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My father-in-law bought a new computer which came with an HP Photosmart Plus e-All-in-One Printer - B210e. My mother-in-law would like to use the new printer from her (ancient) Mac mini running OS X 10.3.9. They're not interested in spending any (more) money, nor in installing a new OS that would have a ripple effect on other software.

The HP drivers for the printer support only 10.5 and 10.6. I tried adding the printer wirelessly via Rendezvous, and got the message "error installing drivers." I tried plugging in via USB. The printer showed up under USB printers, but I could not select it.

I have a couple of other ideas, but my printer driver knowledge is quite small. I'm hoping someone could point me in the right direction. I'd like to solve this since they see me as tech guru -- and because the Geek Squad guy they hired couldn't solve it.

Ideas

  1. USB printing is USB printing, right? She only wants to print (not scan, copy, photo, new-age stuff). Could I shoe-horn some old driver into the system? Or use CUPS?

  2. Dad is printing fine from his new Windows system. Could I share the printer there and use from Mom's Macintosh, or would I still need to solve the driver problem?

  3. I told them to throw a rock in their apartment complex and they'd probably hit two people with unused printers in their closets. Just get a new printer? Eh, I guess I mean get an old printer, or I'd still have the driver problem.

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  • Turns out HP has email-to-print gateway. Once you set it up on their site, mom just emails stuff to the address it it magically prints.
    – slothbear
    Jul 14, 2011 at 22:22

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She could "Print to PDF" and then send the file to the Windows box to be printed there. You may be able to make a scheduled task that prints all the files in a specific shared folder and then deletes them every few minutes.

Also

You could try adding the networked printer and adding a similar HP driver. Some times the driver for a similar but not identical printer is good enough when printing remotely.

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