Sue Simons writes after allegedly being given some questionable advice by an Apple employee:
My son has a Hewlett Packard OfficeJet V40 multifunction printer. He was told by the Apple dealer at Mayfair after the purchase of his PowerBook G4 that it would not work with laptop. Prior to the purchase, he was told it would workI have a Hewlett Packard OfficeJet T45xi. If his won’t work with his PowerBook, will mine?
I’m afraid that neither of these all-in-ones is natively supported by Mac OS X. However, with the help of HP’s HPIJS open-source driver, you might be able to get some of the device’s functions to work with the PowerBook (functions including printing, scanning, and copying but not faxing).
You can find that driver—and instructions for configuring it— here.
Should you or your son find the driver too nightmarish to install and configure, you might consider purchasing a printer that is supported by the Mac OS. Most current HP multifunction printers do work with Mac OS X. They start at around $100 and you can see a list of them here.