NETGEAR PS121 USB 2.0 Mini Print Server
by Netgear
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Our Price: $89.00 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $20.99 (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 NETGEAR PS121 USB 2.0 Mini Print Server
Customer Review: Do Not Buy; Look for another print server
Summary: 1 Stars
The setup was fairly straight forward and it did actually work, but barely. The print speed is MUCH slower than you will get when connected directly to your PC. As you can imagine the online tech support/FAQs were not helpful.
Things got worse from there.
Turns out that you need to 'reserve' the printer in order to print to it, however the application that does this is pretty flaky.
- If you run XP and use a Limited account, you are out of luck, the application crashes.
- If you put your computer into hibernate mode, you are out of luck, the application will fail to reserve the printer (no error messages).
- It's useless if you want to use Linux.
Occasionally the print server will have an error (there's a small red LED that is displayed in this case (if you have this print server sitting behind something you'll need to haul it up to see if the red light is on). In this state only power-cycling the unit fixed the error.
I'm really disappointed; Netgear typically has good stuff.
Customer Review: Easy to set up, works with many printers
Summary: 4 Stars
I looked long and hard before choosing this print server. It's the smallest and most affordable USB print server, and garnered the highest user ratings of all those I checked. I tried it with the print function of my Brother 8840 Multifunction Laser Printer/Copier/Fax and had excellent results. Sadly, it did not interface (through no fault of its own) with my new Konica Minolta Magicolor 2400 W color laser. However, Konica-Minolta told me that this printer wasn't networkable before I tried...I was just hoping to prove them wrong.
The user interface is SIMPLE...just follow the wizard on the CD. It installs a standard TCP/IP printer port on your computer...plug your printer into the server, the server into your network, then install the drivers, select the new driver in the properties menu of your printer, and you're good to go. Note that it probably won't work with the scanning and faxing functions of multifunction machines.
Truly as close to "idiot proof" as you will find in a network device. Now if only it was wireless!
Customer Review: Not a bad piece of equipment if you know what you are doing..
Summary: 4 Stars
I read all of the reviews and decided to give this a try anyway and had some of the same problems as others who reviewed this product (install issues, firewall issues etc). At first I kept getting install failures and couldnt figure out why until I remembered something that I read on the internet about the firewalls interfering with installation and as soon as I disabled my firewall the install went through without a problem. The only thing I had to figure out after that was how to reactivate my firewall and still be able to use the server. I have Zone Alarm and had to add an expert rule to the firewall to allow it to work. I would assume that it would be the same with other firewalls. To be fair, the Netgear website did say that you may have to disable the firewall but their instructions were very vague and their suggestion to use Windows firewall was pretty lame. Otherwise the server works exactly as advertised and I have had no problems with it. Overall it took me about 2 hours to get everything up and running.Customer Review: works fine, don't install the netgear software
Summary: 5 Stars
-this product works great with a Samsung ML-2510 laser printer. even complex graphics, multi-page jobs sail through.
I uninstalled the Netgear software on the PC - you don't need it and it only slows stuff down. The only reason you would want that software is if you can't do the alternate method.
Here's the tip:
1-you have to know the address your router assigned to the ps121. you use your web browser to configure the ps121 to a fixed IP address. you will need to read the manual for the password to log in to the server.
2-you will have to create a TCP/IP printer port, either by adding a new network printer, or by adding a new port to your existing printer.
It took about 5 minutes per pc to set up and run a test print with this method.
For the Vista Laptop that connected via wireless to the WLAN, I used the add printer function, selected network printer, typed in the IP address, and Vista found the correct printer driver and installed it.
Customer Review: Setup Finicky at first
Summary: 5 Stars
You must setup the print server first via the setup wizard. Download the latest Firmware update and Set wizard first before starting.
1. IMPORTANT: Disable any firewalls you may have before using the setup wizard, i noticed my blackice was blocking the ports to scan for the device.
2. Update latest firmware before starting
3. IMPORTANT: Use the setup wizard to assign a static IP to the device.
4. Now have your device drivers unzipped somewhere and ready.
5. Use the addport.exe utility. It will ask which printer to use, if windows does not have built in printer, use the "Have Disk" option and point to the driver location on cdrom or local computer. Your printer drivers should now install normally. Make sure you choose that the printer is installed "LOCALLY" if asked by the drivers. The printer port added by netgear looks local to the computer.
6. That's it.
Works flawlessly.