Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces
by BROTHER
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Our Price: $305.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $75.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces
Customer Review: Amazon Merchandising Scheme Misleading - look out for monochrome printers being listed with color laser printers
Summary: 4 Stars
As this is a product review, I'll be quick about the product. This printer is quite good at producing high quality black and white pictures as well as text documents. If that's what you're looking for, then this is a good option at a good price.
However, I was looking to purchase a COLOR laser printer and searched via Amazon's Search and Merchandising Engine with the term "Color Laser Printer". Sorting by Relevance - which of course means that I'm asking the merchandising engine to display all those items that most closely match the search term I enter. The merchandising engine's first page listed 10 printers, with the number two printer on the list being this Brother printer. It was at a lowest price of those listed, but still within ~$20 of some of the 'other' color laser printers listed so I thought it was the best buy of the lot. With school just starting for the kids and a dire need to replace the old inkjet printer, I pulled the trigger and purchased.
When it arrived, to my dismay I learned that it was a MONOCHROME printer. I retraced my steps on Amazon to see how I could have made the mistake. I was searching COLOR Laser Printers. As I read a couple pages deep into the description of the printer, I realized in fact that it did state it was a monochrome printer. As I read more deeply into every OTHER Color Laser Printer listed, it was clear that every one of them was a COLOR laser printer.
What could have occurred here? Let me tell you. I work for a software company - the largest one in the world in fact - that has as part of our portfolio of offerings software that performs Merchandising execution for online retailers. This software can be set to 'move' product based on stock on hand. A company's merchandisers can set rules that override a tendency - such as term matching - to place products in the display list that they want to sell. It 'feels' like this is what occurred here, although there also could have been product key entry mistakes made, perhaps. Bottom line is I am leaning towards crying foul - because I know how these systems are supposed to work, and I'd bet the chances are greater that this product was set to intentionally rise to the number 2 position, even though it didn't match COLOR as an attribute, than there simply being a human error (other than my own). All of the other 9 printers were color printers - I just happened to pick the lowest priced 'color' printer and found out the hard way it wasn't a color printer.
Since probably 90% of my printing needs ultimately are black and white, I decided to keep it rather than deal with the hassle of sending it back.
Amazon, you made a sale for your vendor, but I post this to warn everybody to check closely that the product you are buying matches what you are searching for.
Customer Review: How to Install the HL-2170W Wirelessly with the Apple Airport Extreme
Summary: 4 Stars
After getting fed up with my slow DSL I decided to order cable internet and had to move my router closer to the tv for it to work. Prior to this I had a Samsung ML-2510 hooked up to an Apple Airport Extreme that worked as my wireless printer. Since I had to move the router into the living room I couldn't have a printer in the space and needed to go wireless.
I ordered the Brother HL-2170W from Amazon and it arrived the next day. The initial setup (plugging in, printing out a test page) was all very easy to do and straightforward. The printer prints out crisp, clean text and the printer is very quiet while printing. Trying to configure it with my wireless network is a whole new story though.
When I put the cd into my iMac the tray kept spitting it back out after a minute. I then downloaded all the software (drivers, wireless network utility) from the Brother support website and proceeded to try to configure the printer.
Instead of following the useless instruction manual, here's how to set it up on a Mac wirelessly:
1) Make sure that you have the printer turned on and printed a test page to verify that it works. Hold the big button down on the top left of the printer until a network settings page prints out and verifies that the printer's wireless 802.11 b/g is active.
2) Download and open the wireless network utility (I recommend installing the driver at the same time which is an option within the utility) from Brother's support website.
3) Run through the steps and select wireless install. It'll tell you to configure the network and all this crap. You don't need to since it already exists. See step #4.
4) Go to your wireless network icon at the top right of the screen and click on the wireless icon. This should show you your current wireless network as well as a NEW one called "Setup".
5) Join the "Setup" network and proceed through the step-by-step guide. This will take you to the screen where you add your network password etc.
6) Once you wrap that up you need to re-join your regular wireless network.
7) Make sure you install the Brother HL-2170W driver and restart your computer.
8) Go to System Preferences -> Printer & Fax -> Click on the '+' sign to add a printer.
9) The Brother HL-2170W should load up under your default printers to choose from. Select "Auto Select" if needed so that it can find the CUPS driver and make the printer work.
10) Click 'Add' and enjoy!
I haven't had the chance to use the printer over an extended period of time (just got it today) but hopefully this will save some of you the hour I spent trying to figure out why the instruction manual was making no sense.
Customer Review: Simply put: ridiculously well designed
Summary: 5 Stars
I cannot comment on the long term performance of this device since I have only just begun to use it. However, I did want to share my experience with the hesitant buyer. As the title reads, this device is ridiculously well designed, specifically in terms of ease of setup.
After reading numerous less-than-positive reviews about complications surrounding WiFi setup, I was admittedly nervous about this printer. After all, the key reason I purchased it over the cheaper HL-2140 was the wireless capability. I opened the box less than 30 minutes ago, read the instructions (not very thoroughly I might add), setup the wireless on the printer, installed drivers on Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.4, printed several text pages on both, and now am typing this review. Assuming negative reviewers are even somewhat computer competent, Brother must have drastically improved their setup because it was very, very pleasant.
Allow me to be more specific: I pulled the printer out of the box. Shoved the cartridge in. Plugged it in the wall. Powered on. Opened manual. Skimmed pages. Grabbed Windows 7 CD and popped it in laptop. Using step by step onscreen instructions, printed status page (automatically done for you one button push). Connected to printer's temporary AdHoc setup network (automatically created, just connect to it). Typed in my WiFi settings (name, WEP, password, etc). Connected back to my home network. Printed page. 10 minutes tops. Then popped Mac CD in the other laptop. Installed driver (no WiFi setup this time). It automatically rebooted. Printed page. 5 mins tops.
Notice, I did not ever once plug in via network cable to either my laptop or router, nor did I use a USB (FYI: other than the AC power cord, no cables were included by the way). It was mind-numbingly easy!
Seriously, I was very skeptical from the start. From the moment I opened the box until I pressed print (the Mac gave no indication that it even saw the printer), I kept thinking: "oh great this will never work". I mean, how many devices do you buy where you spend hours fiddling around with wifi settings, it searches for your network and comes back with an error or says "Cannot find network". This printer would take 2 minutes (felt like an eternity) to "Search for the network" or "Update Network Settings" and to my utter shock, it actually worked! FIRST TRY! I couldn't believe how easy it was. I typically don't review things because I am so apathetic. If I do review things it is to warn others. This time, I can only warn you that you will be bored by this simple setup.
I hope to high heaven that using this printer long term is even half as wonderful as the first hour with it!
Customer Review: Wireless set-up a pain but works great now
Summary: 4 Stars
I read a number of reviews in here that I totally empathized with - the frustration of a new wireless toy performing in a less than optimal way out of box. It appears that many opt to just wire it and forget it. If you go straight to a router using the network cable this is certainly a valid approach (although ask yourself why you are buying a wireless printer) option. The USB option seems to be the only approach I would discourage. If you are after a USB printer there are likely better options for you (on price and feature).
So- some brief background :
My home network has 16 machines running (no, really) in 4 vLANs. 4 Win servers, 2 Ubuntu workstations, 4 XP machines and the rest Macs (all running Leopard or Tiger). Before buying the HL-2170W, I had one Samsung ML-6060 laser printer I've owned since the Lord wore short pants (I simply don't understand how it can keep going like it has but it still works) and the idea of not having to walk back to the office to get a printed copy sort of appealed.
When I unboxed the 2170W, I figured I would just plug it into my network and immediately configure it.
This was a mistake. After that didn't work, I inserted the included disk into one of the Win xp machines and installed the printer & drivers. This 1st machine is key to getting the printer up and "talking". The first install I did was "hard wired" using XP (so Mac users, you might *consider* setting up through a Fusion/Parallels VM). You will need DHCP running on your network (or some means of getting assigned an IP). I was able to get it up and running hard-wired in this manner -- at which point I logged into the onboard web server and put my own static settings in - IP, WINS, DNS and set the wireless to ON (the CD software can accomplish much of this, but it can also be done in this manner).
I have setup 10 of my machines now and I have had NO ISSUES on the subsequent machine setups. The onboard web server is great -- even tells how many total pages have been printed.
The product (a week into it) seems to be working well. The setup was a little onerous though... Casual users and novices might consider sticking to the wired capability - which was easily set up when the CD was used in a Windows enviro (see above). The wireless setup could use improvement. I was able to get it working as I expected, but it took some time and trial/error.
Compared to my old ML-6060, this thing is like a Ferrari - 23 ppm! Not off the charts by any means - but certainly capable for home. I am anxious to keep track of how many pages this thing prints!
Overall, I would recommend it. The price point for these features is (at last) affordably attainable.
Customer Review: Wireless Setting PITA, Then Printer Can't Print!
Summary: 2 Stars
After reading everyone's review about how easy the wireless set up was, I decided to jump on this. The people who had an easy time setting this up, I don't know how they did it. I'm a very computer savvy type of person, who built several custom computers, etc... Even for me, I'm having a hard time handling it. There are suppose to be two ways to set up wireless. The first way is to temporarily use a cat-5 (ethernet) cable, and the other way is to temporarily change your wireless setting to Ad-Hoc, Channel 11, SSID: SETUP. I tried both methods, and it couldn't find the printer at all. I spent over four hours messing with the printer until I did what I normally don't do: email customer support. They never emailed me back... I had to sign up to email them too. They just make it harder for you so they could save their resources. After that, I decided to read up on advance methods to connect to the printer wirelessly. I spent another two hours dealing with it. I reseted the factory memory, and also reseted the internal network card. After that, what do you know... my router was able to locate the printer! Ok great, so now I can talk to the printer through my router. So then I thought, all I needed to do was install driver. The driver is a PITA. I installed it different ways like a million times. I even went to the website to get the latest version. That didn't work, so I had to "add printer" seperately. You go to control panel, printer faxes, add printer, create a new port, use TCP ip connection, enter in the printer's IP. Then I had to download a .DLL certificate... There are two versions: a general, and one for the printer. I tried both. Neither of them worked. I've wasted so much time on this printer its crazy. You might be lucky and have the right hardware/software to do an easy set up. Not me.
It's a good printer, esp if you just set up using a USB cable. I just can't get it to connect wirelessly (the reason why I bought it).
Also, it chews up a lot of power on start up. I have a 800watt power supply on my pc, and when the printer is warming up, it shuts off. I definately need my wireless to work so I can move it to a different power source.
My problem right now is that I just need the driver to work. My router see's the printer just fine. I am able to change settings by typing in the printer's ip address in my browser. I just can't print any papers!!!
Also, the BRadmin program that it installs on your computer is annoying. You can dissable it, but it likes to send data back to Brother. I have zone alarm so I know when it wants to access the internet.
I still like this printer though, its just a PITA.