aaron evans

I just bought a new printer, an HP LaserJet 1020. I was surprised to find out just how affordable laser printers are (I spent $150). I read the reviews and although the printer is not officially supported on the Mac, various people stated that it’s possible to get it to work.

I bravely ordered the 1020 and assumed I could get it working on my Mac. I was even naive enough to believe that perhaps Leopard would have some super-magical update that made everything just work.

Everything did not just work. I plugged the printer into my MacBook and attempted to add the printer. No driver. This was about what I expected. Next step, I googled ‘HP 1020 mac‘. Okay, that forum seems interesting. Click, read, download drivers from HP for 1022, install driver, attempt to add the printer. No luck.

At this point, I realized that that thread was 10 pages long. There are a few routes to get the printer working but I chose to install the old HP driver for the 1020 which allows you to print to the 1022. The old driver is not available on HP’s site; someone is hosting that driver.

You could also go the open source route and install a Foomatic driver. That sounds like fun but I only saw this after I got the printer working so I’m just sticking with the old HP drivers.

What really disturbs me about this is that HP has developed a driver that basically works with this printer but they have chosen to not do whatever is necessary to support the Mac. BOOOO!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.