Well...done, anyhow.
Actually, I'm happy with my decision.
My Canon laser printer prints
significantly better and faster (even with its 8-9 second warmup) than my (ancient) Lexmark inkjet printer did, and it's not at all noisy in the bargain.
Its down-side, a big disappointment, is its inability to print via AirPort Express as I assumed (naively, perhaps) it would based on its easily available specs: "Standard Interface - USB
Device 2.0 Hi-Speed" Digging deeper into its documentation, though, I found: "Interface: When connecting with USB (The USB port on Macintosh)"
But balancing that out is the fact that even if the HP can print as I'd like it would take me more than 30 years to average its higher price down to (an extra) $0.01/copy…not particularly cost effective, and not a price I'd care to pay to save having to move my MBP about 3 feet and cable it up every once in a rare while when I need to print.
Canon may keep their drivers updated, but judging from the documentation they provide both in the box and on-line, they're not particularly Mac friendly.
The installation problem I mentioned earlier is really an example of their forcing Mac users to dig for instructions that are readily available to PC users in the form of a quick-start guide; Mac users, on the other hand, are merely directed to the users guide buried in the driver download, and
without even a heads-up that the installation process is unintuitive and needs to be researched before it's attempted.
Further, the PC users guide (which, for some reason, is more than twice as big as the Mac users guide) has been updated twice since the Mac users guide was last updated.
I hope this helps others with their shopping.