Printing in OSX - best way?

[sidewinder]

Currently for our Macs we mostly use Appletalk for printing after having major problems with IP Printing in that the printer would produce strange errors with large Photoshop documents

A network consultant came in yesterday and said all our problems with excess broadcast traffic were probably due to Appletalk (although I reckon its some faulty Cisco AP's since the problem has stopped since we've unplugged them)

Thing is I dont really fancy going back to IP as it seems to be a nightmare both to use and setup in OSX - Im never sure how to get drivers installed or if I need them while with Appletalk or Rendevous its just click on the printer and add it

Whats the Mac best practice for printing?

[simongrahamuk]

IP printing works really well for me, but then I've only got a single Mac (mine) to deal with.

Perhaps you could explain how you have installed the drivers in the past and setup the IP Printing. May help us to help.

[sidewinder]

To be honest it was about a year ago so my memory is a bit hazy

But basically the main printer is a HP 4650 and although I managed to download and install a driver, I could never get it to appear when selecting a printer and had to go with a generic one, probably being the cause of the problems

Im not sure if thats a general experiance or just HP being obtuse and not providing instructions

I suppose the only way to get help is to try again and post problems here. But while I can set it up and test it, I cant test what will happen when someone prints a 80mb photoshop document until I get a call moaning its not working

[iSteve]

Which flavour of OS X are you using? IP printing works fine for us.

[LeoMJ]

Ip printing has tended to be absolutely fine, but there was a bit of a blip with HP colour lasers. The latest driver and correct installtion over IP should resolve this.
Download the driver from HP and run the install.
Print a config page from the HP to ensure you have the correct IP.
Open the Apple Printer Setup Utility.
Click 'add' then ensure you select @IP Printer@ with the LPD protocol (if you're looking at delivering this from an OSX Directory server use IPP).
Enter IP for the HP, the Mac should now pick up the model and configure the correct drivers within about 10 seconds. If it doesn't then there's either a problem with the JetDirect card or the network (look for auto-negotiation or CRC alignment errors on the switches port for the Mac).
The problem lay with a postscript translation error in the HP driver which has definately been resolved.
As far as Appletalk goes there really is no need to run it anymore, the concept of it being very 'chattery' really only applies to older versions, however with RendezVous (zeroconf) and proper implemtation of TCP/IP since OSX, appletalk is only relvant in networks of Mac OS9 and OSX

Hope this helps!?