An old question from a new user

[Pretorien]

It's been a long time since I owned an Apple - Apple 2E back in the early 80's - but if a Craig's List deal go through, on Monday I will be returning to the fold with a nicely specced mid 2014 15" Pro running a fresh install of El Capitan. My pleasant anticipation is shaded by only one issue. While I do have a nice wireless Canon 3 in 1, My "go to" workhorse is an unbreakable HP 4P laser. It ran perfectly with a // to usb connection under XP, has been a little shaky under Win 7. Searching (this forum and widely on the net) it appears that this printer is a sometimes thing under OS X.

Any experiences to relate? Any words of wisdom?

Thanks

 

[\-V-/]

The last driver update for this printer for OS X was 2005. So ... yeah. I'd imagine you'd run into issues. It runs fine under XP because XP is a 16-year-old OS.

 

[Pretorien]

I may have come up with an answer to my own question. I intend to install Parallels - I have a few old programs that I am unwilling or unable to replace. I also have an authentic XP disk (I know that the current Boot camp no longer supports XP but Parallels does) Security updates are not a concern - all of my net activities will be run under OS. I am hoping that if I run a vm under XP, the older HP drivers will work.

Any comments?

 

[\-V-/]

I may have come up with an answer to my own question. I intend to install Parallels - I have a few old programs that I am unwilling or unable to replace. I also have an authentic XP disk (I know that the current Boot camp no longer supports XP but Parallels does) Security updates are not a concern - all of my net activities will be run under OS. I am hoping that if I run a vm under XP, the older HP drivers will work.

Any comments?

I prefer VMware but if you have Parallels that should work just fine too. I've run old devices in a virtual machine that were very wonky in OS X. The only way to find out is to try it, but the HP driver SHOULD work under a virtual machine.