Dell Printer drivers for MacBook

The general consensus seems to be to get another printer that supports OS X. Dell doesn't write drivers for the Mac, and the suggestions here to use a Lexmark don't seem to have worked.


http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?threadID=&q=dell&objID=f1344&dateRange= all&userID=&numResults=15&rankBy=10001

However, being a laser printer, it may support some PCL language, and there are third-party PCL drivers for OS X.

Unless one of the 3rd-party driver sites such as GutenPrint <http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php> or the HPIJS Project <http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/hpij s%23Printers> has a driver which works with it, and odds are that they don't, you'll only be able to get a Dell printer to work with a Mac if you can work out which Lexmark printer it is that Dell rebadged and if Lexmark supports Macs with that printer and if the Lexmark driver works with the rebadged Dell. That's a lot of ifs.

Dell support and Lexmark support will NOT help you get that printer to work with a Mac. Apple can't help you, they don't have any drivers for it.

My suggestion? Get a new printer, one which works with Macs out of the box.

Yeah, but none of the usual suspects seem to work with Dells in general and that Dell in particular.

Are you certain? Specifications say it supports PCL5e and PCL6. There are Mac drivers for those languages.

For those _page description languages_. yes. But not necessarily for _those printers_. And even the PCL 5 and 6 drivers only support generic features common to all PCL 5 and 6 printers, so any special features will not be supported. Colour is a special feature. Network drivers are a special feature. He's trying to use a 3000cn, which is presumably a colour network printer. He's likely to have a small problem trying to use the generic drivers. If he tries and it works, good. But odds are that it's not going to work.

If all he wants to do is print, those drivers will do. There is a color driver available, although not from Gutenprint. These generic drivers work with networks.

This printer is listed as using PCL 6 as a printer language. The best driver match for a color laser printer that can use PCL 6 is the pxlmono/pxlcolor drivers. These are available form http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting/macosx/pxlmon o. Be sure to install all three packages (Foomatic-RIP, Ghostscript, and pxlmono).

When you add the printer use the "Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic/pxlcolor (recommended)".