[wworsham]

I'm definitely excited about the driver. But the real problem I have is how MacWorld has repeatedly (Including the most recent April '08) given great reviews to this printer when 1) there are no current drivers and 2) scanning doesn't play well with macs.

I bought this printer based on the glowing rec in the March '08 issue. Of course once I got it I realized that I couldn't use it. Mac World should have AT least put a note stating the lack of Leopard drivers.

[carya]

You are absolutely right. The company I bought the Lexmark from, PC Connection, as well as many others, advertise the Lexmark as "MAC Compatible." I even wrote to the head of PC Connection, and referenced a section of their website dealing with consumer ethics in trying to get PC Connection to take the Lexmark back so I could buy a truly compatible machine. They were very sympathetic, and did call Lexmark on my behalf and Lexmark told them that they were "working on the drivers." That was in January. Lexmark also has a list of forthcoming drivers for Leopard and the X502n is not on the list.

Customer service at Lexmark, at least the person I spoke to, had no idea.



By the way, PCWorld for April has an article comparing the top 5 Color Laser MFP's. The Lexmark is 4th from the top. They mention high price of consummables, and slower speed.

I have no problem, though, with this machine, "other" than the drivers. But the drivers ARE important, to say the least! And it's not like Apple "suddenly" introduced Leopard. Lexmark has had plenty of time to write the drivers.

[chm2]

Great comments, everyone. I see no one mentioned ink/toner costs. It's been a while since I've bought a laser printer - could a more experienced purchaser offer an opinion on the following?
If the best current street price is $395.88, and a full replacement of the ink/toner cartridges is $385.35...hmmm...
Assuming that over the life of the unit you'll replace the ink/toner cartridges at least 3 times, you'll end up spending almost three times the purchase price (and close to $1200 overall)! As I said, it's been a while - are these consumable costs widely accepted as part of owning a color laser printer? Thanks.

[chm2]

Just received my May issue of Macworld, and there's the X500N on page 46, still highly touted - and still no mention of the lack of a driver for Leopard. Pretty irritating.
By the way, does anyone have an opinion about my post above, regarding consumables? I'd like to know what people think. Thx

[PITOU5650]

All your tests of printers are made using a mac os 10.4 Tiger! It'd be more interesting to be able to measure the compatibility to OS 10.5 Leopard! Are you sure all thoses products are Leopard compatible???
Tx

[mwolfe]

The support people at Lexmark told me that they have no intention of releasing a driver for OSX 10.5 Leopard. I don't know why Macworld keeps showing it in the magazine.

[Picciano]

I am not at all saying you're wrong, just that Lexmark has told me a completely different story. Transcript from a chat on 4/29/2008:

Anthony XXXXX Any word on a driver for the X500n/X502n that works with Mac OS X 10.5? About six weeks ago I was told they Lexmark was "days away" from a fix. Any update would be very much appreciated.
Ben welcome to Lexmark Chat support.

Ben Hi Anthony.
Anthony XXXXX Good morning
Ben I will be glad to assist you today.
Ben Anthony , our engineers are working on the driver and it will be on the web-site somewhere in the mid of may 2008.
Ben Very good morning , Anthony.
Anthony XXXXX I sure hope so, we bought two of these and one is still sitting in the box because we have no working driver. Thanks for the update!
Anthony XXXXX Bye
Ben The driver will be there for sure.
Ben Is there any thing else I can assist you with?
Anthony XXXXX Nope, thanks for the info!
Ben Please complete the chat survey by clicking on the "End" tab, with overall 5 being the Best, as this will help us to better our service.

Ben You are welcome and have a great day.

[mwolfe]

I hope you are right...It looks like a nice printer and has gotten some good reviews. Perhaps they have not gotten the word out to all of their support people as I was told that it was not forthcoming. I've been burned enough on printer drivers that I'm pretty cautious. I'll wait until the end of May before making the decision on my next MFP.

[Picciano]

Okay, 10.5 compatible drivers are here.

http://www.downloadd...ds/pssd/LexmarkX500Series_X.dmg

It gave me a warning that I had newer drivers already installed, but I proceeded anyway. After installing and restarting, I created a new print queue using Bonjour to find the printer. It auto-selected the new driver (version 0.29.0.0).

I printed a couple times and things seem to work well.

Here's the transcript from tech support:

[Anthony] What is the status using the X500n MFP with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)? I've been told there are supposed to be new drivers coming months ago. Thanks.
[Louis] welcome to Lexmark Chat Support. I will be glad to assist you.
[Louis] Hi Anthony, how are you doing today?
[Anthony] good
[Louis] Anthony, we do have a compatibility driver for Mac 10.5.
[Louis] Please be online while I get you the link.
[Anthony] okay
[Louis] http://www.downloadd...ds/pssd/LexmarkX500Series_X.dmg please use this link to install the driver.
[Louis] Please let me know how is the printer connected?
[Anthony] ethernet
[Louis] Okay, you can install this driver, which should work with Mac 10.5
[Anthony] it's installed, but the only option i have now is to restart the computer which will end our chat. Anything else i should know?
[Louis] No, that's it. This will surely work.
[Louis] We have tested it and it works here.
[Anthony] great, i'll give it a try
[Louis] Sure.

[mwolfe]

Can you post results of further tests?

I'd like to hear how easy, or not, it is to scan.

Thanks,

Mike

[Picciano]

I never had any trouble scanning using the previous driver. Both push scanning and scanning into Photoshop worked well.

[ecorbally]

Like a lot of other people here and elsewhere I have had 4 months of misery trying to get this printer working (in a busy office!) with Leopard so I'm throwing in my 2 cents in the hope it saves someone else from some misery.
What is odd is that there is a good 'potential' fix mentioned earlier in this thread by Picciano on July 8, 2008.
He(?) was given a mystery link to an 'old' driver (0.29.0.0) at...

http://www.downloadd...ds/pssd/LexmarkX500Series_X.dmg

I downloaded and installed it (you have to TELL the installer to never mind there is a newer version installed) and lo and behold, I have had 3 or 4 hours of trouble-free printing. After 4 months of hell I'm not getting too excited yet but it IS encouraging.

Just one note, I found that if I used Bonjour with this driver I still got poor (same) results but once I installed the printer as an IP/LPD printer quoting its IP address that I got the consistency I've seen so far this afternoon.

If things change I'll make another post but I certainly think it's worth giving this process a try.

BTW, I'm very curious to know why Lexmark are no longer offering this as a solution. I've spoken to them a dozen times in 4 months and NEVER was this mentioned!!! (Thank you Picciano)
Also, their instructions on the US site about uninstalling their driver and installing the Lexmark drivers from the Leopard DVD is bollocks. There is NO driver for the X502n on the Leopard DVD!!!
One last thing of some relevance (perhaps) - the last Lexmark guy I spoke with told me this ISN'T a Lexmark printer but a 3rd party printer with Lexmark branding.

Good luck,
Eamonn C