# which are best printers for Macbooks?



## parksung (Feb 9, 2006)

a salesperson told me that many HP printers don't work well with Macs, and that i should stick with Epson.

is this accurate? i prefer HP but haven't used them with Macs. which printers would be best for cheap all-in-ones? as long as the brand has Mac drivers, shouldn't they be fine?


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## ZRXer (Jan 18, 2007)

This is somewhat dated, but I purchased a 4215 all in one, and we could not get it to work under Tiger. I tried downloading all the patches, all the software, etc, as well as spending about 2 hours on the phone with HP support and probably a dozen emails back and forth - no solution. It was left at "well, it SHOULD work" but it never did. The box clearly stated that it supported OS X.

I was very disappointed - again, not a scientific answer, not to mention that this was about 2 years ago. Annoying as all get out though, and I ended up just buying a Lexmark inkjet and a Brother laser printer instead.

I have heard from others who had similar issues with their all-in-ones not being supported well in OS X, but that's hearsay.


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## rgray (Feb 15, 2005)

I like HPs. I have used several of their all in ones. Currently we have 2 Photosmarts - a 3100 series and a 5180 - both are ethernet ready. One is hardwired to the router, the other is connected thru a Linksys WET54G bridge. Both are fully functional (both print and scan) wirelessly which is very convenient in a laptop only household. I had a 1200 All in one and one of the kids is still using it. At the lab we have 2 930s and a 5550 straight printers. I had a Brother 420 that was a constant pain in the @$$ and I'll never own another Epson - if they ever clog up (and they will if not used regularly - my needs vary a lot) just throw it away. For me, HPs just work. YMMV.


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## phuviano (Sep 14, 2005)

I think Hp's work fine with macs. 

I've owned 2 hp printers so far. I believe the older model I had was the 7760 photo something, don't remember the exact what it was called. However, it had an install disc, and I bought the printer a few years before I got my first mac. I installed the drivers from the disc onto my mac at the time (which was a mini). It worked fine, with no problems. 

I current have the Hp Photosmart C5180 All in one. I have it hooked up through my AEBS, so I didn't even need to install drivers. I don't need the installation disc either. You just have to configure the printer under system preferences.

I've also had the C5180 hooked up directly to the mac by usb cable, and I've had no issues that way either. Its a whole lot quicker if you have it hooked up to an AEBS, that's if you have one.


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## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

Myself and the family have gone through a number of printers within the past couple of years. (Home, school, cottage and work) Most experience is printing through the various windows flavours (98,ME,XP) as I am a recent mac owner.

We have not had much luck with epsons (r200, c64, c68?, 740?) the ink tends to dry out or evaporate, so you are consitently replacing cartridges on them if you want them to continue working. Wait too long between prints, the head will clog and back to the store/landfill they go - this has happend within 8-14months of ownership for all of the printers - not good in my books. Printer won't print anything if one of the ink carts is low/out of ink. I presume that if they were used daily the clogging wouldn't be an issue, but with the cost of ink and waste of paper that would create for home use, this is a serious design flaw.

HP - great printers - you can't kill them, ink can be expensive but they keep running and running (680C and a 59xx?, 5L laser jet, 2200 Laser jet, plus a new photo/all in one printer unsure of model#). The 680 was retired as it was making a banging noise when printing, but did a lot of pages over a number of years, the 59xx at work printed more then an inkjet ever should and is still ticking. Both laserjets performed well beyond and developped a paper feed problem and were replaced when the rebuild costs exceeded the cost of a new similar quality laser.

Samsung entry level network laser, current office printer, seems to run well, no issues that I have been made aware of. Consumables less $ then the HP.

Canon ip4200 - very happy for home use, it's the current printer. Refill kits are available making ink costs very small, prints on cd/dvd's, worked out of the box with leopard, required drivers for tiger. Haven't tried printing through the network - that will give me something to do and see if it works from the macbook.

Overall, my vote goes towards HP or canon offerings.


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## chas_m (Dec 2, 2007)

parksung said:


> a salesperson told me that many HP printers don't work well with Macs, and that i should stick with Epson.
> 
> is this accurate? i prefer HP but haven't used them with Macs. which printers would be best for cheap all-in-ones? as long as the brand has Mac drivers, shouldn't they be fine?


For once, I am going to agree with a salesperson. 

It's not the actual HP printers that suck, it's their insistence on using their own printing engine (driver software) that mucks everything up. It's dreadful and shows NO signs of getting better anytime soon.

For that reason, I also would recommend Canon or Epson (or even Brother in some circumstances) over HP. Sorry HP, get with the Apple printing program and everything will be fine!


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## jmcm (Sep 13, 2005)

parksung said:


> a salesperson told me that many HP printers don't work well with Macs, and that i should stick with Epson.
> 
> is this accurate? i prefer HP but haven't used them with Macs. which printers would be best for cheap all-in-ones? as long as the brand has Mac drivers, shouldn't they be fine?


I personally have had now problems (One HP all in one and one HP Laser).


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## krs (Mar 18, 2005)

cliffx said:


> Canon ip4200 - very happy for home use, it's the current printer. Refill kits are available making ink costs very small, prints on cd/dvd's, worked out of the box with leopard, required drivers for tiger. Haven't tried printing through the network - that will give me something to do and see if it works from the macbook.
> 
> Overall, my vote goes towards HP or canon offerings.


How do you find the speed of the Canon vs the Epson?
I have a Canon i450 and it's terribly slow compared to the EpsonC86 or 880.

I'm looking for an all-in-one that also prints on CDs and sort of decided on the Epson RX595 because it provides the best text printing.
I also need one that can handle very heavy paper so the paper path has to be relatively straight.
This would be running with 10.4.10 initially, maybe Leopard later.


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## Queue (May 12, 2005)

HP printers have always worked fine for me.


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## HowEver (Jan 11, 2005)

.


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

No problems here either. In fact, I've found the best luck with HP versus Lexmark and Samsung.


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## jlcinc (Dec 13, 2002)

I am going to jump in here and say that I have had Epson, Canon, and HP. I still have the Epson and HP the HP is a PSC750 all in one. It worked just fine until I upgraded to Tiger. The drivers do not work with Tiger or maybe it's the Intel. The Epson 260 is new and I got it to print on DVD's (works great).

John


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## cap10subtext (Oct 13, 2005)

I have one of those Lexmark x 1140 all in one deals I use at home with my macbook. There were a number of printer issues with leopard documented in the apple forums, the top 3 being HP, Lexmark, and Epson but I found that it was actually 10.4.11 update that killed off my printer and an upgrade to 10.5 didn't fix the problem. A clean Install of leopard and the original printer drivers (built for 10.2) now work better in Leopard than they ever did in Tiger. Strange but good for me.

The only thing I caution against with Lexmark is that they are one of those "we don't support anything after 2 or 3 years so you are on your own" sort of companies. Cheap, effective, but with the chance of going paperweight on you in a couple years. But that's just my opinion.


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## ifade (Oct 19, 2007)

Hi,

Anyone can suggest some Laser printers for a Macbook? I bought several types of printers before, Epson, Lexmarks, and Hp, I did not used them for a Mac, I just transfer to Mac several month ago, the main problem for the printers is the ink, I usually don't use printer a lot, so when I used it once, and after several months, all the ink is gone and I have to purchase it again, so I consider to buy a Laser printer for not changing ink in a period of time.

Thanks,

ifade


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## (( p g )) (Aug 17, 2002)

ifade said:


> Hi,
> 
> Anyone can suggest some Laser printers for a Macbook?


I swear by my HP 2600n colour laser printer. Comes with built in Bonjour support so configuring on a network is a snap.


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## cliffx (May 23, 2007)

> How do you find the speed of the Canon vs the Epson?
The speed is not unreasonable, to be honest it hasn't been an issue. Full colour 8.5*11 pictures take a little while to print a minute or two, but I think that is expected. Specs are courtesy of canon uk:
Text & Graphics: Up to 19ppm (Max.), 10.7ppm (Std)
A4 Full Page: Approx. 25 seconds (Std)

>I'm looking for an all-in-one that also prints on CDs and sort of decided on the Epson RX595 because it provides the best text printing.
Text printing with the canon is pretty good, no complants here text is crisp nearly laser like (obviously depends on quality chosen). This printer isn't an all in one, but can print cd's. 4300's will print discs right out of the box.

>I also need one that can handle very heavy paper so the paper path has to be relatively straight.
Heavy weight no issue, I regularly print on 28lb paper.


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