Hardware support on Macs

Hello,

After all my life using PCs, I am considering buying a Mac. Mostly because I liked the OS, and I want to know new things.

But then, one thing came to my mind. If I buy, let´s say, a Mac notebook, will my HP deskjet 3550 printer work with it? The printer has a USB cable, and works good on Linux and Windows.

I mean, I heard that Apple has monopoly over Mac hardware, or something like that. What exact they have monopoly over? The motherboard? The graphics card too? And what about sound cards, microphones, monitors, webcams, pendrives, etc.?

Also, I would like to know how this applies for both Power PC Mac, and also Mac on intel. The Mac on intel supports more hardware?

On a more technical size, does Macs support PCI boards? What kind of hardware output/input protocols can I find on a Mac? Let´s say, equivalents of parallel port, serial port, pci, etc.

thanks a lot,

Felipe

After a bit of poking around on the HP site, they do indeed ofter a Mac OS X driver. Check it out: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...ypeId=18972&prodSeriesId=411171&lang=en&cc=us

Acctually it´s a deskjet, but on that website I found it =)

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...skId=135&prodSeriesId=305946&prodTypeId=18972

thank you very much

sekelsenmat said:

Hello,
I mean, I heard that Apple has monopoly over Mac hardware, or something like that. What exact they have monopoly over? The motherboard? The graphics card too? And what about sound cards, microphones, monitors, webcams, pendrives, etc.?

Also, I would like to know how this applies for both Power PC Mac, and also Mac on intel. The Mac on intel supports more hardware?

On a more technical size, does Macs support PCI boards? What kind of hardware output/input protocols can I find on a Mac? Let´s say, equivalents of parallel port, serial port, pci, etc.

thanks a lot,

Felipe

Click to expand...

Apples "monopoly" on the hardware simply means you can't build your own, you have to buy one. Nearly all internal components are compatible or the same as those found in the PC world. Power Supplies, Hard Drives, Memory, CD/DVD drives and so on are the same, and with the switch to Intel, the chips are the same too, something which should make upgrading processors a bit easier down the line. My Quad for example takes standard PC2 4200 RAM.The Motherboards are proprietary and you can't get them or the boot ROMs anywhere except from Apple.

The New PowerMacs support PCI Express cards. All Macs come with USB 2, Firewire 400 and FireWire 800 ports standard as well as standard Sound in/out on the board, no need for a Sound Card. The PowerMacs come with Optical in/out as well. Video Cards simply need to Mac compatible, and most popular ATI, NVIDA and other cards come in Mac versions. The Intel Macs come with the same standard ports as the PPC Macs, no difference there.

Wow, I can't believe that HP made two different printers with the same model number. How dumb is that?

Ah well, at least you found your driver.