Ok then, how come there are no HP Laserjet 4/5/6 drivers for Lion? HP telling you to go buy a new printer? MAYBE... so then, how come Microsoft wrote Windows 7 drivers for those popular printers? How about the Aureal sound card drivers Microsoft wrote for XP? In these two instances, they didn't have to do it.... they are not the hardware vendor... how about not being able to run old PowerPC based apps in Lion? Oh, but you still can run 16-bit Windows apps with 32-bit Windows 7 or just use Windows XP mode to do that if you're running 64-bit Windows 7... there's no free OFFICIAL option to even do that with Lion! Microsoft did all of this because it was a courtesy, so that people could continue to use their old hardware without getting pissed off at all the changes that prevents from using their old but still working hardware/software!

I don't really like Microsoft, but I can't hate them either for trying to keep their user base happy. Apple doesn't care because fanboys will still buy their overpriced crap

Drivers are manufacturers obligation. Take that up to HP or Lexmark. Apple does NOT profit from missing drivers. To the contrary haters like you take this up for blaming Apple.
I appreciate that apple kills old APIs or even killed the PowerPC emulation. Taking old baggage with you for ages is so Microsoft and Apple is Apple and not Microsoft 😉
Microft has to keep their business clients happy and thus has to invest in writing their own drivers for stone age hardware (abd did they really write those themselces).

Haters always gonna hate no matter what and fans will always love. But direct the blame where it needs to go.

TheMAN wrote:

Ok then, how come there are no HP Laserjet 4/5/6 drivers for Lion? HP telling you to go buy a new printer? MAYBE... so then, how come Microsoft wrote Windows 7 drivers for those popular printers? How about the Aureal sound card drivers Microsoft wrote for XP? In these two instances, they didn't have to do it.... they are not the hardware vendor... how about not being able to run old PowerPC based apps in Lion? Oh, but you still can run 16-bit Windows apps with 32-bit Windows 7 or just use Windows XP mode to do that if you're running 64-bit Windows 7... there's no free OFFICIAL option to even do that with Lion! Microsoft did all of this because it was a courtesy, so that people could continue to use their old hardware without getting pissed off at all the changes that prevents from using their old but still working hardware/software!

I don't really like Microsoft, but I can't hate them either for trying to keep their user base happy. Apple doesn't care because fanboys will still buy their overpriced crap

The reason why OS X works as well as it does on "inferior" hardware is specifically because it doesn't carry the legacy baggage that Windows does. With each new release of OS X, Apple culls some older hardware from the officially supported list and that keeps the OS running faster, better, and more stable on the hardware that is still supported. They have been doing this with Mac OS ever since the original Mac was released back in 1984. A few enterprising users from time to time come up with ways to make newer versions of the OS run on legacy hardware, but it isn't always desirable due to the limitations of the old hardware not being able to run the OS quickly enough or with full features enabled.

And you're still using such an old laser printer? Why? The cheapest b&w lasers on the market today are vastly superior and don't cost very much. They also use less electricity and ink than a printer that old so it would be an upgrade that pays for itself. I don't blame Apple for dropping support in Lion because any business owner with any sense would have already dropped, or will soon be dropping, those printers in favor of more efficient models anyway.

Dominus wrote:

If you want to bitch about lack of backwards compatibility/support, look at MacOSX... greatest example is recently trying to get a not so old Lexmark C500 printer working in Lion... guess what? No drivers for it... how about the drivers meant for Snow Leopard? FAIL... Apple is basically telling you to go fuck off and buy a new printer... it's one thing when an ancient HP Deskjet printer won't work in Lion, but it's another when a business grade Lexmark printer that was only made during the past mid decade won't even work at all in Lion. No compatibility mode with the older driver models either. Apple just let people with old, good working hardware (printers and monitors have crazy long life cycles!), hanging high and dry! Even Windows 7 has drivers for my 20 year old HP Laserjet 5!

What a bunch of bullshit. Complain to Lexmark for lack of driver support. Yes Apple changed stuff, mostly getting rid of apis they declared deprecated years ago, but ultimately it's the fault of Lexmark. Lexmark is telling you to f... off and get a new printer.

Same thing with canon. Canon told me to f... off when I bought NEW LBP2900 printer, that han no Vista 64-bit support. That was pretty much bullshit, they didn't want to let me return it to the store and I had to give up my OEM 64-bit Vista for some crappy pirated release. Fortunately, the driver became available in some 2-3 years. But I'm not buying anything made by Canon ever again.

That's all stupid marketing, the envy to suck out as much resources from the buyers as they can.

My Dad's Canon scanner also has no W7 / Vista support. However you can use the Windows XP mode to get it going, works quite well.

It was the top model at that time and yea quite a shame they stopped supporting it.

and don't forget Creatives Labs:

Creative caves; supports Dolby Digital, DTS in Vista driver
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/daniel_k-who-fi/

forced-accelerated-obselescene-plan indeed.

sliderider wrote:

TheMAN wrote:

Ok then, how come there are no HP Laserjet 4/5/6 drivers for Lion? HP telling you to go buy a new printer? MAYBE... so then, how come Microsoft wrote Windows 7 drivers for those popular printers? How about the Aureal sound card drivers Microsoft wrote for XP? In these two instances, they didn't have to do it.... they are not the hardware vendor... how about not being able to run old PowerPC based apps in Lion? Oh, but you still can run 16-bit Windows apps with 32-bit Windows 7 or just use Windows XP mode to do that if you're running 64-bit Windows 7... there's no free OFFICIAL option to even do that with Lion! Microsoft did all of this because it was a courtesy, so that people could continue to use their old hardware without getting pissed off at all the changes that prevents from using their old but still working hardware/software!

I don't really like Microsoft, but I can't hate them either for trying to keep their user base happy. Apple doesn't care because fanboys will still buy their overpriced crap

The reason why OS X works as well as it does on "inferior" hardware is specifically because it doesn't carry the legacy baggage that Windows does. With each new release of OS X, Apple culls some older hardware from the officially supported list and that keeps the OS running faster, better, and more stable on the hardware that is still supported. They have been doing this with Mac OS ever since the original Mac was released back in 1984. A few enterprising users from time to time come up with ways to make newer versions of the OS run on legacy hardware, but it isn't always desirable due to the limitations of the old hardware not being able to run the OS quickly enough or with full features enabled.

And you're still using such an old laser printer? Why? The cheapest b&w lasers on the market today are vastly superior and don't cost very much. They also use less electricity and ink than a printer that old so it would be an upgrade that pays for itself. I don't blame Apple for dropping support in Lion because any business owner with any sense would have already dropped, or will soon be dropping, those printers in favor of more efficient models anyway.

because it WORKS... because it's dead reliable and solid... because it's easily serviceable with cheap parts.... because I have extra trays for different sized papers and a duplexer

printers and monitors are hardware inside a computer like freaking PCI bus cards, IDE, floppy drives, etc.... that's fine if they want to get rid of that, it's the same in the PC world anyway... all of that old stuff is going away

but to discontinue support for plug in devices such as older very popular printers is absurd... the OS maker has no obligation to support them, sure, but they sure will get brownie points for being courteous enough to make those drivers even if the printer maker didn't

so why are you using such an old computer for gaming? 😒

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

My Dad's Canon scanner also has no W7 / Vista support. However you can use the Windows XP mode to get it going, works quite well.

It was the top model at that time and yea quite a shame they stopped supporting it.

my professional grade A3 sized epson scanner has no 64-bit Windows 7 drivers either... but vuescan works pretty good with it... if I wanted some extra functions, there's always XP mode of course, but that involves waiting for it to boot...

TheMAN wrote:

so why are you using such an old computer for gaming? 😒

Because a lot of old games won't run on new hardware, that's why. There's no excuse not to upgrade an ancient printer, though, so you're not making a valid comparison.

new consumer grade printers jam easily, toner cartridges are small and expensive... ram is not upgradable
toners are cheap and huge for the laserjet 5, plus I got the postscript module and 100MB RAM, which works great when I need to print PDFs
600dpi is plenty for my needs, and I don't need color... the samsung AIO printer (sitting next to the HP) which jams easily was sold back in 2007... also 600dpi, it's a much newer printer, with official windows 7 drivers, but there's no difference in print quality, so what's your point? don't tell me I'm stupid for buying that samsung... I got it for $25 off ebay a few years ago because I wanted a cheap copier and fax machine!

I sort of agree with theMan about the printer issue. I still have a Hp LaserJet 1000 from year 2001. Its built like a tank, it never broke in all the years, printed thousands upon thousands of pages, each cartridge can do about 2000, print quality is flawless, as musch as my eye can see, better than most other printers ive seen, takes more electricity? Common its not a toaster. But guess what, It wont work in windows 7 64bit because there is no new driver.. derp..

I was pissed and decided i wanted to keep my beloved printer anyway so i used Win XP mode to get around it, kind of a hassle but it worked.

The fun part is when i Found in the garbage this fall a HP laserJet 1200!!
Guess what? this one works with windows 64bit, why? Because its got its own control processor built in so it can work with standardized input. The 1000 was the budget version and it relied on the host OS to act as a controller. Which is why it needs a specially tailored driver.
Beside this, the printers are identical, they all use the same parts and cartridge, im planning to keep this laserjet 1200 for at least 10 years, ill fix it with the old laserjet 1000 parts if i need.

max, have you read this thread?
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-O … ion/td-p/309001
google is your friend 😉

TheMAN wrote:

max, have you read this thread?
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-All-in-O … ion/td-p/309001
google is your friend 😉

Ive been googling the issue for like 3 days back then.
I kinda remember this thread, its more than a year ago since when i was troubleshooting this but after reading a bit a remember it.

The problem with that solution is that, while it worked, it was not as good as the real thing, not everything would print, lower print resolution and maybe other glitches. Using WinXP mode and setting up a printing network between the host and the virtual machine let you use the real HP driver which resulted in flawless printing, it was the best solution i found.

But as i said all that is now irrelevant since i found that HP1200, which works natively in 64bit with hp's own drivers.

TheMAN wrote:

new consumer grade printers jam easily, toner cartridges are small and expensive... ram is not upgradable
toners are cheap and huge for the laserjet 5

The single-digit LaserJet printers (5, 4, 3, etc, not the L or P variants) were office-grade workhorse equipment in their heyday, costing $1500+.

Comparing them to a <$200 home printer is a bit unfair.

then why did you bring up the cheap "vastly superior" laser printers of today? 😒

WTF? I didn't "bring up" anything of the sort. You did. Have a look at the bit I quoted.

Everybody knows that HP LaserJet printers are indestructible and last forever, but they have a price tag that reflects that. "new consumer grade printers" (your words) are designed to be cheap and rubbish, there's no comparison.

In other news, water is wet. 😜

sliderider wrote:

And you're still using such an old laser printer? Why? The cheapest b&w lasers on the market today are vastly superior and don't cost very much. They also use less electricity and ink than a printer that old so it would be an upgrade that pays for itself.

You said "cheapest"... that equates to consumer grade crap in my mind
I'm asking again... how are they vastly superior to the well built fine piece of engineering I have? Oh wow, it was more DPI... big deal

You started the apples to oranges comparison, not me
I can't afford those new business grade printers, nor do I want them... particularly, new HPs are more expensive to maintain because they move more components to the toner cartridge, which makes them more expensive to replace

I brought up the printers subject because it was relevant to the discussion of "planned obsolescence"... support for older printers with MacOSX just sucks, period

Dude, that's not me! 😀

TheMAN wrote:

You said "cheapest"... that equates to consumer grade crap in my mind I'm asking again... how are they vastly superior to the we […]
Show full quote

sliderider wrote:

And you're still using such an old laser printer? Why? The cheapest b&w lasers on the market today are vastly superior and don't cost very much. They also use less electricity and ink than a printer that old so it would be an upgrade that pays for itself.

You said "cheapest"... that equates to consumer grade crap in my mind
I'm asking again... how are they vastly superior to the well built fine piece of engineering I have? Oh wow, it was more DPI... big deal

You started the apples to oranges comparison, not me
I can't afford those new business grade printers, nor do I want them... particularly, new HPs are more expensive to maintain because they move more components to the toner cartridge, which makes them more expensive to replace

I brought up the printers subject because it was relevant to the discussion of "planned obsolescence"... support for older printers with MacOSX just sucks, period

Try doing a cost analysis and you'll see a huge difference in how much you are paying for electricity and ink for your dinosaur printer compared to a newer one that gives better output and is probably also faster. Parts and toner cartridges aren't going be available for that old printer forever, either, you know. The LJ4 was discontinued in 1995, so it's coming up on 18 years since the last one rolled off the assembly line. They must all be getting close to the end of their service life by now and that's when the really expensive repairs start coming due. It would cost more to fix a clapped out LJ4 than to just buy a new printer. If you still have one in service in a mission critical function, you're taking a huge risk.

gee... when was the last time I bought a toner cartridge for it... hmm... NEVER?
I'm still using the toner cartridge it came with when I got this printer used... and it came with a spare... I don't think I'll need to buy one for a while
don't think for a minute that I seldomly use it... I used it enough already to have to replace the rollers and fuser assembly

laser printers use TONER, not ink
this is not some POS inkjet, which uses INK
this printer was such a popular model, parts will be available for a long time... at least another 5 years, since windows 7 officially supports this printer, there will be plenty others like me who will continue to use this printer... hell, even old laserjet 4s are still pumping out thousands of pages every day around the world in not so well funded offices, that too is supported in windows 7

as for electricity, the new ones I'm sure uses less at idle, but this one does have power saving mode too, so I don't care