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52 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worked After Some Tweaks (Brother HL-5150D printer), September 17, 2006
The print server hardware worked fine, but the setup software
caused a few problems as a result of oversimplication.
I was able to get the server going with a Brother HL-5150D USB
printer on a home network with 4 computers (3 wireless, 1
ethernet), an all-in-one networked device and the USB
printer itself. This is using a mixture of computers with
different flavours of Windows XP. The print server is wired to
a router using DHCP. I did not chose to put the print server on
a static address (as the manual prefers) since that does not
reflect my network setup (home networks are usually DHCP).
I encountered problems because:
(a) My software firewall first caused the installer to crash.
I wanted to avoid turning it off entirely, but
to no avail. I was able to leave my router's hardware
firewall on but had to turn off my software firewall
for the installation. The manual asks that firewall
be turned off at installation, but I find that drastic.
I guess I should have cut off my internet connection when
I did this.
(b) I installed my printer drivers and print server back-to-back
without rebooting the computer in between. The manual
allows for this but I was not able to avoid the "the
segment of the print server is different from your
computer" error no matter what I tried. So I rebooted
and started the print server install a second time over.
Worked fine. The manual's guidance for this error was
incorrect in my case.
So, if what I've learned applies:
(i) install the printer driver as a normal USB
printer on your computers first.
(ii) reboot the computers
(iii) install the print server software.
Did this for all computers on the network, and
now I can print from anywhere (note that I did not
reconfigure the print server hardware each time, only
on the 1st computer, but I don't see the harm if one
does it for each computer as long as one is consistent
in placing the same settings each time).
(c) The installation of the print server software caused
my printer settings to go from "Use Printer Online"
to "Use Printer Offline". My printer swallowed all
my jobs because of that and no pages were coming out.
To remediate this go to the "Control Panel", "Printers",
"Viewed my installed printers",
right click the printer and select "Use Printer Online".
Did this for all computers.
Everything worked after that, with all firewalls reenabled.
Some day in the future, the network will go down
(power outage or other), and DHCP router might
assign a different dynamic IP address for the print server.
If that is the case, I'll have to point my computers to the
new IP address. To findout what your computer thinks the
printer address is: "Control Panel", "Printers",
"View installed printers", right click the printer and
select "Properties". Select the "Ports" tab,
then "Configure Port". Then compare the IP against the
new address your router gave to the print server
(go to your router's web page to find out). If they don't
match then you'll need to reconfigure. That said, I tested
a new IP address on the print server by power cycling it.
I then rebooted the computers and found that the new print
server address had been matched automatically on my
PCs. So things can fix themselves even if the network goes
down (the name of the port was still had the old address,
but the actual address it used was the new one...)
I've not tried this with IPP printing (remote location
printing, not did I test it under Linux or Mac).
The print server's web access is rather primitive.
But it has all I need. I intend to use this with Linux too.
The device worked as advertised and I am satisfied with it.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
After trial and error, works with Vista, September 5, 2008
I bought this to connect my Canon MP760 to my two notebook computers, one running XP and the other Vista. After connecting the device to my printer and my router, I started the install CD on my XP notebook and ran the wizard, accepting all the standard options. The software finished and reported a success, but I couldn't print anything. Then I noticed (after being clued in by reading someone else's review) that the printer needs to be set to Online in the printers control panel. After doing this my XP notebook could print.
However it wasn't so easy on the Vista notebook. Although the CD software seemed to run fine (after giving it permission), no amount of tweaking got anything to print. Items would sit in the print queue forever, and zero bytes would by shown sent to the printer. It should be noted that IOGear nowhere says this software is compatible with Vista, I can confirm it is not, and I couldn't find any Vista driver on the IOGear website.
Now the good news. I discovered there is a much simpler way to install this device. Just use the instructions for IPP that are given at the back of the manual. These instructions are given for setting up to print over the internet, but the same technique can be used to set up on a local home network. With a home network it all boils down to: tell Windows you are installing a network printer and type in the URL as http://192.168.0.90:631/lp1, (your IP address will be different) then select the print driver and you are done. What it so hard about that? Nothing. And this method DOES work for both Windows XP and Windows Vista.
So it took me about 2 hours of trial and error, but now it works great. The device can be managed and configured using a web browser, just by typing in its IP address. The CD-ROM software that comes with it is not needed at all. The only thing the CD sw may help with is discovering the IP address the device is using, but that could also be done by viewing your router's status. I should mention since my router uses DHCP and serves addresses in the range 100..199 I decided to configure the print server with a fixed address of 90. Using a fixed address is the logical thing to do in this setup, because you don't want DHCP to ever change it. Again that can be configured using the device's web setup page.
After all is said and done, I sort of expect hiccups when installing a product like this, and I am judging mainly based on the final outcome: this is a great little product for a great price. I'm very happy with it.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Simple to use, configure and forget., December 23, 2007
When my printer died recently I found myself searching for a new solution instead of just a replacement. I wanted to print from each of my computers without having to wire all of them to the usb switch that I had been using. In my environment I have XP, Vista, and Linux. The XP machine gives me the most trouble with printing since it is usually connected to work using a VPN connection. The VPN connection makes printing to a local IP address impossible since it redirects all traffic to work and will block any attempts to get to any local IP addresses.
With this print server I'm able to print to my printer by opening a port on my firewall direct to the print server. As long as my IP doesn't change on my internet connection then the printer works. I have printed pages, CDs, and photos through the IP connection without a failure. My wife loves it because she can now print from her laptop while on the couch; wireless connection on Vista.
The only problem I've had so far is after I installed the software for the print server on my XP box I had to change the setting on the printer from offline to online. The rest of the installs was done without the software for the print server so none of them needed this to be done.
This product has made my life easier. Just remeber to assign it an IP in your router that is easy to remember.
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