Poor printer quality coming from Mac

Barney's reference to proper driver is a suggestion to use a driver that supports the type of network connection you have, ie. a Mac OS X driver that works when the printer is physically connected to and shared by a Windows computer.

As Charles has said already, the problem you are having is due to a limitation of the Canon driver. It has been written to support direct USB connections only on Mac OS X. It can also be used when you have it connected to another Mac OS X computer or an Airport base station.

But as soon as you connect it to a Windows computer or a 3rd party print server, you are no longer able to use the Canon provided driver. For these types of network connections, as I have said above, you have to use a CUPS based driver, such as Gutenprint or PrintFab. Since the Gutenprint suite does not provide support for your MP510, then you can try the PrintFab driver suite, which does support the MP510, and if you are happy with it you can purchase the software.

However, for the price of the software you may be better off buying another AIO (All In One) that has either support for a wired or wireless network. This will then allow you to use the vendor provided driver for both Windows and Mac OS X. If the experience hasn't turned you off Canon, then you could look at the MP630 for wired connections or MP620 for wireless.

PaHu

Hi all

Thank you PaHu. I think I’ve finally “got it”!

I have performed some more experiments this morning and they, of course, confirm exactly what you have all been saying.

I attached the printer to my MacMini (I had already installed the latest drivers from Canon) and shared the printer. Of course, no problem to use it now from my Mac Pro. I COULD get it to work from my PC (via Bonjour), but only as some generic printer. So this just about works, but really I wanted the printer attached to my windows machine. Is Bonjour the only way for a Windows machine to see a Mac shared printer?

I did look at the PrntFab drivers, and they are incredibly expensive when compared to the price of a new printer.

Interestingly enough, I originally DID choose my printer very carefully. I wanted one where the ink prices were not too high. It’s not so important how much the ink is, but how MUCH ink is in each cartridge for the price. Anyway, that’s another story. ☺

I think the problem (for me) is how to know in advance if the drivers for a particular printer are network aware drivers. I understand that if a printer can be networked, then it must have network aware drivers. But is it possible to find a non-networkable printer that still has network aware drivers?

What I mean is this: the MP620 you suggest is a wireless printer so it must be safe to assume that it can used by either Mac or Windows wirelessly. I’m happy with that – and most likely that is the printer I will go for.

But with the MP630 – it is just a USB printer (like my MP510). I have looked at the Canon specs for each and I cannot see anything that tells me the MP630 will work with my Mac on a network and that the MP510 won’t. I’m not doubting you for one second, PaHu, I’d just like to know how I can tell in advance that a printer will work.

MP510 Specs:
http://www.canon.co.uk/forhome/product_finder/multifunctionals/inkjet/PIXMAMP510/index.asp?specs=1

MP630 Specs:
http://www.canon.co.uk/ForHome/Product_Finder/Multifunctionals/Inkjet/PIXMAMP630/index.asp?specs=1

All the best

Canon supplied a driver that will work when connected directly by USB, but not when using a network connection. If Canon supplied a driver that was network-aware, it would work when using a network connection. The GutenPrint drivers are network-aware, as they use the CUPS system, the Common UNIX Print System. CUPS by definition has to be network-aware. If Canon had used a CUPS driver there would be no problems. The GutenPrint drivers do not support the MP510. This means that you will have problems printing over the network until someone produces a network-aware driver for the MP510, preferably a CUPS driver if only because that would be easier and also because such a driver would work with any other system which uses CUPS to print, including many Linux and UNIX systems.

PrintFab can give excellent results, but as you say it's not cheap. I'd never use it to print to home or low-end office devices, as it could cost more than the device it'd be printing to. ($180 to 280, depending on the version of PrintFab; more than that if you want to be able to have multiple users) The main advantage of PrintFab is that it supports a large number of printers, including the MP510. It is much better behaved than the GutenPrint drivers, but then you're paying for that, so it had better be better behaved.

Still, as you say that $180 is more than the price of many printers and MFDs from many vendors, including Canon, which include network connections and will work across the network without a problem. Unless you're married to the MP510, I'd just buy a new printer. It's cheaper.

The PrintFab drivers are actually cheap compared to the situation in the past. When I was working in printing, the company once bought a multi-user print system to handle printing to all the network laser printers and imagesetters, especially to the (extremely expensive in those days) colour laser. (Actually, it was a Tektronix crayonjet, not really a laser. It still cost nearly $10,000. And it was cheaper than the imagesetters.) The PrintFab drivers are several orders of magnitude cheaper than that kind of thing. (Which was beautiful. It cached fonts, and pix, and even pages; it did seps, and full pages, and could handle monochrome or full colour, could convert RGB to CMYK on the fly, could even correct some of the messes QuarkXpress perpetuated. But it cost considerably more than my car...)

If you want to have a printer which you know will be network-aware, buy one which has a network card built in or which can get a network card as an option. (Not too many of those around anymore. Mostly the vendors just drop the network card in and have done) Typically there will be a little notation that it does Ethernet and, in many cases, wireless B or G. (Very few do wireless N. Note that if you get a wireless-capable printer and turn that ability on, and you have a wireless-N router such as an AirPort Extreme, you'll be slowing things down to G standards.) Ethernet is usually faster than wireless; a typical Ethernet-capable network card in a printer will be 10/100, which maxes out at 100 Mb/s (theoretical) speed, where wireless G maxes out at 54 Mb/s (theoretical). Some printers ship with gigabit Ethernet, which maxes at 1000 Mb/s (theoretical).

You're correct; the MP620 does Ethernet (10/100) and wireless G, as well as USB. The 630 does only USB and you'd have a problem printing over the network with it, too, as the GutenPrint people don't support it either. They do support the 610.

Blimey Charles – thank you very much for all the info!

The problem, you see, is that I’ve had a sheltered upbringing – in other words, I’ve only been exposed to Windows machines! I am still quite new at the Mac thing (well it’s nearly two years). I’ve been spoilt by sharing printers between Windows machines for a long time.

The correct comparison (this is where I’ve been going wrong) is to say that printers work on either all-Windows networks or all-Mac networks (at least my MP510 does). I shouldn’t have blindly assumed that a Mac / Windows share would work perfectly. And that if a printer has network capability (and therefore has network drivers) it can be used on both.

I wasn’t saying that PrintFab was in anyway a bad thing – just too pricey for my small home office problem. I got carried away thinking that everything would work between Mac and PC out of the box. Actually the main network for file transfers works very well.

So you think the 630 would not work? Because it’s not a network printer?

A printer which is attached to a Windows machine can be shared to other Windows machines without a problem (most of the time; older Windows machines may have a problem but anyone with a Windows machine that old has other problems). A printer which is attached to a Mac can be shared to other Macs without a problem (most of the time; older Macs may have a problem if the vendor wasn't paying attention). A printer which has properly done drivers and is attached to either a Mac or Windows can be shared to either one.

A printer which has network capability, usually noted as having a network card or the option for one, will have properly done drivers by default. In general, if the printer knows TCP/IP, you're good to go so long as your Windows box is Win98 or newer and your Mac is System 7.5 or newer. Earlier than that and you might have a problem. As that covers the last decade plus (for Windows) and the last 15 years (for Mac), 99.9% of users should be good to go. And anyone still running Windows 95 or System 7.1 has figured out work-arounds by this time.

I figure that the 630 will work fine if connected by USB, but will give you exactly the same problems as the 510 over a network.

For the Not Bonjour question, I googled this http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=ConnectMac+Printer+fromWindows&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 and got quite a few hits. The first one had a step-by-step down the thread a ways.

What you will find out is that what works for some doesn't work for all.

Also, http://www.MacWindows.com/ has been providing help for integrating Mac and Windows for years.

@Charles: Thanks. I’ve just downloaded the latest Gutenprint drivers – and they are better. Not perfect, but good enough until it’s time for a new printer.

@Barney: Thanks for the links. I’d never heard of Macwindows.com before. Very useful.

My guess would be poor quality driver from canon. Apple doesn't make the drivers; they just bundle the drivers with the os. See if canon has an updated driver