What goes with Leopard Print?
May 2, 2008 2:38 PM Subscribe
Any good experiences with network printing under Leopard?
Our office is predominantly a mac shop. We've been having a holy hell of a time with printing to our Xerox Phaser 4500DTs since Leopard came out, and after going round and round with Xerox support, we're about to throw in the towel and get a pair of new network workgroup printers. I'm inclined to dismiss Xerox right off, as it's their crappy drivers that got us into this mess. We don't have any trouble with a networked HP Color Laserjet, but I hear mixed things about their support under Leopard. Is anyone here happy with their network printer performance under Leopard?
Our office is predominantly a mac shop. We've been having a holy hell of a time with printing to our Xerox Phaser 4500DTs since Leopard came out, and after going round and round with Xerox support, we're about to throw in the towel and get a pair of new network workgroup printers. I'm inclined to dismiss Xerox right off, as it's their crappy drivers that got us into this mess. We don't have any trouble with a networked HP Color Laserjet, but I hear mixed things about their support under Leopard. Is anyone here happy with their network printer performance under Leopard?
This question is pretty chatfilter-y, but I've travelled all over the country with my Mac, and plugged it into dozens of networks using dozens of different printer setups, and never had a single problem. In fact, it very often works far better than Windows, and it's easier than having to screw around with those idiotic "ports". So there's that...
posted by TheNewWazoo at 2:53 PM on May 2, 2008
posted by TheNewWazoo at 2:53 PM on May 2, 2008
Response by poster: I'm not trying to start a Mac/PC war here, hell, I polish my macbook pro with a diaper.
My point is that in a workgroup environment (~10 people to a printer), I'm getting lost jobs, printer pausing, and random restarts on the two Xeroxes I have right now. It's so unstable, it's even caused the print server on my OS X server to take a dive. The fixes I've gotten from xerox so far make it "more stable", but still unacceptable to my users.
I'm looking for someone to say "we're using Brand X in our office, and it works like a champ"
posted by Oktober at 2:59 PM on May 2, 2008
My point is that in a workgroup environment (~10 people to a printer), I'm getting lost jobs, printer pausing, and random restarts on the two Xeroxes I have right now. It's so unstable, it's even caused the print server on my OS X server to take a dive. The fixes I've gotten from xerox so far make it "more stable", but still unacceptable to my users.
I'm looking for someone to say "we're using Brand X in our office, and it works like a champ"
posted by Oktober at 2:59 PM on May 2, 2008
I had a recent problem with iPhoto 8 and a networked HP Color LaserJet. Creating a new printer preset (from the print dialog box) which turned over color management and paper size handling to the printer (from the pulldown menus in the print dialog box) created a successful print, where before, there had a page with errors. (The problem was specific to iPhoto 8, whether on Leapard or earlier, but it is worth a shot if you are having trouble.)
posted by coevals at 3:00 PM on May 2, 2008
posted by coevals at 3:00 PM on May 2, 2008
Literally just ran into a big problem today with printing from Leopard to Phaser 8550. Spooky. And this question does not make me think we are going to solve it soon. However, it was working perfectly prior to today.
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:30 PM on May 2, 2008
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:30 PM on May 2, 2008
I love how every post about Macs have to have some negative comment about windows.
Anyways... I have a direct networked HP color laser 2600n that works beautifully under Leopard. It even shows toner levels. I also have a direct networked Brother laser MFC that has a lot of issues under Leopard.
posted by wongcorgi at 3:42 PM on May 2, 2008
Anyways... I have a direct networked HP color laser 2600n that works beautifully under Leopard. It even shows toner levels. I also have a direct networked Brother laser MFC that has a lot of issues under Leopard.
posted by wongcorgi at 3:42 PM on May 2, 2008
Response by poster: rooftop
the "party line" is to use the HP jetdirect socket option under IP Printing with the latest drivers, although I've had almost as much luck just moving it to a print server, so ymmv
posted by Oktober at 4:29 PM on May 2, 2008
the "party line" is to use the HP jetdirect socket option under IP Printing with the latest drivers, although I've had almost as much luck just moving it to a print server, so ymmv
posted by Oktober at 4:29 PM on May 2, 2008
We have a brother all-in-one network printer we picked up at Costco that works just dandy with Leopard. The Macs discovered it easily, found the print driver automatically, and we haven't had any problems printing to it.
posted by Good Brain at 9:10 PM on May 2, 2008
posted by Good Brain at 9:10 PM on May 2, 2008
Sounds like you are getting resource conflicts. Think of the network connection to the printer as simply a replacement for a parallel or usb cable- it's a single user kind of thing. The network connection in the printer is almost always not smart enough to deal with multiple clients. And the client software isn't smart enough to deal with a printer that's in use.
I don't know Xerox drivers and networking capabilities well enough to tell you whether there are settings that can solve the problem as you have your network set up. I kind of doubt it. The one thing I know about the Phasers in general is that they are expensive and good.
Maybe there is a "simple" print driver available? The kind that doesn't do any ink level monitoring and things like that, and just accepts print jobs. That might be good enough.
If not, the solution is to set up a more formal print server- your clients send their jobs to the server, and it then sends them to the printer one-by-one. It may be as simple as getting an old PC, setting up the printer to print to the network port on the printer, and then sharing that printer object to your users. They set up their clients to point to the print server.
posted by gjc at 9:00 AM on May 3, 2008
I don't know Xerox drivers and networking capabilities well enough to tell you whether there are settings that can solve the problem as you have your network set up. I kind of doubt it. The one thing I know about the Phasers in general is that they are expensive and good.
Maybe there is a "simple" print driver available? The kind that doesn't do any ink level monitoring and things like that, and just accepts print jobs. That might be good enough.
If not, the solution is to set up a more formal print server- your clients send their jobs to the server, and it then sends them to the printer one-by-one. It may be as simple as getting an old PC, setting up the printer to print to the network port on the printer, and then sharing that printer object to your users. They set up their clients to point to the print server.
posted by gjc at 9:00 AM on May 3, 2008
Response by poster: Thanks gjc
I've tried setting up a print server (OS X Server 10.3.9) and the print service dies whenever you send jobs to it.
posted by Oktober at 10:45 AM on May 3, 2008
I've tried setting up a print server (OS X Server 10.3.9) and the print service dies whenever you send jobs to it.
posted by Oktober at 10:45 AM on May 3, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by adamrice at 2:49 PM on May 2, 2008