Customer Reviews

D-Link DP-300U 10/100TX 1-USB Port 2-Parallel Port Print Server

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

First I tried the NetGear PS101 print server. I liked the spiffy form factor. I could talk to the print server admin web interface and get it to print a test page, but even after many, many hours could never get it to print a document. So I returned it.

After that debacle, I decided to splurge for the HP JetDirect. At first I could only get it to print the configuration page. A visit to the HP support forums turned up lots of references to the JetDirect not working with SP2 and the suggested solution was to uninstall SP2. Ugh. Finally I went to the D-Link web site and copied the D-Link installation guide for XP w/SP2. The main difference was that D-Link suggested installing the print server as a local TCP/IP printer instead of a networked printer and, bingo, I got the JetDirect to print. (NOTE: It still goes over the network, it just looks local to the PC.) However I was miffed that I paid double the price for a device which required a competitors documentation to get to work. In addition, DHCP didn't work and I could never get it to show up in my network neighborhood.

So ... in a possibly nonsensical move of principle and price, I bought the D-Link DP300U and set up it. It's not trivial to install, but after working with the other two devices, a couple hours of install time seems like nothing. Here are a couple tips ...

(1) Do NOT use DHCP. Use a fixed IP address. Unlike the JetDirect, DHCP works. However, it still didn't show up in my network neighborhood and now I didn't know the IP address. There is NO HARDWARE RESET on the device. The D-Link support guy was great. He told me that if I couldn't find the IP address, I would have to send it back to D-Link to be reset (Ugh!). The good news is that he told me how to find it. I went to the router and looked at the DHCP assignment list and got it, and then reset the thing to a nice, fixed IP address in my subnet.

(2) I first set it up as per the instructions as a local TCP/IP printer, which means it's still on the network but looks like a local printer to the PC. It worked OK, but did this weird, long pause ... about a minute ... right in the middle of long documents. Again D-Link support was good. They told me to try setting it up as a networked printer, which I did. Unfortunately, this doesn't have spooling and you're back to 1980's wait-for-printing. Then something weird happened that I can not explain ... after setting up the device as a networked printer, I went back to the local TCP/IP printer that I had set up and it worked perfectly. Don't know how it got fixed.

My PC is a Dell laptop w/ wireless connection to an access point, and then wired to a router and the print server. My printer is an HP Deskjet 5550.

So, in the end I'm sticking with the D-Link product and I am happy with it. I would have rated it 3 stars as an overall product, but bumped my rating to 4 stars because I still thought it was the best of the ones I had tried. The itty-bitty-print-server market could use some improvement.

Enjoy!

Though not very explicitly described as the DP300U, I took a chance and ordered it. It was indeed what I expected when it arrived several days ahead of schedule. I put the print server on a mac/pc wired/wirless home network, effectively replacing two older desktop machines. This unit has two parallel ports and one USB port, and connects to a network router via an ethernet cable. (No cables are supplied, but this was no surprise.) There's also the inevitable power cord with transformer block plug, but this pleasingly small one doesn't hog too much space on the power strip. Setup was physically simple, but software-wise it was a bit of a challenge. Mac OS X requires (free) gimp-print and ghostscript software to allow postscript emulation on non-postscript printers. Gimp-print includes drivers for popular inkjet and laser printers, but I had to search the Web for a third-party OS X Samsung laser printer driver (also free, thanks UNIX community). Standard Windows XP drivers worked fine. After installing all the drivers and whatnot, setting up the print queues on the print server was pretty straightforward. My printers now work without having to be connected to aging desktop machines, and I can print wirelessly from a Mac or PC laptop in any room in the house. Very liberating.

This Dlink print server works fine once you figure it out; I am fairly computer and network savvy, but it still two me two hours to get this thing working.

The instruction manual is a little inadequate; you know to use caution when they misspell the word "parallel" consistently. It would help a great deal to explain what to do if your network does not lie in the 192.168.0.0 network range, as mine does not. I knew what to do immediately when I saw that they preset the IP to 192.168.0.10, but I am sure that many folks would not.

main gripe:
I had one parallel port printer, and one USB port printer. The USB printer *refused* to work; even the print server itself didn't know that it was connected. After trying everything I knew, I finally upgraded the firmware to 1.20 (it was shipped with 1.10). Presto; it worked. However, shame on Dlink for shipping a device that only half-works. To their credit, none of the configuration on the device that I had already done was destroyed by the firmware update, unlike some of their other devices that I own.

I am also noticing abnormally slow ping returns from this device. Every computer on my network returns a ping in 0.2ms; this device returns on in 3ms. This might be expected behavior, but I just thought I would mention it. (BTW, before the firmware upgrade, the ping time was an obsene 300ms!)

Printing photographs on my color printer takes around three times as long as when the color printer is directly connected to a computer. However, this very well might be that I was printing from my laptop over a 5Mbps wireless connection. I will try again later with the laptop connected over the 100Mbps wired connection, to see if this critique is fair.

All in all, I am pleased now; however, two hours of my time were burned up by a device that only half worked when I received it.

I purchased this product for a friend who had purchased a brand new laptop with no parallel port on it. She has an HP Color LaserJet 4500 that is a great printer that gets services regularly and did not want to stop using it. Everyone at CompUSA was telling her to buy a new printer. This printer brand new was $3000 and is a work horse. I found the D-Link parallel print server and bought it to hook this printer up to her existing home/office wireless network. It was easy to setup and I had it connected and printing in 5 minutes on 2 laptops. I recommend this product to anyone that loves their old printer and doesn't want to buy new. I would purchase this product again.

I have this print server hooked up to my wireless router. I can print from 1 Windows Vista Laptop and 2 Windows XP Laptops. Setup was a little confusing, but I followed the directions and had it all up and running in about an hour. I no longer have to keep restarting my old Windows 98 computer that was only being used as a print server, so I am very happy. We have been up and running for over a week now with absolutely no problems.

As you read this review, take into consideration that I have only had this a couple of days. I had initial difficulty adding this device to the home network, which uses a NetGear router/wireless access point. Both the NetGear, and the LinkSys i had before, start assigning IP addresses at the 192.168.1.* range. However, the DP-300U has a preconfigured IP address of 192.168.0.10. The manual recommends connecting by assigning one of your computers an IP in the same range, which takes it offline. I determined that the best way to connect was to leave the DP-300U's IP address where it was and reconfigure the network. I could not change the NetGear's range until i changed the NetGear's own IP address to 192.168.0.1. Then I reserved the DP-300U's address in the NetGear's admin panel, and i was able to connect. I did all of this while waiting on the phone for D-Link's support. Print jobs are served from anywhere in the house now.

You do need to follow the manual when it comes to adding the printer to the computers in the network. It is actually added, not as a network printer, but as a local printer that you configure as a Standard TCP/IP Port.

check this link out first before buying the dp-300u:

http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=1263&question=DP%2D300U

I finally got this dp-300u server set up correctly with my HP DeskJet 882c. Before I got it working, though, it would print gibberish and create totally non-readable documents regardless of what I printed (I got it to sort of print basic text docs but it still spit out garbage with it).

my hp882c is an older printer and is not on D-Links above-referenced "supported" list.

as d-link mentions, this does not necessarily mean that a non-dlink officially supported printer will not work.

so my printer finally works but here is what I had to do to get it to work:

(1) I swapped my HP 882c's default USB cable with an LPT cable (ieee 1284).

(2) I made the printer default preference to always print in black and white. Parenthetically, you do this once you install the printer and go into printer properties -> general tab -> printing preferences (windows 2k, xp).

(3) Make sure to turn on LPR Byte counting when you add the port name. I also enabled the SNMP option but do not know if that had much effect.

So I cannot currently print in color but the b/w works just fine. I think D-link makes good products and overall I was impressed that I could get to their tech support as quickly as I did. They were very polite and mostly helpful; they issued me a trouble ticket so I could skip the first level in the future if I couldn't get it working. I recommend they have people check out using the parallel printer cable if people are having similar problems as I did.

My office bought the DP-300U to replace the Netgear PS-101 we previously used to share a central printer on a network of about 7 computers. The PS-101 had a variety of problems, including a tendency to freeze if more than 2 documents queued (requiring a reset of the printer and print server).

Contrary to other reviewers' experiences, I had almost no problem setting up the DP-300U. I followed the directions in the quick installation guide (changing the IP address of one computer so it can connect to the DP-300U's default address; using the web-browser based setup system to change the DP-300U's IP address to match our network; adding the printer on each computer), and was able to get everyone connected.

The ONLY hitch was: the diagram on page 2 of the quick installation guide is incorrect. The parallel port closest to the power plug is actually (at least on my unit) Parallel Port 2, not Parallel Port 1. Since this changes the port name you must use when adding the printer to computers (e.g. from PS-ADF399-P1 to PS-ADF399-P2), I could not print until I sorted that out.

All in all, though, an excellent product.

I thought I would give my two cents about this print server. I am using a canon S750 and an Epson Stylus C64 and both work great with the print server. The only problem I had was getting both printers to work. I could get one printer to work following there directions, but could not find directions on how to setup two of them. I was on hold with tech support forever, but never got through to anyone (it was the day after christmas so cannot blame them for being busy) Well as I was waiting I started to play around with it. I finally figured out how to get it to work basically using the same instructions they said, but more in depth. So I am going to write here what I did to help out anyone else who is having problems. This way works for Windows XP

Click on start - settings - printer and faxes.

Click on add new printer

Select local printer - uncheck automatically detect printer

click create new port - choose standard tcp/ip port

Hit next a few times until you get to a screen that asks for printer port name or address. in the top box type in the IP address (192.168.0.10) Then click on the second box and right after the ip put in your port name that you want to use. For example mine was PS-B419A6-U3 So the second box should look like 192.168.0.10PS-B419A6-U3 then click next and then you can go back and follow the instructions about clicking on custom and then changing it to a lpr and putting in the port name in the queue and so forth and it should then work. So I hope I could help some of you out.

Other then the install being a pain the unit works great and I have plans to use the second parallel port on it for a cd printer just need to get a cable.

Print server was cheap and it lets you setup multiple printers. ** NOTE: If you have a All-In-One printer that includes a scanner, this unit is not capable of sending data back from the printer to the computer. Installation was easy once I read and followed the instructions. My HP LaserJet 1100 works perfectly with this server. All my computers are able to print directly to the printer now (XP, Win2K, WinME). I've been using it a year without a single problem. In fact, I'm buying another one of these to give to my dad as a Christmas present!!