HP software actually Mac OS X-friendly
Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh, TechnologyMarch 16th, 2007 • 10:27 am
I can personally confirm what Shirt Pocket’s Dave Nanian wrote about HP’s Mac OS X drivers for its printers yesterday.
Last week, I had the opportunity to install a brand new HP LaserJet P2015dn for one of my clients. Since the version of Mac OS X that was installed on their machines did not include the driver for this recent HP printer model, I actually had to install HP’s own software.
Based on my own recent experience with HP software, I was very concerned. I was expecting a crappy installer that would take forever and would require a hard restart of each computer. Much to my surprise, the installer was remarkably Mac OS X-friendly, and everything worked very smoothly. The only minor annoyance was that the installer script forced me to read some text file in TextEdit after the installation was complete.
But other than that, I was shocked to find that HP had actually made real Mac OS X software. When you think that I got my own brand new HP LaserJet 1320n (the printer that the LaserJet P2015dn replaces) 7 months ago, and that at the time I once again had to observe that the hardware was good, but the software was positively atrocious, this is a very welcome development. It looks like someone at HP actually listened to Mac OS X user complaints, and did something about it.
It’s worth noting.
March 19th, 2007 at Mar 19, 07 | 9:38 pm
I agree with you that it is great news that HP seems to be improving — across the board, not only on Macs. I guess I should lament the loss of future income based on HP software that works and doesn’t need a troubleshooter around a lot of fix problems.
I’ve also noticed that they seem to be listening to users and make a number of low-priced machines that are “network ready.” Not being forced to have an all-in-one tethered to a individual machine is a great benefit.
I’m having to eat my words for telling users to avoid them for several years.
March 20th, 2007 at Mar 20, 07 | 10:55 am
I don’t think professional troubleshooters will be out of work any time soon myself, but it’s true that they need to have a wide enough portfolio of skills to be able to accommodate unexpected bursts of remarkable improvement :-).