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Can't read it. I wanted a wireless laser printer to cut down the annoying wiring in my home office. Problems:1. The installation cd does not work in my drive. requires ridiculous amount of power. noisy.
Got the printer to work, but then I just can't configure the wireless bit. Now this piece has glowing reviews yet my experience is horrible. Well I have a mac, so I tried the bonjour thing. one of the most noisy printer I ever used (and I used 20+).2. installation is a pain. What's the point if in the end I still need to connect the printer to either the router or the laptop.3.
My lights blinks when this thing wakes up.Pros: compact, and print fast.Printing out return label now, on my old HP2015, which is perfect except for the lack of wireless.
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. It'll tell you to configure the network and all this crap. 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. 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. 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. The initial setup (plugging in, printing out a test page) was all very easy to do and straightforward. 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.
See step #4.4) Go to your wireless network icon at the top right of the screen and click on the wireless icon. Prior to this I had a Samsung ML-2510 hooked up to an Apple Airport Extreme that worked as my wireless printer. You don't need to since it already exists. The printer prints out crisp, clean text and the printer is very quiet while printing. 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. 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. 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.
We have our set up on a wireless network, and the installation was simple. Bottom line: it prints fast, it prints well, it's relatively quiet, and it's a fairly compact, lightweight device that helps keep a work area looking neat. The Brother HL-2170W is the best value laser printer on the market today. The print speed is exceptional for the price - it's great value, bar none. My intial purchase stopped working after 3 days, and amazingly, Brother sent another printer, on the spot, which has worked great since. The customer service was exceptional.The install is quick, and easy. The printer is all you need in a home office setting or even small office setting.I highly recommend. You're just not going to find anything close, for the money.
I clicked the option to add a printer, let the system find it, and the setup was complete, test page printed fine.It also seems solid and well constructed compared to similarly priced options. After plugging in the USB cable, the printer was available and worked without any configuration (I didn't even have to run through an add printer wizard). There was no driver to download/install or any fuss getting this working perfectly in Ubuntu 8.10. The toner cartridge was easy to insert. Next I tried setting it up as a network printer. I plugged it into an open port on my router, and went to System > Administration > Printing in Gnome. I don't know much about printers, but didn't even open the manual and was printing a few minutes after opening the box. If you want a cheap monochrome laser printer, this is a good buy.
Then I had to reinstall it on a new computer which took hours more. Once it was working, it's great. But trying to install it to a wireless network took literally hours. Both times I called Brother and both times I had one incompetent technical support person, and then spoke to another who was able to fix the problem. But if you add in the time spent getting it to work, it "cost" a lot more than the given price.
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