Things that Annoy Me

[bohemiancoast]

So. HP decided that they wouldn't bother to release a printer driver for my printer (Business Inkjet 1100) for Snow Leopard. The printer is fine, still churning out average quality, low cost prints. The alternative open source driver is utter pants; will not duplex, returns no printer information, and finally failed to print landscape in my crunch

Comments

[drplokta]

There is another way to print on your old printer, which is to export PDFs and then print them from a Windows virtual machine.

[alexmc]

Yep. Or I have a whole machine set up as a print server just because it isn't a USB printer!

[drplokta]

Xerox Phaser 8560?

[bohemiancoast]

I got the impression that the Phaser solid ink printers were not good at printing off the odd copy of something while sitting at my computer. Which I do do quite a lot of still, though less since having an iPhone.

[voidampersand]

It's fine if you leave it on all the time. When you turn it off the ink hardens, and it takes a while to melt the ink again when you turn it back on. I used bovil's printer for the newszine at a con. When he brought it to the con it was the first time he'd turned it off in over a year. He was kind of anxious, but it worked great.

[flick]

Also, the 'fix' for it refusing to print landscape is to open a .pdf in Preview, hit splat-R to rotate it, and then print it. No, I don't understand that one, either.

[ffutures]

You might want to look at Gelsprinter printers, sold by Ricoh amongst others. Allegedly fast, cheap consumables, high quality, and most of the better models have duplex and network built in. But I need to stress I haven't tried one personally, and that I don't have any info on Mac compatibility.

[ffutures]

Sorry - looks like they are PC compatible only. My mistake.

[gerisullivan]

Why not move to colour laser? Lower printing costs than inkjet and the prices have come down, down, down, down, at least here in America.