Help with Deskjet 5550

[furryrabidbunny]

From the title i have a deskjet 5550. I reinstalled tiger... and I can't get full on support from the printer. I can print and everything, but everything else is disabled. I can't check ink levels... print test pages... or even modify power options. Is there a way to get the drivers to work? HP says tiger has native support for the printer and drivers aren't needed, but if this is native support i'm sorely dissapointed. Has anyone else had this problem and fixed it?

 

[ITASOR]

From the title i have a deskjet 5550. I reinstalled tiger... and I can't get full on support from the printer. I can print and everything, but everything else is disabled. I can't check ink levels... print test pages... or even modify power options. Is there a way to get the drivers to work? HP says tiger has native support for the printer and drivers aren't needed, but if this is native support i'm sorely dissapointed. Has anyone else had this problem and fixed it?

The ink levels and stuff are checked through the actual program that comes on the disk, not through Mac OS X's printing options really. I have this printer, when the ink gets low, the light on the printer comes on. You can open the top of the printer and see if the ink holder slides to happy or sad face too. To print a test page, hold down the 2nd button from the top (the paper one) and the little HP Deskjet 5550 page will print out.

By Tiger support, they mean for printing, not doing things HP's app would do.

 

[jghaines]

HP Deskjet 5550 not longer supported in Mac OS X

According to list of HP Printers Not Supported in Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard, OS X v10.7 Lion, or OS X v10.8 Mountain Lion, the HP Deskjet 5550 is no longer supported by HP.

Apple provides an HP Driver Bundle for Mountain Lion (and earlier). The bundle supports the HP Color Laserjet 5550 and the HP Deskjet D5500. Neither are compatible with the HP Deskjet 5550.

I managed to get the Deskjet 5550 printing in Black and White (only) by using the "Generic PCL Laser Printer" driver that comes with v10.8 Mountain Lion.

If you are happy to install 3rd party, open source software, the best option is CUPS+Gutenprint driver that can be installed as part of Gimp-Print. This allowed me to color print to my HP Deskjet 5550 from v10.8 Mountain Lion.