Printers in Snow Leopard and Gutenprint

Printers come in varying shapes, sizes, and configurations. As the primary output device on your computer, the printer becomes an important tool for converting the digital information on your computer to ink on paper. As much as we’ve become a digital society, there’s still a significant need to print content to a physical medium, from party invitations, name tags, directions, photos and more.

Printer types

There is a wide assortment of printers available to you as a consumer, and you’ll need to decide what type of printer meets your specific needs. Printer types include inkjet, laser, dot-matrix, thermal, and many more. In today’s market, consumer printers generally fall into two categories: laser and inkjet. Let’s take a look at these two options.

Laser printers

Laser printers work by heating toner (a dry, powdery substance that is electrically charged so that it adheres to a piece of paper) and adhering it to the paper. Laser printers generally have very good text and line art quality, but lower photo quality. The cost for laser printers is much higher than that of inkjet printers, but they are usually built better because of their expected output requirements. The toner cartridges can be expensive, but the price per page is generally pretty low.

Laser printers usually have a pretty fast ppm (pages per minute) rating and are a good choice if you tend to print a lot of letters, reports, forms, and so on. Color laser printers are also a good choice for printing reports that contain charts and graphs for presentation purposes, but the cost per page of a color laser printer is certainly higher than that of a black-and-white laser printer.

Inkjet printers

Inkjet printers and their underlying technology have significantly improved over the past several years. Because of their low initial cost (stores often include them with the purchase of a computer), they are usually the first choice for budget-minded consumers. Inkjet printers work by spraying droplets of ink onto the paper during the printing process. Because of this technology, photos look outstanding, but you obtain the best photo results when printing on coated paper.

Inkjet printers usually have very good photo quality, but lower text and line art quality. Although the overall cost of the printer is fairly low, the consumer needs to use caution, as the ink can sometimes be very costly. Some inkjet printers can contain six or more color cartridges.

Installing a printer

Regardless of what type of printer you choose, the printer needs to be installed on your computer. The installation process may vary, based on the manufacturer and type of printer you are installing, but this article will guide you through the general steps required to install your printer. Always consult the instructions provided with your printer to verify the installation process for that printer. The general steps to installing a printer on your machine involve installing the appropriate printer drivers on your computer and then adding the printer to the printer list so that Snow Leopard operating system can access it.

Printer drivers

A printer driver is a piece of software written for a particular printer that allows the computer to communicate with that specific printer. Printer drivers are usually supplied on a disk that is included with the printer. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to check the manufacturer’s web site for the latest version of the printer driver to ensure the best performance from your printer. Printer drivers are written for the operating systems that are current on the release date of the printer.

Therefore, older printers may not have printer drivers for operating systems that are released after the shipping date of those printers. Generally, printer manufacturers only release printer drivers for new operating systems for certain older printers. You may find that this is the case for Snow Leopard operating system if you are trying to connect an older printer to your computer.

Fortunately, you’re not completely out of luck if you own an older printer and are not yet ready to part with it. Snow Leopard operating system ships with a complete package of Gutenprint printer drivers for older printers that do not have current printer drivers from the manufacturer. Gutenprint is open-source software. Open-source means that a group of dedicated software developers have invested their time and energy to write software for people to use free of charge. Gutenprint (formerly called Gimp-Print) drivers are often even more robust and feature-rich than the drivers supplied by the manufacturer!

Installation

1. Connect your printer to your computer using your preferred connection method. Usually this is a USB cable if you are connecting the printer directly to your computer, or an Ethernet cable if you are connecting the printer to a network.

2. If you have received a disk with your printer that contains the latest drivers, insert the CD and follow the instructions to install the printer drivers. If you’ve downloaded the drivers from the Internet, the installer will be located in your Downloads folder or your Desktop depending on your browser preferences. Launch the installer and follow the instructions on the screen.

3. Now it’s time to add the printer to the printer list. Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu and press the Print & Fax button in the Hardware section of the System Preferences pane.

4. Click the plus sign (+) in the lower left corner of the Print & Fax preference pane.

5. In the toolbar of the Add Printer window, make sure that Default is chosen. Your printeris displayed in this category.

There are three other categories that you can choose from in the toolbar of the Add Printer window:

Fax is used to set up your modem or Bluetooth device to send and receive faxes.
IP is used when you want to add a printer based on its IP address or DNS name. This is usually a network printer.
Windows is used when you want to add a shared printer that is located on a Windows workgroup.

6. Select your printer from the list. After a few minutes, the bottom of the Add Printer window displays the default name, location, and the printer driver being used to print to the selected printer.

Feel free to change the name or location to something more relevant. The printer in this example is using the Gutenprint drivers because the manufacturer has not released drivers compatible with Snow Leopard operating system yet. If you’ve installed printer drivers from the manufacturer, but those drivers are not selected in the Print Using drop-down menu, you can choose specific drivers by clicking on the Print Using drop-down menu and choosing the drivers supplied by the manufacturer.

7. Press the Add button. The Print & Fax preference pane appears, and the printer is addedto the printer list on the left side of the pane.

The features available to you depend on the model of printer that you have, as well as which printer drivers have been installed for use with this printer. Although the figures in this article show an all-in-one printer (printer/scanner/copier), this article will focus on the general features that are likely to be found on most printers. The printer has been added to the printer list.

8. Notice that by default, the Share this printer on the network checkbox is enabled but is not being shared because, by default, printer sharing on the computer is turned off . Uncheck this checkbox to disable printer sharing for this printer.

9. At the bottom of the Print & Fax preference pane, there’s a drop-down menu where you can choose the default printer. The default setting is Last Printer Used. Change this to the printer that you just added. This feature is useful if you have more than one printer installed and would like to print to one specific printer most of the time. When you print from any application, the printer that you choose here is automatically selected.

10. You can also choose the default paper size from the drop-down menu at the bottom of the Print & Fax preference pane. For now, leave this set to US Letter; however, if you areusing a printer for a specific purpose, such as envelopes, you can choose that size here.

Printers in Snow Leopard and Gutenprint

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