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wireless networking and wifi printer help
Stoic Joker:
I was a little leery of dropping about $250 on this type of device.-40hz (January 22, 2015, 11:59 AM)
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Once the marketing types got ahold of the idea that MFP == Green, we were stuck with them.
Multi Function Printers were a hard sell initially because people were worried that everything would be gone if the one device broke. But their service life has proven much better that initially direly predicted ... mainly because you can actually break parts of it and the rest will keep going.
techidave:
In our school, we have mostly Samsung lasers. Not the real expensive ones we use are about $300. They work well and we don't have to repair them Unlike a couple of HP printers that need feed rollers in them all the time.
40hz:
My experience with HP is to stick to the real business class products and you'll be fine. T'was a time when that was all they sold, so it was a no-brainer going with HP. The old Laserjets (II/3/4/5/81xx/85xx, etc.) were built like tanks and un-killable. And they were repairable (often even field repairable) if anything did go wrong.
Then HP (of necessity) got into home/consumer-grade products...and the results are what we live with today.
But I don't completely blame HP's engineers. It's hard to take engineering teams, who were used to designing and building what was often the Rolls-Royce of office and computer equipment, and suddenly expect them to start making "good enough" inexpensive pieces of plastic crap for the masses - most of whom were utterly "price motivated" when out shopping.
"Fast, cheap, reliable - pick any two," as the saying goes. 8)
Vurbal:
I'll show my ignorance here and ask what's probably a stupid question.
If I can create an adhoc wired 'network' so easily, then why is a wireless solution so much different. The comm's should be the same, so we're only talking about the means of transmission (is landline v mobile telephony is an appropriate analogy?)
-Target (January 21, 2015, 09:08 PM)
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Since others have already covered the basic technical aspects, I'll just add this. While it would be possible to overcome the technical hurdles, it would require an R&D investment which doesn't make sense financially because there isn't enough of a market for it.
Most people who would buy a wireless printer already have some sort of Wi-Fi enabled router or switch installed. Adding the dumb Wi-Fi interfaces used today costs very little because the technology is already commoditized so the cost per unit is minimal but it will sell a lot more printers. They're only going to improve those interfaces if they expect to recoup those costs in revenue growth.
Keep in mind, I'm not saying the results couldn't justify the cost, but I guarantee the manufacturers are.
xtabber:
@xtabber - That's good news to hear. This was my first Brother multifunction appliance purchase (for myself) and I was a little leery of dropping about $250 on this type of device.
-40hz (January 22, 2015, 11:59 AM)
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It's a good investment. I paid $280 for my DCP 8080DN (not wireless) 4 years ago and have never had a problem. Brother's network administration utilities are excellent, and they support both printing and scanning from Android devices too.
My previous Brother printer lasted 5 years and was replaced with this one only because it needed a new drum and and it didn't cost much more to buy a newer and faster model than it would to buy a new drum. As Stoic Joker said, most personal and workgroup printers today are designed to be disposable, so you don't want to spend time fixing them, but you also don't want to have to replace them before their time is up.
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