dan Woods said 11:13PM on 8-02-2009
…Except for the fact that for using it on a network, you need to use BJNP instead of open standards, and Using it as a USB fax machine doesn't work at all in MacOSX.
It's also one of the only products in Canon's current line-up which doesn't fully support Windows 7's Device Stage completely.
Still it still has better mac support than my beautiful, but useless HP ScanJet 4650v.
Will said 6:23PM on 7-31-2009
The reality is, for whatever reason, the printer is the most aggravating part of our "Mac Experience" at the house.
Right on schedule, it's stopped working just as my wife was getting the last of her work ready for school. I ended up bringing stuff in to the office and printing it here.
Strange font issues (MS PowerPoint on Window in Parallels printing slides from her Mac Book via my Mac Pro), connectivity issues to the printer (that's what it was this time, it's now, suddenly, working after the 3rd or 4th restart), etc.
It's an HP All In One scanner/copier/printer, and overall the integration is marginal (I'd like to be able to scan from the scanner, for example -- put down a document and press the scan key without firing up programs and such on the mac side).
Beyond this, it's all peachy. But the printing is a sore spot.
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Blaktornado said 6:25PM on 7-31-2009
I have a relatively new (I think) Epson Stylus SX100 which I plugged in and couldn't play with straight away (like most printers, such as an old HP I had a while back).
While it's the most obvious answer, the CD had the drivers on, but it certainly surprised me that OS X didn't have the necessary drivers. Plenty of other drivers but not this one. Regardless, all is good now and I have a fully working printer and scanner (Ace!).
Even though it wasn't as plug-and-play as I had once assumed, it certainly was a lot easier than anything on Windows!
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ProfessorDex said 6:57PM on 7-31-2009
As a side note, Dell actually provides Mac OS drivers for it's 1710 printer.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/driverslist.aspx?os=MAC1&osl=EN&catid=-1&impid=-1&servicetag=&SystemID=PRN_LSR_1710N&hidos=WW1&hidlang=en&TabIndex=
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Sneakz said 7:50PM on 7-31-2009
Thanks for this post. Gutenprint has the HP OfficeJet G85 listed. Now I don't have to use those old 10.3.9 drivers built for PPC.
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Sam Katz said 11:30PM on 9-02-2009
Most Dell laser printers are Postscript-compliant and will print using a generic laser driver. Note that this doesn't work for inkjets.
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David S. said 10:05PM on 7-31-2009
Yeah...and old tip survives to help fellow Mac users once again. I love this community!
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Rocky said 12:24AM on 8-01-2009
After the HORRIBLE experiences I've had with HP printers, both MAC and Windows, I will NEVER AGAIN purchase anything with the "HP" logo on it. The response I got from HP when requesting drivers for my LaserJet 1000 was basically, "go buy a new printer." On the Windows side, it should not take me 45 minutes to install a driver for an All-In-One inkjet. HP has lost a customer for life, and Lexmark is a close second.
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Andrew Timson said 12:07PM on 8-01-2009
I can't speak for the all-in-one installation; I didn't have that problem with mine.
But for the LaserJet—if they don't already have a Mac driver for the product, what other response CAN they give? It was never advertised as a Mac printer; you got what you paid for, a bottom-of-the-line laser that works well with Windows and can be kinda convinced to work somewhat with foo2zjs.
Byrdman said 1:32PM on 8-01-2009
That's too bad considering that HP makes the best printers on the market by far. Canon i a close second, and Epson (except their professional photo machines that cost >$25,000) and Brother are the worst pieces of crap ever made.
Steve B said 12:53AM on 8-01-2009
I have had problems even trying to use Gutenprint/Gimp
D-Link wireless print server with HP 2605 D Color Laser
attached.
Win Boxes on Network have no problem. D-Link admits nothing for
Mac.
Printer would print great when connected directly to Mac. HP G-85 previously connected worked great when connected as well as current HP 7200 All in One.
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Randex said 1:38AM on 8-01-2009
Just wanted to thank you guys for the info on getting a PC printer to work on a Mac. I made the switch 2½ years ago and have tried numerous times to get my Samsung Ml-1740 to work w/ my Mac Pro. I read your article, downloaded the driver from the Australian Samsung site and the Bingo! Thanks again.
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rwzehr said 2:15AM on 8-01-2009
Unfortunately missing from any of these printer-support options is any support from Leopard forward for Postscript v1 devices.
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glad said 3:15AM on 8-01-2009
I bought a Samsung 1610 laser printer about 3 years ago looking at the box it supported only windows and linux(!!). However I took a punt on it googled it and found the australian website via a Mac users blog, and yipee my £49 laser printer worked on my Macs. I now have a copy of the driver stored on all my machines. I am puzzled as to why Samsung don't have it on their main website and also why Mac support isn't shown on their boxes when it clearly is available. Also it's a great little printer too.
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tony said 3:47AM on 8-01-2009
Can anyone tell me why all printers simply don't understand PDF?
If they did, job done!
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Andrew Timson said 12:03PM on 8-01-2009
Printers that can understand page description formats like PostScript or PDF are more expensive than printers where all the processing is done on the computer (like any inkjet or bottom-of-the-barrel lasers like the HP LaserJet 1000). They need more memory and more computing power to transform the page description language into output than printers where all that is handled by the drivers on the computer.
Stoo said 7:36AM on 8-01-2009
Our old samsung died, and my Dad replaced it with an HP 1018.. *shudder* I eventually managed to get it working via the foomatic drivers, but it's a royal pain in the bottom - considering replacing it with a Canon LBP5050n so I can run it over the network and forget about it..
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