Which driver for Epson 4900 for Mac OS X Lion?

[Jan Morales]

I have an Epson Stylus Pro 4900 on order, and I'm researching the latest driver for it. I have an iMac running Mac OS X Lion.

Currently I have a Canon PIXMA Pro9500, which the Epson is replacing, and I have found that the driver for this printer that comes with Mac OS X Lion works just fine for me, including letting me see ink levels, print test pages, and clean the head. Does anyone have an opinion about whether the Apple driver for the Epson 4900 is good as well, or do I need to install the driver from Epson? Is there any difference? I'd rather use the Apple driver if I can.

Also, in researching the latest driver on the Epson web site, I found that on the U.S. site the latest driver is version 8.40 dated March 10, and does not explicitly list Mac OS X 10.7 as supported, only 10.5.8-10.6.x:

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=171983&prodoid=63089641&infoType=Downloads&platform=Macintosh

However, on the U.K. site the latest driver is version 8.64 dated August 1, and does list 10.7 as supported:

http://www.epson.co.uk/Printers-and-All-In-Ones/Large-Format/Epson-Stylus-Pro-4900/Drivers-Support?target=driver&languageId=1&driverId=328230&defaultOSId=15&DRV_CATEGORY_CODE=DRV

I'm in the U.S. Does anyone know if I can use version 8.64 from the U.K. site with my printer bought in the U.S.?

Thanks for any help!
Jan

[Wayne Fox]

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supAdvice.jsp?type=highlights&noteoid=187364

It specifically states the drivers are compatible with Lion.

Europe often gets updates ahead of the US but whatever is in this new version it isn't about compatibility.  And yes, you can normally download them and use them just fine if you want.

I'm running a 4900 on 8.4 and Lion just fine.

[Farmer]

You can use the US one just fine, but I'd expect an update in the near future to 8.64 from the US as well (it's available in the UK and Australia at the moment, possibly others).

Whatever you do, do NOT use the Apple auto-update driver.  If you get any prompts for Apple updates for the driver, decline them.

[Jan Morales]

Phil, can you tell me, just out of curiosity, what is the problem with the Apple auto-update driver?

Thanks,
Jan

[Farmer]

Jan - there's a bug at the moment and the Apple auto-update basically kills the functionality of the driver (which is not to say it's Apple's bug - I don't know where the bug actually is).  Both Epson and Apple are aware (as is Adobe, for that matter, but it's got nothing to do with them other than increasing the number of support calls they get unfortunately).

Presumably this will be fixed at some point, but it's not working at the moment and you'll save yourself a lot of hassle if you avoid it for now :-)  There are a few threads around with people who have experienced the problem.

[Jan Morales]

Thank you both, Phil and Wayne!

Cheers,
Jan