Okay, as much as I dislike Dlink products, actually not just dislike, I am actively antaganostic to them, I do have to recommend 1 of their products as I was actually impressed with it, so much so I'll be buying one for my home office. The unit in question is the DPR-1260
http://www.dlink.ca/products/?pid=482 LIKES 1) 4 usb ports for plugging in printers 2) supports AIO and multifunction units to allow network scanning, particularly with devices that don't actually support network scanning, specifically HP units. 3) can be hooked up to the lan either via cable or wireless 4) for supported printers, you download an exe from the unit, it sets everything up for you, configures the tcp/ip printer port, loads the printer driver and sets up the printer 5) Coolest feature - web based scanning, no driver needed, you just go to the scan page in the web interface, it detects the scanner and gives you a similar interface as you'd see on your pc 6) supports both tcp/ip and lpr printing (for you unix heads) DISLIKES 1) Dlink tech support sucks, more on this later 2) No documentation on manual configuration, tech support wont help with this either. The client I was setting this up for had an HP PSC-950 which is not one of the officially supported multifunction units. There automated installer (exe download) basically would say it couldn't find the inf driver file even when pointed to the install cd. So I called Dlink Canada tech support asking what I thought was simple question, essentially what tcp ports map to which usb port on the print server, so I could manually setup the tcp/ip printing. After explaining over and over what I wanted, I was told, sorry we don't support that, you need to talk to your printer manufacturer about mapping tcp printing ports, after explaining that this had nothing to do with the printer and that all I wanted was the usb port to tcp port mappings on the unit, I was again told that they didn't have this information and wouldn't help me, about this time I asked to speak to a supervisor and was put on hold for another 5 or 10 minutes. In the meantime I browsed their tech docs for the information on manually configuring an attached printer but found nothing. I then had a look at the first printer that was setup by their automated setup installer (the exe file you download from the printserver) and by trial and error, experience with print servers and some luck I got all the various settings configured right, loaded up the drivers and was printing happily. When the tech came back online and said, I'm sorry no supervisor was available, I basically said, I'd never buy or recommend another Dlink product, but... here I am.... This is a really cool product. The scanning part is sooo cool, you logon to the printserver's web interface, click on the scan link and you see a page where you can get a preview scan or do a full scan, adjust the dpi, chose the output file type, jpeg or tiff IIRC, etc. When you are ready you click scan, it shows up in a box in the the browser window, you right click on the image and click "save image as" and you are done. This didn't require installing ANY software on the computers and is accessible by all computers on the lan/wlan. And best of all it "just worked" with a non-supported multifunction unit. I can't wait to try this out with my HP flatbed scanner when I get one. -- Harondel J. Sibble Sibble Computer Consulting Creating solutions for the small business and home computer user. [EMAIL PROTECTED] (use pgp keyid 0x3AD5C11D) http://www.pdscc.com (604) 739-3709 (voice/fax) (604) 686-2253 (pager) -- ---------------------------------------- The WIN-HOME mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
