01 June 2009 | Uncategorized | bob

Several weeks ago I described the search I went through to find a “smudge-free” printer. I ended up purchasing a small, compact Brother laser printer, the HL-2170W. This printer had pretty much everything I wanted – small footprint, built in wireless networking, low cost, and was “easy to use.” The only thing it lacked was an automatic duplexer for automatic two-sided printing. But, my wife and I determined the extra cost for that feature was just not worth it.

The printer arrived in a big box via UPS just a few days after ordering, and I happily took it inside the house to begin installation. I unpacked it, and was greeted with the printer, the requisite software driver CD, the toner cartridge in one of those Mylar bags, and a quick installation guide. Nicely packaged, and nothing appeared broken or out of place.

Installing the toner cartridge was a breeze, and I then went to place it in the family room, its new home. I did actually look at the installation notes, and was glad I did. The notes tell you that if you want to install it using the wireless connection, they highly recommend doing the initial configuration using a wired connection, and then switching to the wireless network. I decided Brother probably had a good reason for this, so I followed the advice.

I had a spare network cable near my laptop, so I connected it to the network, and proceeded to install the software from the CD. The dialog to install was very straightforward, and I selected the option to use wireless networking, configuring with wired networking initially. I was then presented a screen to provide the SSID of my network, along with the security key. After that, those settings were sent to the printer, and I was then instructed to disconnect the network cable and restart the printer.

The driver installation also went smoothly, and when it came to the point in the process to detect printers on the network, the printer was found, a port was configured automatically, and installation was complete. I printed a test page, which worked perfectly, and I was up and running.

I also installed the driver software on two other computers in the house, so we now have three computers (two Windows Vista and one Windows XP) happily sharing the printer. The printer does have a built in web server for administration, though the web admin user interface leaves a lot to be desired. It’s obvious that Brother invested very little there. It’s pretty ugly and not very intuitive.

Overall, we’ve been very happy with the printer. After running 589 pages through it, we’ve had not one problem. I can only hope it stays that way!