Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Bible

Chapter 17. Printing and Faxing

IN THIS CHAPTER

How to add printers to your Mac

Options for managing printers

Settings in applications' Print dialog boxes

Print queue options for specific print jobs

Configuration and use of fax modems

In an era of electronic documents, there's still a place for printed ones. When it's time to print a document, or send someone a fax copy, you need to ensure that your Mac is properly set up for the printers and fax modem you have.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard manages both printing and faxing from a common system preference: Print & Fax, as shown in Figure 17-1. Note that fax options won't appear unless you have a fax modem attached; Macs do not include built-in fax modems as some Windows PCs do.

You can have multiple printers and faxes configured for your Mac. Sometimes you have multiple devices connected to your Mac, sometimes you use different printers and faxes at different locations and want your Mac to be set up for them, and sometimes both situations apply. Your Mac will recognize a printer or fax it's configured for when that device is available, but you must have it connected to be able to set it up in the first place.

Setting Up Printers

You can connect your printer to your Mac in any of several ways, depending on your printer's capabilities. These include using USB, FireWire, wired network (Ethernet), wireless network (Wi-Fi), and Bluetooth wireless connections. If your printer uses any of the wireless or Ethernet settings, refer to its manual to see ...