[schalliol]

I have a couple of printers I set up into a printer pool at the office, but I would like to set one as the preferred printer. I know you used to be able to drag the printers, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to do this in 10.5. Does anyone know how to set the printer that will be used if none are busy?

[OreoCookie]

Have you set up a cups printer pool on the print server or on your Mac?

[schalliol]

I set up the printer pool on my Mac. In this configuration, there is no one print server, but each client has their own internal print server (well, print application queue). It will print to the available printer. That part works fantastically well, but I'd just like to print to the new 8560 instead of the old 8550 when both are free.

[schalliol]

I sent this to some friends and one helped me figure out how to do this. Basically the current OS X prefPane doesn't seem to let you set a default or add a pool with only one printer. So, here's how you do it:

1. Add the two or more printers in OS X's prefPane for best ease of use.
2. Go into the CUPS web admin at http://localhost:631
3. Click add class
4. Name your class/pool and then click the first printer your machine should try and add the class
5. Click back on the class on the next page and then command-click the next printer to add and choose to modify the class
6. Continue doing this until you have added all your printers
7. Select the pool in the prefPane and set it as default if necessary

The next time you print, it should try the printers in the order you added them.