Hackszine.com: Use a Windows-only Printer on a Mac

Use a Windows-only Printer on a Mac

A few months ago, I accidentally purchased a printer that only had Windows drivers available for it. By the time I realized my mistake, I had already unpacked everything, which meant it could no longer be returned without incurring the heinous "restocking" penalty.

Gutenprint to the rescue:

Gutenprint, formerly named Gimp-Print, is a suite of printer drivers that may be used with most common UNIX and Linux print spooling systems, including CUPS, lpr, LPRng, or others. These drivers provide high quality printing for UNIX (including Macintosh OS X 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4) and Linux systems that in many cases equal or exceed proprietary vendor-supplied drivers in quality and functionality

The list of supported printers is massive, and there's even a binary build for OS X, complete with standard installer. Install the driver, add your printer through the system prefernces panel, select the Gutenprint driver for your model, and you're in business!

Posted by Jason Striegel | Jan 25, 2007 10:36 PM
Mac | Permalink | Comments (2)

Comments

Newest comments listed first.

Posted by: andif on January 26, 2007 at 9:11 AM

I need to add my Mac to a network with a Windows-only printer, and this should help!

Posted by: jason_striegel on January 26, 2007 at 10:06 AM

Yeah, you should be able to add your windows network or ip/lpd printer in the printer preferences panel, and then choose the correct gutenprint driver before saving.

In my case, I have the printer connected directly to my iMac, and then I have sharing enabled for it so that I can print from my iBook over wifi. So you can network and print to a windows-only device without needing a single windows machine!