Dell 1320C and Mac OS X
When my Samsung CLP-300N failed, I had about $200 worth of new unused toner sitting around and so I bought a 2nd hand CLP-300 (the network version is rare and so prohibitively expensive). This worked ok for about another 6 months, but before I can even change the toner, the black imager is dying again. So I investigated sub $500 color laser printers, and I found that the Dell is one of the cheapest capital expenditures while still giving good quality. I think this is because they sell the toner with the imaging unit, which makes the toner about $100 per color, very expensive. However, it should prolong the printer. I saw these on special at $180 from Dell’s site and picked one up last month. I hadn’t set it up because of the shift though. Now, in the new place, in a hurry to print something, I unboxed it and set it up, only to find that:
1) Mac OS 10.5.8 does not support the printer natively
2) The driver disc Dell included includes only the electonic version of the manual, in about 10 languages, in the Mac OS mount partition (obviously the Windows drivers are on the Windows partition).
Googling tells me there is no driver, and to use a Fujixerox driver that uses the same electronics, and so will print, but will not give any options. Great. I couldn’t even find the driver they were talking about. However, dispelling these myths and the myths of Dell’s lack of support for Mac OS X, they do indeed have a Mac OS X driver on their site. And it’s just the driver - 550kb download or so. The application has been split. I like this. It works perfectly now. Thanks Dell! 