Print to an HP 7140xi in OS X 10.4.10

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I have never been able to get my HP 2600 series multifunction printer to work reliably. It’s not just OS X either, there are a few mechanical problems with it (stupid page rollers!). I’ve heard however, that they actually make some halfway decent hardware, and we have been using a 7410xi at work for some time with no problems.

Well, a couple weeks ago, Audra upgraded from a PC to a Mac. She will be doing some design work on our brochures and case studies etc, and really had it to her eyebrows trying to use Word for graphical design work. All but 2 of us are using Macs now, so it was a natural move.

We were upset to find out that our $750 HP All-in-one 7140xi didn’t work on the Mac. Specifically, everything worked except for double-sided printing. Noone else could print using that printer at all, and it dind’t show up in the list of automaticaly detected printers (we’re printing over a windows network).

I called HP and was told the drivers for that printer are out of date, and although the HP website says they work with 10.4, they only work for 10.4.0-10.4.4. The rep then tried to blame Apple by saying: “The drivers still work on XP, because it hasn’t changed in so long, but OS X changed so much the the drivers no longer work.” Somewhere along the line HP decided that that printer was old (that business printer I might add, VERY expensive business printer)and not worth supporting with drivers. His recommendation: buy a new printer or downgrade to 10.4.4. Right.

I can do without scanning and faxing from the computer (email, anyone?), but I want to be able to print, and I want to print double-sided (HP Bastards). So what’s the solution? OPEN SOURCE, OF COURSE!

Solution:

• Install the Gimp-print eps drivers here (espgs-7.07.1.ppc.dmg as of this writing)
• Install Foomatic-RIP
• Install the latest hpijs package (hpijs-2.7.6.U.dmg as of this writing)

That’s it! You may want to restart OS X and Reset your printing system just to be sure, but now when you enter the IP of the printer, you can manually select the “HP Officejet xxxx (Foomatic/hpijs)” and add away!

Thanks open-source!