Printer Sharing in Mac OS X

I discovered that this is yet another thing that's very easy to do in OS X.

At home, we use the HP Deskjet F4280 All-in-One Printer; it's a printer, scanner, and photocopier. Though not the best printer and doesn't give the cheapest printing per page cost, it's decent enough to get us through.

I've already set it up with the MSI Wind hackintosh; I use the HP Printer Drivers v.2.4.1 for Mac instead of installing the software suite from the CD that came with our printer. Now we scan using Preview app's import from scanner feature and I'd say it gives a more OS X integrated experience this way. I never really liked the bundle of HP apps; they were not very easy to use specially when scanning.

HP Scan Pro, besides the fact that it won't let me scan in Snow Leopard now (it reports an error), would save the original scanned imaged in new folder it created somewhere in my user directory. With Preview, it automatically saves the image in Pictures. This simple gesture of keeping my files neat and tidy is something I really appreciate.

And so now let's get to the juicier part:

How To Setup Printer Sharing Between Two Macs/Hackintoshes
- Make sure both computers are connected to the local network

1. On my main hackintosh, in my case it's the MSI Wind that the printer is physically connected to, I go to System Preferences > Sharing and enable the option "Printer Sharing":                   
2. On my other hackintosh, the HP Mini 311, I go to System Preferences > Sharing and enable the same option "Printer Sharing".
3. Still at the same window, at the right portion of the Sharing preference pane, under the pair of boxes "Printers" and "Users", I click on the plus (+) sign.
4. This will bring me to the Add Printer pane which automatically retrieves the printer name and settings:                                                       
5. After clicking on the "Add" button, the printer is set up for my HP Mini 311: 

And I'm done!

Now when I want to print a document from my room on the HP Mini 311, as long as the wifi router is on and the MSI Wind and the printer is on, I can do so just as if the printer was physically connected to my Mini 311.

Transfer GMail Contacts to Address Book

Before, I used to Google high and low for a solution that will let me transfer all e-mail addresses that I've corresponded with using my Google Mail account into Address Book for use with Mail. There were apps here there free and none free; techniques in Address Book dealing with syncing it with GMail.

None worked - okay, that's an exaggeration - some worked. Syncing Address Book with GMail (now that we've got Snow Leopard 10.6) is a myth or maybe I was just being too dumb to follow along the how-to - I'd rather tinker with my EFI partition and probe the innards of my now dead HP Mini 1000 than attempt followint that Sync Address Book with GMail stuff again.

But this method works and it's so simple it might've been conceived for the mentally challenged mob (like me ;)):

(1) Launch your fave web browser, I did this in Safari 4, and log into your Gmail account. Supposing we live under a rock and this it our first encounter with the concept of "electronic mail", here's the address.

(2) On the right sidebar, along with your "inbox" and folders list, click on "Contacts"

(3) A new box will appear; on the far upper left corner, click on "Export":

(4) Choose which contacts you want to import; there's handy drop-down menu you can choose an option from. And select the third option for the export format - "vCard format". Click on the "Export" button at the bottom.

The contacts will be downloaded as a "contacts.vcf" file and Address Book will automatically launch (it did for me) and ask you to confirm import of contacts contained in the file.

That's it. In less than a minute, depending on the number of contacts you have and net connection speed, you've imported your GMail contacts into Address Book ready for browsing next time you use Mail to write an email. :D

SMBIOS Dilemma

I guess I'm OC; that's just the way I am. That's why I tend to nitpick through every single detail with MacBook Mini. As I'd just finished with dabbling with Snow Leopard - for which experiment MacBook Mini has fallen docilely as prey - I said I'd restart anew. Yep, new install. That's what people with absolutely no life do.

As you see, I've always been wondering why MacBook Wind happily assumes MacBook Air's identity, embracing it as its own while MacBook Mini is a bit confused - ok, make that totally confused. In the past, whenever I checked Apple Menu > About This Mac > More Info . . . and System Profiler launches, it gave me a nonchalant "There was an error while gathering this information" as it highlighted by default the Contents > Hardware main header.

So when I reinstalled iDeneb 1.3 (10.5.5), I made sure I checked the SMBIOS option for a MacBook and true enough, when I checked just before updating to 10.5.7 as per my usual routine, here's what I discovered:

10.5.5 as it is, delivered by iDeneb v1.3 actually can recognize MacBook Mini for what it really is. Even details pertaining to the Processer and Memory are correct. Although when I checked just the "About This Mac", I still got this:

Upon further investigation; I found other tiny details that attest to my MacBook Mini being recognized as a MacBook by OS X:

That's clearly a lappie depicted by the icon there. Now compare it to this (udpated to 10.5.7):

A Mac Pro, so it seems.

Actually, this shouldn't be a problem. But for OC'ness sake, if ever such a word was, I find myself irritated with this. I tried extracting the MacBook SMBIOS from the iDeneb installer and apply it to MacBook Mini again but nothing happens.

I don't know until when I can endure this and continue to just ignore stuff. Honestly, I'm reconsidering editing the DMI/BIOS again; I just have to figure out how to make the Mini be a MacBook without borking out the original HP logo in the boot splash nor getting a painfully slow boot up time.

Decisions, decisions...

Snow Kitty Needs Potty Training

Snow Leopard may be a little wild for MacBook Mini but there's a little ray of hope; at least I could make it boot.

I still followed the same instructions from msiwind.net and osxfujilives but with a "twist" so they say; that is, I had to use the com.apple.Boot.plist from my existing 10.5.7 installation. Plus I did the DSDT patching using the HP Mini (Mac OS X side of course) and just pointed DSDT Patcher to my external HDD from where I was gonna boot Snowy.

First boot: