2 More Reasons I Love Macs

1. Setting up a printer is stupidly easy.
   I have an HP 5100. It’s actually a really nice printer. But HP is notorious for their horrible software. On a PC you load the HP print driver and it installs 3 other bloated applications and a few things constantly running in the background slowing your machine down. So I had been dragging my feet installing the printer. I went to HP’s website to download the Mac driver and there wasn’t one. At first I was annoyed but then on a whim I checked the print dialog box and there it was. I didn’t have to install anything. the iMac just knew what printer I plugged in. Nice. And the best part is that there’s no crappy HP software running on my computer. (Yes, I know you have to install software for a printer/scanner machine but it is possible to just print without it.)
2. Sharing a printer is stupidly easy.
   Megan had asked me a few times if there was a way for her to print wirelessly from her iBook. I kind of avoided looking into it for a while because anytime I’ve had to do some sort of networking on Windows it ends up being more complicated than it should. I Googled a few terms and everything I was finding was about sharing a printer between a Mac and a PC. Again I started to get annoyed. I decided just to open the System Preferences and see what I could find. I clicked on Sharing and it turns out there’s a Printer Sharing checkbox right there. I clicked it and looked on the iBook and the HP 5100 shows up in the Bonjour printers without installing anything. And the first test print I sent worked.

I love technology that works like it should.

~ by Dave on July 10, 2007.