HP 6500a Plus update enabled Airprint

BHBoston,

I highly concur, if you don't need button handling or real time status messages from your device (like low on ink, out of ink, cover open, paper jam, etc.) then simply installing the drivers from Apple is the way to go. The reason I answered the way I did is that TheMacPhotog wanted button support as well. Likewise you may want the status notifications from your device outside of simply printing if your device is also used for receiving faxes. If neither of these cases fits you, then simply installing the Apple solution is fine. Oh, one other thing going the Apple only route doesn't get you is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to turn your Scans into text. The Officejets come with this software as well (one of the other benefits of an Officejet).

One side note however, is that if the daemon is being a resource hog, something is going wrong. The team has worked very hard at making sure it works well. But lots of people are still running older versions that do have the problem.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

TheMacPhotog,

Don't know if you ever got it working. I talked to a current member of the Scan team today, so if you are still having problems make sure you post back and we can work through the issues.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

My airprint works fine but continually get a paper jam error. There is no paper jam. unplugging, wait 15 sec and power up again clears the message and it prints fine. I see lots of complaints about this. Is there a solution to this? I plan to return the 6500A Plus to Best buy tomorrow because it won't print consistently.

This is the first I'm hearing of the 6500A paper jam problem, but I will look into it. Is there any additional info you can provide, like which App you're printing from, what kind of document, where you have seen reports of this issue, etc., as anything at all will help me track it down.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

It is a very common topic on discussion threads. Symptoms are basically the same. Google for more. Also check on the HP support threads as well as in the wild.
In my case , it happens in many apps including Safari, Pages, word 2010 for mac, pdf's, etc. It seems to be app agnostic.
It has jammed on documents varying from text/word, illustrated docs from the web, spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations.

I have never had an actual piece of paper jammed. Only the message on the display and on the Imac or MBPro, or macbook. I have used HP printers [photosmart and officejet all-in-ones for example] since mid or late 90's and have never had this problem. I also currently have photosmart 4280 and 4500 [yes i have 3 printers in my house] and they print fine with laser or inkjet paper from HP or any quality supplier. The same papers I have tried in the 6500A plus.

I have reported this to the appropriate teams, and they are investigating. I'll get back if/when I have more info. Sometimes this type of info doesn't always make it to the appropriate people quickly enough. Rest assured the appropriate people now know.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

hi andrew,

sorry for taking so long to get back to you. things have been really busy at work. so i went thru all the steps verbatim that you gave me in your previous post... and i am still having the same problem. whenever i try to scan from the printer, it gives me a scanner timeout error... it opens up an automator script on the computer (so the printer/scanner actually does connect to the laptop) but then the printer gives me this "connection timed out error"... then it goes on to show on the display, scanner could not locate the ocr software on the computer.... not sure what that means since i have image display and preview on my laptop...

woud love your input at this point... also, what did your friends on the scan team tell you about this?? it should be working, right??

Short answer is yes it should work. Longer answer is that we have identified an issue on the 6500A where the CD software (which is required for button support) may be causing conflicts, while the In-OS software provided by Apple Software Update (which doesn't have button support) works fine. They are still investigating that. As for the response from the Scan guy on the Mac team, here is what he replied to me with:

=====

I just went out to the forum and it appears that TheMacPhotog last posted on the 27th. If I understand their current situation:

* Connection is via WiFi
* Printing works fine
* Since reinstall, scanning from HP Scan works partially (can scan, but sees only 200 ppi as a resolution option)
* Scanning from buttons still doesn't work

Regarding the 200 ppi, HP Scan must successfully communicate with the device in order to obtain a complete listing of the supported resolutions. Until this happens, 200 ppi is the only option in the list. The fact that invoking a scan in this situation is successful is a bit surprising to me.

Regarding the scan buttons, here again it seems like there is a partial communication taking place. The fact that a scan can be invoked from the device and result in the launching of the Automator action indicates that the Mac is successfully subscribed to the device for scan events. But obviously something is preventing successful completion of the scan request.

My first inclination would be to check the selected device in the software for both of these cases.

For HP Scan: Open HP Scan > Preferences to the Scanning tab. In the Scanners popup menu, choose "Browse Scanners". In the window that is presented, make sure that the intended device is selected and then click "Continue". If things are working correctly, the Resolution popup menu in the Scanning tab should contain multiple resolution options.

For Scan buttons: Open HP Utility. Make the 6500a the active device. Under "Scan Settings", select "Scan Shortcuts Manager". This will present the list of available scan shortcuts. At this point, I suggest testing one of the shortcuts (e.g. Save as PDF) to see if the scan can be successfully completed from this launch point. If running the scan shortcut from here succeeds, then I suggest clicking the Edit button and confirming the selected device (same basic UI and procedure as in the HP Scan case, just now presented in the context of the Automator workflow).

Not sure if performing these steps will be sufficient to get the software back on track, but it might at least help us to better isolate the root cause.

I'm also interested to know if Image Capture scanning works for this customer. Since the same underlying drivers are used to support both Apple's and HP's scan solutions, it would be useful to know if Image Capture is also exhibiting odd behaviors.

BTW, the requirement to install scan components from Custom Install didn't kick in until products released after the 6500a. Easy Install for this device should install the software required for full scan support.

=====

So if you want to try his suggestions and get back to me, we'll see if we can't get you working.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

When printing from the apple ipad the HP6500/e710n will sometimes be listed for airprint and sometimes it will not be listed. this happens when both the ipad and hp6500 are stationary on the same wifi network and just trying to print different items and/or different webpages from the ipad. Print webpage one and the hp6500 is listed and it prints, do not move the ipad using the same wifi network the hp6500 is on, i go to another webpage and try to print and the hp6500 is not listed. I specifically purchased this printer for airprint from ipad. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Andrew,

I am having a similar problem as TheMacPhotog, albeit a little more basic in nature. I am simply trying to scan anything at all. I can't run any scan from HP Scan 3, Preview, or any of the other suggestions you listed in a previous post.

When I run HP Scan 3 on my MacBook Pro, the program freezes and does not respond. When I run it from our black MacBook, it returns an "error connecting with the scanner" message. These are both wireless results. When I plug my MBP into the printer via USB, I get the same result.

I'm a little concerned considering how well it's worked so far with wireless printing and copying.

I did also run the HP Print Utility as the HP Tech suggested but this returned no results when trying to test the various options. Image Capture also shows "No connected device" when I try to scan via that option.

Let me know if you need any more information from me. I'll let you know if I get it to work in the meantime.

Thanks in advance.

"For HP Scan: Open HP Scan > Preferences to the Scanning tab. In the Scanners popup menu, choose "Browse Scanners". In the window that is presented, make sure that the intended device is selected and then click "Continue". If things are working correctly, the Resolution popup menu in the Scanning tab should contain multiple resolution options."

- correct device selected in menu, but still not getting resolution options...

"For Scan buttons: Open HP Utility. Make the 6500a the active device. Under "Scan Settings", select "Scan Shortcuts Manager". This will present the list of available scan shortcuts. At this point, I suggest testing one of the shortcuts (e.g. Save as PDF) to see if the scan can be successfully completed from this launch point. If running the scan shortcut from here succeeds, then I suggest clicking the Edit button and confirming the selected device (same basic UI and procedure as in the HP Scan case, just now presented in the context of the Automator workflow)."

- automator workflow starts but still not scanning

"I'm also interested to know if Image Capture scanning works for this customer. Since the same underlying drivers are used to support both Apple's and HP's scan solutions, it would be useful to know if Image Capture is also exhibiting odd behaviors."

- image capture shows device, but not scanning...

so in short, the device is seen and recognized by the computer and the hp software, but somehow the scanner is not communicating/connecting/working...

thanks again for your help and i look forward to hearing for the next step...

i just downloaded the new software update recommendations on my laptop and noticed that there was an updated hp driver... haven't tried scanning again, but any chance that this update is a fix for the issues that everyone has been having?

so just got off the phone with hp support... they told me that once hp writes the drivers and gives them to apple, they muck around with thme... and in an effort to make them more "compatible" with snow leopard, they (read apple) has taken out the functionality to scan from the front panel... therefore, the only way to wirelessly scan is via hp scan 3...

she told me that they have chosen to concentrate on trying to introduce this functionality in lion, rather than struggle with apple in get current compatibility... dunno to what extent this is true, but she seemed to be rpetty knowledgable... esp about macs.. so i am guessing that she is on the hp mac team...