Lexmark X9350 All-In-One InkJet Printer

This is not a full-blown review of the printer, but a quick note (after a grueling week of contacts with tech support at Lexmark) about Lexmark's claim that the 9350 can function as a shared printer in a mixed Windows/Macintosh OS X network. In my experience, it cannot. Perhaps this note will save someone a week of wasted effort.

The 9350 works fine as a Windows-only printer in both wired and wireless modes. The physical build quality is good. The Windows-only setup was easier than the supplied instructions would indicate.

Lexmark claims that the 9350 has a built-in print server which allows it to function in a mixed Mac OS X/Windows XP environment, when the printer is in wireless mode. I set the printer up in wireless mode (using a wireless-G router from Belkin which has been working smoothly for months) and assigned it a static IP address, and was able to ping it. After a Macintosh connects to the 9350 and tries (unsuccessfully) to print to it, the Windows PCs are then no longer able to print to it.

I also tried sharing the printer from a Windows XP machine when it was wired (i.e. not in wireless mode) using the OSX Windows Printing services, but either because of some failure in the OSX routines (10.3.9) or in Lexmark's drivers, we were never able to print successfully in this mode either. The Mac can see the shares on the Windows XP machine, and it can see the printer; there is activity on the printer (lights flashing) when the Mac tries to print to it; but that was as far as it got. The print job always failed and had to be deleted from the queue.

The worst thing was that Lexmark tech support was of very little help trying to troubleshoot this problem. Their OS X support is vapor. I talked to half a dozen different techs over the course of the week. They did not have a Macintosh department and these calls were handled by their networking group.