Printer for Mac?

Orcvader

Orcvader

Orcvader

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Greater London
My brother has a Macbook pro he uses for graphics, and his current printer has poor print quality as well as on the verge of breaking down, so he needs a new one. However I don't know what printer is fully mac compatible since the printers we have at home and in my uni accomadation doesn't have mac drivers.

What's a good printer to get for his graphics course ? Preferably HP since that's been the most reliable and best quality for us. His current one is Epson. Budget is about £60 if possible, being a student is hard :mad:. Doesn't need to print in A3, standard A4 printing will do.
 
Typically, the way Mac printer drivers work is that they're all provided within the operating system (as in, it can detect most printers, and it'll download the drivers from Apple).
 
QwaF said:
Typically, the way Mac printer drivers work is that they're all provided within the operating system (as in, it can detect most printers, and it'll download the drivers from Apple).
Click to expand...

Wait... so you're telling me... any printer will work?! *smacks head against the wall*
 
I'm not going to say *any* printer will work as it's hard to give such a guarantee, but in my experience with a few Macs and various printers it has been fine:

"Relax. Your camera, printer, and mouse work, too.
Almost any device that connects to a computer via USB, audio cable, or Bluetooth will work with a Mac. That includes digital cameras, external hard drives, printers, keyboards, speakers, and more.

You can even use a right-click mouse with a Mac. And with thousands of device drivers included with OS X, you can start using these devices as soon as you plug them in — no need to manually download additional software."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is/compatibility.html
 
Ok thanks guys, I'll give it a go. I'll try see if my printer will work first. I never knew it was that different compared to Windows...
 
Most modern printers from the big three (HP, Canon and Epson) have Mac support out of the box, They'll either ship with drivers or OS X will pick them up automatically.

Older printers are a bit hit and miss. Apple removed a huge number of previously supported printers over 5 years old with Snow Leopard for no apparent reason. I was left with a perfectly working (if admittedly old) HP 990CXi and no proper driver to make it work other than a open source CUPS generic DeskJet driver with only basic B&W support and no features. Happily I found a solution via a bit of 3rd party software called PrintFab. No idea why they removed them as they worked perfectly under Tiger and Leopard which came with a new Universal driver. When I asked Apple and HP each blamed the other then told me to buy a new printer!
 
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I have a HP Photosmart C4680 which is about one and a half years old now, will that work?

EDIT: What the... there's OS X drivers appearing on the product page... that was never there before when my brother first got his Mac!
 
I'm using a HP photosmart 4000 series printer, connected wirelessly, and has worked perfectly since day one with my Macbook! No problems and would definitely recommend the Photosmart series!
 
Yup, he has it connected to his Mac now, and it's all working! Thanks everyone :D! However that makes me printerless... the C4680 can only be connected by USB :(.
 
You could share it via the computer over the network.On OSX: System preferences > Printer Sharing > Select Printer then your other computer will either find it when you are adding one (selecting network printer) or punch in the local IP address of the computer the printer is on.
 
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