New Deskjet Driver - restricted options?

[MrBrother]

Hi everybody,


I recently reinstalled Mac OS X and installed the newest driver for my Deskjet 5652 printer.

Since then however, my print options are very limited. In the drop down menu much less options are available so that I can for example not chose any longer to just print in B/W or draft mode.

Before my system reinstallation and on my other Macs the options are still availble.
Does anyone know how to fix that or what driver I should use?
I also tried the older one available on HP.com but it didn't work either.

My current drop down list only lists the current options:
- Layout
- Paper Handling
- Cover Page
- Scheduler
- Supply Levels
- Summary

On my other systems hover it looks like this:
- Layout
- Paper Handling
- Cover Page
- Scheduler
- Two-sided Printing
- Paper Type/Quality
- Borderless Printing
- Printer Driver Information

The last entry tells me that this driver is 3.3. My current limited one is declared as 3.3.3. However, i downloaded the latter one from the support pages as 3.3.
Can anybody tell me what I did wrong or what I can do in order to use my printer with full options again?
I kinda clueless at this stage as it seems like I have the right driver but the wrong options.

Any help is much appreciated.

Best regards,
MrBrother

[Mach2]

Hi Mr Brother,

your description matches very precisely what I have experienced hooking up a Dekjet 5740 to my newly acquired MacBook Pro, which of course runs Mac OS 10.5.6. Even the steps you list also describe what I went through. I just finished downloading Gutenprint drivers version 5.2.3 from http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/MacOSX.php, an URL I found on another post in this forum. But I am a bit disturbed about having to install such open software for a commercial products which I bought and paid for... My impression is that HP and/or Apple are simply a little behind in updating drivers, and hope they will come up with a proper update soon.

Good luck. And BTW, although the download page only mentions 3.3, it is actually 3.3.3 that is in the package, as I found out. 

[MrBrother]

Hi Mach2,

Thank you for the post.

Regarding the Gutenprint drivers you mentioned, did they work for you?

And do they offer all relevant options?

Regarding HP Drivers, there is actually not much hope for a new driver in the future.

I had similar experience in the past (when Win XP came on the market), products are just being run dead with no new drivers coming out, if the product is too old. That way new products are being pushed.

But what I don't understand in this particular case is, that I actually have the driver 3.3.3 on two different Macs.

On one I have all the options and on the other one which I recently reinstalled completely not. Strange...

Best regards,

MrBrother

[Mach2]

Hi,

no, unfortunately and to my disappointment, the HP Deskjet 5740 is not included in the printers supported by this release of Gutenprint drivers. So I am back to square one.

Indeed puzzling that the same driver on two different computers in your case work differently...

Cheers!

Mach2 

[RobDCh]

I just discovered the same problem, using HP Deskjet 950C.  No help at Apple.  However, while in Print Mode, I opened the printer from dock and pulled down "Help".  Here's a copy of what I saw:

If you can’t see all the options in the Print dialog

If the Print dialog contains two pop-up menus and a few buttons along the bottom, you can expand the dialog to show all your options.

The smaller Print dialog is helpful if you’ve created printing presets with your favorite printing options and no longer need to set specific options.

To expand the Print dialog:

Click the triangle button beside the Printer pop-up menu.

The Print dialog expands to show all your print options.

Whew!  I got it all back, including Grayscale and the all-important ability to print a range of pages!  (You also have to click the arrows beside the box that says "Applescript".)

Good luck, you guys.

Rob 

[MrBrother]

Thanks RobDCh for your advise.

But we have done that step already and are in the advanced "Print Window". However, there is an additional drop-down menu on the fine black line, and in Mach2 and my case there are now less entries to select advanced printing options then before - which is also the main concern of this post.

Is there any update on this matter or can anybody provide additional help?

Regards,
MrB

[Mach2]

Hello,

this morning I ran the Software Update utility on my MacBook, which installed the most recent OS update, namely MacOS 10.5.7. Among the many things this update introduces are fixes to printer drivers, according to the Apple web site. Well, I am happy to report that after this OS update, all driver options for printing in grayscale etc. are now back.

I printed a few pages and everything now works fine, just the way it should. Let's just hope it'll stay this way!

Cheers!

Mach2