Printer question re:Macbook pro

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As a newbie to the Mac camp I've noticed a few new things to remember. For instance, Unlike my PC, Mac does not like me to simply pull out my flash drive when I've finished. I need to "eject" it first. I'm still working on that one.. My question is regarding my USB printer: I don't see that it comes up under devices (like my flash drive does). Is it OK to simply pull that out when I'm done with my printer or do I need to find my printer connection somewhere else to "eject" it?

Thanks for the clarification.
 

Raz0rEdge

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Regardless of OS (Windows, OS X, Linux) you need to eject the drive before pulling it out. You will get a message/warning in all of the OS'. Without going into the details of why this needs to happen, know that ejecting the USB flash drive means that any pending writes are finished/flushed to ensure that the contents on the flash drive are accurate.

A printer is a different type of USB device and doesn't fall into the restriction of needing to eject..

FYI, USB has classifications of different types of devices that operate differently. USB flash drive, an external enclosure that has a SSD/HDD act USB Mass Storage class. Mouse, keyboard, and other display things fall into HID (Human Interface Device) class..printer is yet another class..

The reason the printer, mouse or keyboard can be plugged in and out without any consequences is that nothing from these devices is "mounted" or made available within the filesystem of the OS. These are devices that are used if plugged in and not if they aren't plugged in..
 
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Thanks for the quick reply. I didn't completely understand it all but the gist I got was
1) That I don't have to worry about how to disconnect the printer from my Macbook and
2) Maybe the fact that I did NOT see warnings regarding the disconnection of flash drives was the cause of at least a few of the PC problems I was seeing. Then again, maybe I didn't get the warnings because I did not try to remove while it was reading/writing.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my question.
 

Raz0rEdge

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Yes, thats the gist of it..

Some flash drives has an LED of some sort indicating activity, so if you either let it not be lit or indicate that it's sitting idle, then pulling it out without ejecting it will usually be fine..
 

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