Mac OS X Leopard - ARCAism

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CHAPTER 5 CONNECTING PERIPHERALS TO YOUR MAC
NOTE Often printer drivers from manufacturers include more than what is really necessary for
you to print. They often include special utility software and sometimes even strange graphics
and printing software. By downloading the driver from the manufacturer’s web site, you at
least eliminate some of the extra software, and manufacturers may offer driver-only updates
along with utilities and driver/utility bundles. In addition, occasionally during the install routine
you can select a custom install and install only the driver. To print effectively, you almost always
need only the driver. As for the utilities and other software, sometimes it’s quite useful, and
sometimes it’s not. Occasionally the printer’s utilities are just plain evil—lurking around in the
background, popping up unnecessary windows, and eating away system resources. Whether
you install these is up to you (provided you have a choice), but we tend to avoid these things
unless necessary or unless we have found through experience that they are indeed useful.
Connecting to a Network Printer or Shared Printer
Printers in most companies as well as more and more homes are accessed through a network.
These printers could be actual network printers, complete with network interfaces (either wired
or wireless). Or they could be common USB printers attached to other computers on a network
or a network print server (such as the ones built into Apple’s AirPort and AirPort Express). Connecting
to these printers ranges from almost as easy as connecting a USB printer to fairly easy if
you know exactly what you are doing. We’ll walk you through the general process using a reallife
example of connecting to a networked Brother multifunction device (a fax/scanner/printer/
copier).
The first step of adding a printer is to open the Print & Fax pane from System Preferences,
and click the + button at the bottom of the printer list. This opens a Printer Browser window
(Figure 5-3).
Figure 5-3. The Printer Browser window allows you browse and pick various types of printers to
connect to.
As we look in the browser, we see Brother MFC-440CN listed, which happens to be the
printer we want. When we select it in the list, our computer will try to find the name, location,
and driver automatically. In this case, it succeeded (Figure 5-4).