Leopard Printing Setup
The printer setup utility in Leopard can be a bit frustrating to use. I have a headache right now from it. I’m a low volume printer. Generally I only print out reference material when I’m working on something new that I’m unfamiliar with. Because of that, I hadn’t bothered to set up my printer yet since doing the clean install for Leopard. I needed to print something today, so I finally got around to trying it out.
The problem I had was that the OS would not find the correct drivers for my printer. I use an HP Laserjet 1012 that’s shared via bonjour through an airport express. The add printer function in the printer preference pane would find it with no problems, but it would not list drivers for it in either the auto-discover or select driver.
I went around with it for a bit when finally I decided to move the printer and plug it directly into the machine. It was instantly set-up and ready to go then. Everything worked great. I then hooked everything back up through the airport express. Trying to add the printer now resulted in the correct driver being found automatically for it. So it appears that the driver discovery doesn’t correctly work with a bonjour printer, at least over an express, until the OS has first seen the printer with a direct connection.
On the plus side, I like the new printer pane in Leopard and configuration was great with with the USB connection that most users will use. Everything was automatically set-up and ready go as soon as I plugged in the printer. It was a really good user experience for that type of connection. Hopefully the bonjour set-up will eventually be that smooth.