Wireless Printers For Mac OSX

ZENER

As the title says really. I have a decent USB Photo printer already but the inks cost a fair bit so I'm seeking to supplement it with a wireless printer/scanner which will play nicely with the Macs and the iPad and not break the bank on cost of running terms. Separate inks are a must to keep costs down.

A scanner would be nice too though not essential, so that component will need to be compatible preferably without the need to install tons of crapware to achieve it.

I'm running SL 10.6.8 on my Macs and iOS 5.1 on an iPad 1.

Budget up to €100.

Thanks in advance.

Ken

Gordon

Brilliant thread, I'm watching this!

Sorry Zener, no help to you, I was just recently considering the exact same question.

snollup

Picked up a Brother DCP-J315W in Power ****ty a few months back. Decent enough print quality. Bought set of inks on Amazon for around 30 quid.
Scanner wont work over wireless. Think this has something to do with there being no print server, cant remember exactly, a while since I looked it up. Anyway, scanner is not really used so not really a problem.

antodeco

I have a HP photosmart BAxxxx printer. Got it in power city a few months ago. Think it was €60. Print no problems from my mac and iPhone. No problems with it at all! It's a scanner too!

ZENER

Does the scanner work over wifi though ? Or do I need to install their software ?

I'd prefer if the scanner operated via the Preview app in OSX, it suggests it can scan via a networked scanner: "Preview > File > Import from scanner > Include networked devices"

I've read about and experienced many printers/scanners (HP in particular) that rely on installed software to enable these functions or even SANE to work. Surely Apple has some common interface in mind when they included this function ? Do any MFDs support this feature ?

The HP software is hit and miss at best requiring power cycling of the printer to correct errors on a regular basis. Surely there must be some device that's at least 95% Mac compatible ? I'm not over fussy about the scanner, as I've said, but I've used SANE and find it clunky at best !

I was looking at a Canon unit and I have good experiences with their printers (i965) working without installing extra software. Has anyone had any experience with these ? What about the Kodak "i" series ? How do they fare our ? Or Epson, plenty about but do they speak Mac ?

Seems this might be a relevant topic for Mac users !

Ken

antodeco

I installed the software, but the printer has manual buttons, so you can press scan and send to computer and it'll appear in preview.

Sad Professor

Oh don't get me started about HP. Their software is the stuff of nightmares. Totally unusable! Like a virus in everything but name! Unless they've improved dramatically or their devices work without HP's software, my advice would be to avoid them like the plague! It's a few years since I've had any experience with them though.

I've a 3 year old Canon all-in-one at the moment that works okay. The wireless printing was perfect right out of the box - no drivers or nothing. Scanning was more problematic. As I recall, wireless scanning didn't work at all, even with their own software, I had to connect it directly via USB and use Canon's app or VueScan. I can't remember what Canon's software was like. I'm not using it anymore so it must have been crap. At first Image Capture didn't work for scanning no matter what way it was connected, but it does now, even wirelessly. I think there might have been an driver update in Lion or something. It's great and I use the scanning function much more often as a result.

I'd be interested to hear people's experiences with Epson as well.

ZENER

Thanks Prof. Your opinion is always valued. My experience with Canon so far has been positive, at least as far as their printers go. I have an i965 6 cartridge photo printer that gives excellent results without needing to install proprietary drivers, so that's good.

Basically I need a printer to work wirelessly from my MBP, PowerMac G5 (10.5.11) and iPad as well as a couple of Windows machines (which I doubt will be an issue). I don't have a scanner at present but could see a use for one scanning in photos for editing in PS. I don't mind if I HAVE to install some driver software but would prefer not to have to. I agree about HP though, that's what I've based past experience on - bloatware personified IMO !! Even if I had to connect the device via USB to my main machine for the scanning/printing function that would suffice. But reliable wireless printing from other devices is a must.

The printer will not be used to print photos, just colored web pages, letters and basic printing to plain paper but preferably from OS X - iOS without drivers/bloatware.

antodeco wrote:

I have a HP photosmart BAxxxx printer. Got it in power city a few months ago. Think it was €60. Print no problems from my mac and iPhone. No problems with it at all! It's a scanner too!

Did you have to install their software to make that work ?

Ken

Sad Professor

Oh, BTW, I meant Image Capture, not Preview. I didn't even know you could use Preview to import from a scanner. I've edited my post.

antodeco

Didnt need to install the software. Basically when you scan something in, it will send it you your mac as a PDF!

Gordon

I made a snap purchase today (a vice I always regret!), based on price and apparent availability and price of refill cartridges.

I bought a Kodak ESPC315 (£60). It has a scanner (scans from Preview) and prints wirelessly. You have to install their software though . Also, it's not Airprint compatible if you want to print from an iPad or iPhone. I bought Printopia ($20, free 7 day trial) which is pretty handy as you can print to pdf and send it to your Mac from iPad.

Hope you find the perfect printerscanner

MACHEAD

In work we recently purchased a Canon Pixma MG6150. It has WiFi, USB and Ethernet. We have it networked via ethernet to 10 Mac workstations and wirlessly to Mac portables. All functions work seamlessly via the Canon software, though on the workststions it did take some tweaking. For some reason only admins could access the scanner. But all good now. Print quality is excellent, the down side though (and there usually is one isn't there!) is that the cartridges (and there's six of them) are tiny! So it can be a bit expensive to run. As soon as it's out of warranty we'll be on to the compatible cartridges. We would have considered an all in one colour laser device, if it wasn't for the lack of glossy paper support.

silvine

Have you considered using Google cloud print and paring it with a nice laser printer? You can pick a black and white one up for less than a hundred and it will print far more for far less than any inkjet. It's quicker too. I've a Samsung ML-1860. It doesn't support USB but I'm sure you could find a similar, more expensive model that supports usb and colour printing.

ZENER

Just a quick update on this. After reading lots of reviews and considering the age of my existing printer (>4 years) I decided that a replacement was a better choice. The general consensus is that Canon printers play nice with Macs so decided to check out their range.

Bought a Canon Pixma MG6250 6 cartridge Printer/Scanner for 185 euro in HN.

Works beautifully with the free iPad app for both scanning and printing and the minimum of software was required on the Mac. It does need the Canon software to use the Scanner and I can't scan directly into Preview but the app is quite nice with plenty of options in a well presented front end. So !! Happy Chappy

Ken