I upgraded to OSX 10.6, Snow Leopard – printer problems
By Paul Biba
For all our Mac fans out there, I thought I should give you a brief report about my upgrade to Snow Leopard. I say brief because it went so smoothly that there isn’t much to say.
I upgraded both my MacBook Pro and MacBook and both upgrades went smoothly. They took about 45 minutes each and no glitches were encountered. Most everything seems to be running smoothly, even Windows XP under Fusion. As most sites have reported there are not a lot of obvious external changes. The upgraded Stacks is nice, but, for me, the best thing is the ability to use, finally, my mini Display Port to HDMI adapter and run my Toshiba 32″ HDTV at a native 720p as a display for the MacBook Pro. There is now a set of HDMI resolutions available in the Displays Preference panel. Previously, the HDMI adapter never really worked and I had to run the Toshiba via its PC input, giving me a display that was always a bit “wavery” and that never filled the screen quite right. Now it’s rock solid and the Toshiba’s screen tracks the MacBook’s screen exactly. I got that adapter, by the way, from Amazon for only $11.
The current problem is that neither my HP LaserJet P1505 nor my Epson Stylus Photo R800 work. Printer driver problems are common with this release from what I read. I think Epson has a new driver out, but I can’t find one for the HP. Luckily I don’t have a great need for printing right now.
You can find an excellent overall review of Snow Leopard at Ars Technica.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:16 am
My Snow Leopard disk has arrived yet, but I was thinking about waiting a few weeks for bug fixes in any case. I do have a HP Photosmart 2610 xi printer, though I don’t need it a lot.
Good to hear Fusion works without issues, I use that for VPN.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Thanks to Michael Pastore who found me the HP drivers at the HP UK site here:http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=bi-54970-5&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=uk&product=3435668&os=219
September 1st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Those drivers on the UK site do not work with 10.6… Just tested them and same behavior as those drivers downloaded from other HP sites…
September 1st, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I guess you are right. I was able to get 3 prints out of them and that’s it. Now it’s back to the same behavior.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:31 pm
I read the forum on Snow Leopard a few days ago. There were 18 pages of gripes and growing. I also discovered that Calibre does not work on Snow Leopard. I think I will wait, this thing is not ready for prime time.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:45 pm
This site offers a diagnosis, and the a fix, for the HP printer problems; I haven’t tried it.
http://blog.fosketts.net/2009/08/30/snow-leopard-hp-printer-driver/
And here’s some drivers on MacUpdate:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/28037/apple-hp-printer-drivers
September 1st, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Help is on the way …
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HP staff will answer questions in real time, via a forum, on September 9:
http://www.macnn.com/articles/09/09/01/hp.pgp.mac.support/
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From an HP news release …
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HP today announced that company experts will provide real-time support through the HP Support Forums for customers who have recently upgraded to Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard.
From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT on Sept. 9, experts from the HP Mac-connect team will monitor the HP Mac Printing & Scanning Board on the HP Support Forums to help customers enjoy full functionality of their current Mac-compatible HP peripherals. Customers who post questions on the board will receive a timely response from HP experts.
Customers can access additional information and timing regarding HP driver support for a wide range of HP product lines at http://www.hp.com/support and http://www.hp.com/go/mac.