Is your printer compatible with Lion?

The article aims to guide drivers to find the right driver for printers to use with the new Mac OS X 10.7 OS from Apple.

Upgrading to a Mac OS X OS version is a risky process; although Apple always tries to make the upgrade process easy. And according to the information gathered, the company did indeed make this process very easy to implement. However, there are always some factors outside the normal upgrade process that need to be researched and anticipated, otherwise users may inadvertently make mistakes and encounter many problems.

One of the steps is to find out what happens to the peripherals once you install a new operating system. Especially for printers, it is even more difficult to imagine: there are many manufacturers and models, so it is difficult to decide which machine will run well after upgrading.

Good news

The first thing to remember is that the upgrade process is smoothly very high, because unlike when switching from OS X 10.5 to 10.6, Apple has not changed much for printing technology in OS X Lion. So most manufacturers now have a long time to improve support for this new Apple OS, and most of these companies are now able to keep up with the pace.

Although it is not always safe to conclude from a typical case, Mac OS X Lion can find it in a test case of Macworld and install an updated driver for all printers in the office. including a nearly 10-year-old printer whose manufacturer has run out. Indeed, updated drivers (device drivers) for this machine (the brand of this device now belongs to another company) still have new and better management features than previous drivers.

Therefore, if you have upgraded, you should first check the Print & Scan frame in System Preferences, where you can install drivers for any printer connecting to a Mac or sharing on the local network. yours. If you connect to the Internet, OS X will automatically detect the appropriate driver for each printer on Apple's server, then download and install it for you.

Check first

It is obviously not safe if you wait until after upgrading to see if your printer can work with Lion. If for some reason, an updated driver cannot be found, you can force it, or leave your printer unused or return to using the old version of OS X again. Both of these options are not acceptable. Therefore, you should first study a little bit, so that you can at least do an upgrade process that knows what will be difficult ahead.

First of all, go to the Apple support page, which has a list of supported printer models on OS X Snow Leopard and Lion. This list is completely complete, contains information about many manufacturers and types of printers; For multifunctional devices, this data also details whether the driver can be used for printing, scanning or faxing.

Finding your printer on this list is usually not difficult, especially if you remember that some drivers are available for a variety of printer models; For example, the driver for the Samsung CLP-310 Series will be available for Samsung CLP-315 printers.

If your printer is not listed on the Apple website, you should go to the manufacturer's online site, where you may find more information about the drivers that the company supports. These drivers do not necessarily correspond to Apple's list, since each printer manufacturer may provide 'unofficial' drivers for older models that Apple officials, for many reasons, have decided not included in the official Lion distribution list.

Most major manufacturers have their own websites that tell which drivers are available for Lion, including Brother, Canon, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, OKI, Xerox, and Lexmark.

In other cases, you might have to look a little more; For example, Samsung has a separate page for each printer model on their support website, which means that if you find more, you will have the answer.

And don't forget to use the phone. Most major printer manufacturers have support phone lines that you can ask for help.

Find a replacement driver

If neither Apple nor the manufacturer can help, don't worry.

In many cases, even if no software is available for a particular printer model, you can use one of the same generic drivers that OS X supports. These drivers are in the Print & Scan framework when OS X cannot determine a more specific driver to use, and can often at least provide a basic printing feature to help you use your printer, not leave.

Apple support communities are also a real source of information; If you have any difficulties, someone may have reported this issue and may have a solution. At least, if there is no solution, quickly searching through the forums will also help you avoid having to search the web for information but still empty your hands. You should also do this for your printer manufacturer; Even without the driver, most vendors have a peer-to-peer discussion forum, where you can find an alternative that can be applied.

Finally, Google search can detect other 'unofficial' drivers for printers, like Splix and Gutenprint. Although these drivers are not supported and require a bit of risk to install, they can often help you use your printer rather than use them as expensive oversized paper blockers.