Macbook + printer. UPDATE! Solved :)

pulliptears

Long story, but in brief....

OH bought a new printer, Epson Stylus SX300 (I think). I tried to install it to the Mac, nothing. I was running Tiger at the time. OH installed it into the PC and it was touch and go if it would connect. We bought a new lead which made no difference so assumed it was faulty and took it back.

We exchanged for an SX400. I had done some research by that point and thought that the fact I was running Tiger may not be helping, so I upgraded to Snow Leopard, downloaded the latest Apple drivers and tried to install the SX400.....

I go through the install, come to select the printer and its not there, not even registering as connecting even though Im connect through USB. I managed to get it in the printer list just once, and when I come to print I get the message that "The Printer is offline"

I use a HP Photosmart at work which I have no problems just plugging into and printing so I figured this was an epson problem and returned the SX400.

Now, I'm at the stage where I still have no printer. the Epsons would have been ideal as ink replacement is cheap and it used the CMYK inks rather than one block.

I'm considering buying an HP now as I know I can connect one of those but again the ink is expensive and its a single block.

Can anyone offer me any advice as to why I cant seem to connect to any epson printer on the planet, and if you can recommend an alternative that will work with Macbook and Snow Leopard?

Apologies for the long post!

Marty_J

Were you able to find Snow Leopard drivers for the printer?

There are Snow Leopard drivers for the NX400 on their US website, and it looks to be the same printer (the model numbers differ in different regions). If you still had the printer I'd say it would be worth a try, but I wouldn't recommend buying it (again!) in the hope that it'll work.

Probably best to throughly Google whatever printer you decide on in order to make sure it plays nice with Snow Leopard.

Leopard

Apple posted this, which may help you, on its Support site.

The first Snow Leopard update - OS 10.6.1 - is due out within the next couple of weeks. It tidies up a few loose ends and one of the matters it addresses is printer compatibility.

I like Canon printers, myself, and HP has become very Mac friendly over the last couple of years.

Had an Epson once and it was so fussy and troublesome that I binned it and swore never to buy an Epson again! :mad:

TheFlyingGerbil

Maybe if you go to the Epson website it will have its own forums, often they have employees in the forums who will answer queries, even if they don't there are likely to be more people experiencing this problem, and therefore more heads trying to get to a solution. You may need to register like you did here but I'm sure that would be free or you may be able to just browse without signing up.

Joe

pulliptears

Marty_J wrote: »

Were you able to find Snow Leopard drivers for the printer?

There are Snow Leopard drivers for the NX400 on their US website, and it looks to be the same printer (the model numbers differ in different regions). If you still had the printer I'd say it would be worth a try, but I wouldn't recommend buying it (again!) in the hope that it'll work.

Probably best to throughly Google whatever printer you decide on in order to make sure it plays nice with Snow Leopard.

Yep I found Epson Drivers for SL, didnt make a scrap of difference. The problem came as soon as I plugged it into the USB, it didnt recognise it was there at all, and if it did it was classed as "offline" Installed something called Gudenprint for it as well, still with no luck. I question whether it was my USB ports but they work perfectly with everything else :mad:

I'm really thinking towards a HP, but as I said the ink costs worry me a little . I know you can get compatible cartridges but the prices for those still seem high in comparison.

jaydeeuk1

Upgrade to Windows 7. Seems Apple never bothered testing Snow leopard properly.

pulliptears

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Upgrade to Windows 7. Seems Apple never bothered testing Snow leopard properly.

I'm not convinced its a Snow Leopard problem given that I had the same issues with Tiger OS installed.

Marty_J

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

Upgrade to Windows 7. Seems Apple never bothered testing Snow leopard properly.

Apple make printers now?

pulliptears

Marty_J wrote: »

Apple make printers now?

Apple promote a HP model on their site, not sure if its UK or USA but its got horrific reviews lol

I wouldnt dream of using windows, watching OH's troubles with his Windows Laptop usually makes me smile

Leopard

pulliptears wrote: »

I wouldn't dream of using Windows, watching OH's troubles with his Windows laptop usually makes me smile

I was going to suggest that since you mention that it connected on at least one occasion - and that this problem occurred with Mac OS 10.4.x as well - the fault could lie with the USB port on the MacBook. But you don't reckon that's the source of it. I might, nonetheless, be tempted to see what happens when the printer and some other devices are all plugged simultaneously into a powered USB2 hub attached to that port.

If that's not what's wrong, I'm minded to wonder whether you imported (under Snow) a corrupted driver from your Tiger system - which didn't work either - and it's trying to use that.

What inspires that line of thought is that I have a (networked) Konica Minolta laser printer but manufacturer support for it (at least with Macs) seems to have died out with a driver last December for OS 10.5 (which works well).

Apple does not even list Konica Minolta as a manufacturer whose printers it now supports and I was concerned (having a good stock of toner cartridges for it!) that it might not work after an upgrade to Snow.

But, to my very happy surprise, Snow just imported the driver that works with OS 10.5 from my previous set-up, did whatever was necessary to make that work and all is perfect.

Indeed, the very first thing I did after installing Snow for the first time (on an external hard drive, just to be safe) was try printing a document and it immediately offered me the Konica Minolta printer (which had been my default choice under OS 10.5) and churned it out perfectly.

If that printer driver had been corrupt and unusable under OS 10.5, I doubt that would have happened. If Snow, as advertised, had gone looking for an update for it, it would (and, presumably, still will) search in vain.

So, don't discount that possibility.


Canon inkjet printer ink, incidentally, works out cheaper than HP's and my A3 colour photo printer uses six different colour refills, so I don't have to throw out multi-colour cartridges just because one colour has run out!

pulliptears

Thats interesting Leopard, especially as I upgraded to SL directly from Tiger using the restore disk method from an external drive....

As the Epson disk has long gone (and didnt come with an uninstaller anyway) can you recommend a good way of making sure its all off there? I'm not massively technical, and install SL was a big achievement for me lol

As I said I use an older model HP at work and can just plug and go with it, even after installing SL it was there