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Mac 101: Get a PC printer running on a Mac. There's a driver for that!

by Mel Martin Jul 31st 2009 at 6:00PM

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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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...
 

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Burt Blylevon

We have an all-in-one DELL 962 that we cannot utilize. Or can we?? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Burt

October 12 2009 at 2:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RUGRLN

What was that about it just works?

August 26 2009 at 1:40 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jim

I had a Dell P1500 LP, after much searching, found it was a rebranded Lexmark E323 and their Mac driver works well... I can finally print envelopes without having to fire up a WinXP vm! Yay!

August 04 2009 at 10:57 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron

Most Dell printers are WinPrinters, which require GDI drivers, not PostScript drivers. This means the printers are cheaper to manufacture than PostScript printers, which need to have their own processor and RAM. Instead, WinPrinters use the PC's (or Mac's) processor and RAM to rasterize the image.

August 03 2009 at 7:42 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dschol

I have a scanner that don't work on my mac's. Is a HP scanjet 4470 C.
Is there anyone who have the same or similar problem.

Please help me.

Thanks David.

August 03 2009 at 7:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jamy015

HP always has Mac drivers, just hop on their website, search for them and install them. It Just Works (tm). Unlike the Windows drivers for HP printers, those are crap.

August 02 2009 at 8:39 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to jamy015's comment
CL

That's not even closed to the truth. I have a LaserJet 1020 and that didn't have any OSX drivers. Some users figured out that they could use the drivers from the more expensive Laserjet 1022 which worked perfectly for about a year then people tried to download the 1022 driver and all of a sudden it didn't work anymore. Guess what, HP actually modified that driver so it won't work with the 1020 anymore. In the end, some good samaritan actually put the old version of the driver on their own server so new users can download it.

August 02 2009 at 11:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kj

I'm so happy I saw this article and read the comments. I just got my Dell 3010cn laser printer to work with my two macs. I've been trying to get it to work for over a year and finally it works. I'm so happy.

August 01 2009 at 2:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jsi

I have an HP Laserjet 1000 in perfect condition that I bought in 2000. This is a USB printer, but not in the traditional sense - it requires a Windows-side "server" to run. It was advertised as such and I never thought I'd be running anything but Windows. So, when I got my Macbook Pro about a year ago, I didn't bother trying to get it working under OS X.

A few months back, I convinced myself that someone must have already solved this problem. I was right - foo2zjs. The only caveat is that each time the printer power is cycled, I have to send it an explicit command to initialize itself. Also, if I switch USB ports, I have to delete the duplicate printer that shows up in Preferences, cycle the power and re-init.

All-in-all, a very reasonable solution for using a printer that's not supposed to work under OS X, and doesn't deserve to die.

August 01 2009 at 1:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
coyo t

driver? what the what what? whatabouteverything "just works" ?

August 01 2009 at 12:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stoo

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..

August 01 2009 at 7:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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