Any current production printers have working OS9 drivers?

[Black]

A friend who relies on others for support has had a string of bad luck with Canon printers. She needs to print from OS9 still occasionally (can't remember why exactly). Any recommended current models out there?
Thanks.

[davester]

I think any ethernet postscript printer is likely to work, but that's probably not what you're looking for. I'm not aware of any current printers that have OS 9 specific drivers. I still have an OS 9 beige G3 running but it has one of the last Epson OS 9 printers attached (plus it prints to a postscript printer over ethernet).

[Black]

davester wrote:
I think any ethernet postscript printer is likely to work, but that's probably not what you're looking for. I'm not aware of any current printers that have OS 9 specific drivers. I still have an OS 9 beige G3 running but it has one of the last Epson OS 9 printers attached (plus it prints to a postscript printer over ethernet).

Thanks davester. Do you use it for proofing magazine . . . sorry.
I know nothing about ethernet/postscript printing, so I'd be in a poor position to advise her or help her when it's not working. Not really interested in much of a learning curve in this particular case.

[kj]

Brother HL-2040 seems to be a commonly suggested one.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B...ew?ie=UTF8&condition=new

kj.

[Black]

Sorry, I should have mentioned she needs color. Has always had inkjets.

[Gareth]

The beauty of Postscript printers is that you don't need to know anything about them to get them working under OS X, OS 9 (or even older). They just work and you don't need to install any drivers (you can install a PPD, Postscript Printer Description, for printer specific features and more control).

The downside is that essentially only laser printers (and extremely expensive, somewhat specialized inkjets) have Postscript and nowadays pretty much only Xerox makes true Adobe Postscript printers and they are expensive (though the Xerox 6180N is not bad for a networked color laser around $400). HP and Brother both make printers with their own versions of Postscript emulators, but I've found them both to be a little buggy compared to true Adobe Postscript printers.

But, chances are, this is not the type of printer your friend is looking for.

[Robert M]

Gareth,

All very true. however, for 99% of the universe, the postscript emulation offered by HP and Brother is fine. I suspect the only people that are going to worry about postscript emulation versus true Adobe Postscript are graphics and publishing professionals.

That said, new machines which offer color output and support OS 9 are few and far between and, more often than not, expensive. I think Black's best bet is to see if he can find a used but in excellent condition older model from HP. Ink will be readily available. It's just a question of finding the hardware.

My reasons for suggesting HP is because clogged print heads are a non-issue with them. On most consumer grade inkjets from HP, the print head is built into the cartridge. So, the print head is replaced each time the cartridge is replaced. This is one of the reasons ink for HP printers tends to be more expensive than ink for its competitors.

The only other suggestion I can offer is to see find out what is holding this person back from moving to OS X entirely. Although I hate to see anyone abandon something that is working for him/her a point of time comes when it's best to move on. It sounds like that time has come for this person.

Robert

[Black]

I haven't got a response yet but I'm guessing it's Photoshop that's preventing the move. She gets used to doing things a certain way and has a hard time changing. She never really was able to understand the whole windows/desktop metaphor 100% I think, but has done an admirable job of figuring out how to get things done considering.

[RgrF]

Black wrote:
Sorry, I should have mentioned she needs color. Has always had inkjets.

I'm still using an Epson 740i that came with my first iMac in 1999. It's indestructible and Epson even had to pay back some money on it. Inkjets do color these days in fact this old sucker will even do photographs, imagine that.

[kj]

I think he was referring to my suggestion of a monochrome laser printer, rogerian.

Is she using os9 in classic, or booted into it? If in classic, I think she may be able to buy anything that works with osx, since classic hands it's printing off to osx. I guess this depends on what version of osx, though, of course.

Also, it seems the magic year for inkjets to have any possibility of os9 drivers is 2004, for some reason.