Being a proud member of the Top Ten Most Expensive Things To Own for decades, the cash cow of all printer manucaturers, the inkjet printer in our home chose to end its life cycle a few weeks ago. All that came out of the printer was rubbish, colors bleeding into eachother and with a smeary and sticky not-yet-dry surface. If you ask the manufacturer, HP, they will probably tell you that it was because I wasn’t using their original ink cartridges at $20 each. Our printer required five color ones and one bigger with black ink, so the bi-annual ink cartridge switch came close to $130 which is near the cost of the printer itself.
However, we need a printer at home.
Thoughts on a new one were:
- Laser printer (no more ink!)
- Network printer (i.e. no USB)
- Apple AirPrint
- Small(er) than the old one
A quick cost/benefit analysis drew the conclusion that a laser printer would better fit our needs. We only print maybe 15-20 pages per month, but still see the benefit of having a printer for such necessities as printing airline tickets, etc. Scanning and copying would be nice but we can live without that functionality and I haven’t even seen a fax since 1992, so “multifunction” didn’t make the requirements list.
More or less by coincidence I stumbled across a printer from HP that met all the above requirements and came with a decent price, so I bought it: HP LaserJet P1102w. The network interface on this model is wireless only. I ran the installation CD but was not able to get the printer to connect to our home (wireless) network. I spent several evenings on this without being successful, trying all the usual tricks that normally closes the deal. But no cigar. In the end I had to conclude, and HP Support later also confirmed this, that the HP P1102w is not able to connect to a wireless network if this network has one or several access points. I.e. it can only connect to a wireless network in which the router is the only wireless network component. This is not compliant with the stated standards, which I pointed out to HP Support. “We may choose to look in to this in the future” was their reply. Oh, really?
The printing needs in our household are now met, but with equipment from another manufacturer. Needless to say…