# New HP Mac compatible printer



## West Coast Boy (Sep 3, 2004)

Seasons Greetings folks 

I was in Staples yesterday (no I wasn't shopping, I was just browsing while wife was shopping at a tea store), and noticed that HP has come out with a new model printer (HP LaserJet P1005 Printer) that is Mac compatible without having to load the linux drivers like you do with the 1018 or 1020.


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## ifade (Oct 19, 2007)

Hi, 

I just bought a hp Laserjet P1505 at staples today (the day after the boxing day), and noticed the P1005 also support Mac. I think the 1505 is a little bit faster than the 1005. Also spent hours on a issue - it only produces empty pages. I have to remove the cover in the tuner that protects the cartridge, just pull the screw from the left side. I am still not very sure the new printer supports Mac very well, for example it dos not print self test page (it shows "stopped" at the status message), on the other hand it prints demo page without problem. and When I print from terminal (vim), the print job also fails. Very strange.

Regards,

ifade


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I am maintaining my position on HP printers for now, which is this:

Nice printers, but until they stop insisting on using their buggy, poorly-written and supported and generally headachy bad printer software, I can't recommend them. The software is a hassle to make work, it's a hassle to uninstall, it's a hassle to update. Avoid.


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## phuviano (Sep 14, 2005)

I've had 2 HP printers, and both worked fine with OSX.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

chas_m said:


> I am maintaining my position on HP printers for now, which is this:
> 
> Nice printers, but until they stop insisting on using their buggy, poorly-written and supported and generally headachy bad printer software, I can't recommend them. The software is a hassle to make work, it's a hassle to uninstall, it's a hassle to update. Avoid.


I will also stand by my own earlier comments regarding HP. Their Photosmart all-in-ones have never given me a bit of trouble. We have one of their small lasers in the lab that has never given a spot of trouble and grinds out pages upon pages of draft after draft of our publications.

In my hands, HPs work as advertised and I have never had software issues.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

I feel I must clarify my position.

I don't think I made it clear ENOUGH that my problem with HP does not lie with their actual hardware. Their older line of laser printers (particularly the legendary 4MP) are high testament to the quality of their products.

I'd be pleased indeed to discover that HP has rewritten their printer software to be Leopard-friendly, but I've been dealing with their software on behalf of clients for YEARS now and I'm willing to lay money that most if not all of the drivers on their web site make NO mention of Leopard compatibility.

In my experience, IF the driver you need is already included with Tiger (or Leopard), that works GREAT. If it's not, OH BOY.

Until I encounter some proof in the field that this is no longer true, that's my position. YMMV.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

chas_m said:


> I'd be pleased indeed to discover that HP has rewritten their printer software to be Leopard-friendly, but I've been dealing with their software on behalf of clients for YEARS now and I'm willing to lay money that most if not all of the drivers on their web site make NO mention of Leopard compatibility.
> 
> In my experience, IF the driver you need is already included with Tiger (or Leopard), that works GREAT. If it's not, OH BOY.
> 
> Until I encounter some proof in the field that this is no longer true, that's my position. YMMV.


I draw you attention to this page, which I recognise is but a single example. However it clearly specifies a driver for 10.5. In my case the printer driver in the Leopard package was minimal and there was no scanner support. I downloaded the software at the above link and everything has been tiggitty-boo since. This is for a Photosmart 5180.

Indeed YMMV...


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

chas_m said:


> In my experience, IF the driver you need is already included with Tiger (or Leopard), that works GREAT. If it's not, OH BOY.


The drivers for the current line of PhotoSmart Printers is brilliant. Has been for the last year or so. Supports all the functionality of the machines (including WiFi scanning on applicable models) and looks/feels/operates as if the people coding it are actually experienced Mac programmers who give a crap.

Believe me, I was as surprised as anyone.


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## MacBookPro (Jun 22, 2006)

You must have the worst luck in the world. I have never had a single problem with HP printers and Macs (not since 1987 at least...)

Your advice to others, based on your unique experience, is in my mind irresponsible, let alone absurd.



chas_m said:


> I am maintaining my position on HP printers for now, which is this:
> 
> Nice printers, but until they stop insisting on using their buggy, poorly-written and supported and generally headachy bad printer software, I can't recommend them. The software is a hassle to make work, it's a hassle to uninstall, it's a hassle to update. Avoid.


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## Number5 (Apr 25, 2006)

I've have used and currently use several different models of HP network lasers, plus USB attached ink jets, and have never had a problem.

It has always been my opinion that 96% of computer problems are *user error*.


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## UnleashedLive (Aug 9, 2004)

West Coast Boy said:


> Mac compatible without having to load the linux drivers like you do with the 1018 or 1020.


edit: woot! the 1022 driver works in Leopard. I could never get it to work in Tiger.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

MacBookPro said:


> You must have the worst luck in the world. I have never had a single problem with HP printers and Macs (not since 1987 at least...)
> 
> Your advice to others, based on your unique experience, is in my mind irresponsible, let alone absurd.


I appreciate rgray and posterboy's letting me know that the Photosmart line (with which I have no experience) are up-to-date and have no problems with their drivers. Thanks.

As for you, sir ... I don't have the worst luck in the world. What I have (or had, now that I've moved) was a LOT of clients who had OLDER hp printers/scanners/AIOs and would encounter a LOT of non-user-error difficulties when they upgraded their OS (like from Panther to Tiger) only to find out that HP's driver support was not only broken, but that it would be MONTHS before a corrected driver was available. I myself, who in 25 years of Apple ownership have had to spend maybe a half hour in toto on the phone to tech support, found that my clients and I would *routinely* have to spend hours on the phone with HP support to get the problematic tiger drivers to work.

You'll just have to take my word that I know my way around proper driver installs, and HPs stuff wasn't cutting it. I'm delighted to hear that this is no longer the case, but I'll reserve judgment on whether they've truly reformed their Mac enthusiasm until I can see this in the field.

FWIW, I also own an HP scanner which I like(d) a lot, till they announced that they wouldn't support 10.4 or anything beyond it on it. I bought it new three months before 10.4 came out. Cheesy way to force customers to upgrade, I thought. (Luckily VueScan supports this model).


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## PosterBoy (Jan 22, 2002)

FWIW, the point of my brief post is that if they are finally getting around to keeping the PhotoSmart software working, I can only assume that they are doing the same for the LaserJets. Especially since the two new (1000 and 1500 series) budget LaserJets have explicit Mac support.


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## Jason H (Feb 1, 2004)

chas_m said:


> I am maintaining my position on HP printers for now, which is this:
> 
> Nice printers, but until they stop insisting on using their buggy, poorly-written and supported and generally headachy bad printer software, I can't recommend them. The software is a hassle to make work, it's a hassle to uninstall, it's a hassle to update. Avoid.


I'd like to add to avoid them because of my experience with warranty service. They lost my printer for 2 months and then told me i did not send it in. Finally they sent me a printer, but no power adaptor or cord. The initial problem was with the power adaptor. Totally inefficient service and IMPOSSIBLE to talk to a supervisor in the call centre. 

Although I seem to think all printer models suck, except for my Apple Laserwriter. Too bad I could not get it working on my mac book pro.


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## ifade (Oct 19, 2007)

rgray said:


> I draw you attention to this page, which I recognise is but a single example.


I did a search on my printer p1505, and there is no update for 10.5 Leopard unluckily.

And there is a problem -- it cost toooooo much of CPU if the "hp LaserJet Firmware Download Utility" is running even I have no page to print, I don't know why. It is like I open 17 tabs of pages with Firefox.

Any helps, thanks.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

ifade said:


> And there is a problem -- it cost toooooo much of CPU if the "hp LaserJet Firmware Download Utility" is running even I have no page to print, I don't know why. It is like I open 17 tabs of pages with Firefox.
> 
> Any helps, thanks.


Ah, thanks for reminding me of the OTHER reason I became disenchanted with HP ... their (tiger) drivers hogged CPU power like CRAZY.

Up until Leopard, with my HP scanner no longer connected, every once in a blue moon (about once a week-ish), the HP driver would just "go crazy" and start using 50% CPU even though it was obviously not doing anything. I could always tell because the fans would start gearing up, so I would fire up Activity Monitor, kill the process and all was well ... till the next random time it did it.


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## Doctor P (Dec 29, 2007)

I'm going to have to agree with chas_m on this one. I've got an HP LaserJet P1505 sitting right next to me, which supposedly supports OS X, and I'm having a great deal of trouble with it. I can get it to print once from Preview, but if I want to print anything else the second job and on shows up in the print jobs list as "stopped," and refuses to start up again; if I want to print from Word, which is why I bought the printer in the first place, I can't even get the first job off. I can only guess that it's because the driver doesn't state that it supports Leopard. Does anybody know of any way that I can find out if such a driver is coming along, or if there's a third-party driver that might work, or do I just have to take it back and get something else?


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