IOGEAR USB 2.0 Print Server, 1-Port GPSU21 (Silver) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The print server hardware worked fine, but the setup software
caused a few problems as a result of oversimplication.

I was able to get the server going with a Brother HL-5150D USB
printer on a home network with 4 computers (3 wireless, 1
ethernet), an all-in-one networked device and the USB
printer itself. This is using a mixture of computers with
different flavours of Windows XP. The print server is wired to
a router using DHCP. I did not chose to put the print server on
a static address (as the manual prefers) since that does not
reflect my network setup (home networks are usually DHCP).
I encountered problems because:
(a) My software firewall first caused the installer to crash.
I wanted to avoid turning it off entirely, but
to no avail. I was able to leave my router's hardware
firewall on but had to turn off my software firewall
for the installation. The manual asks that firewall
be turned off at installation, but I find that drastic.
I guess I should have cut off my internet connection when
I did this.
(b) I installed my printer drivers and print server back-to-back
without rebooting the computer in between. The manual
allows for this but I was not able to avoid the "the
segment of the print server is different from your
computer" error no matter what I tried. So I rebooted
and started the print server install a second time over.
Worked fine. The manual's guidance for this error was
incorrect in my case.
So, if what I've learned applies:
(i) install the printer driver as a normal USB
printer on your computers first.
(ii) reboot the computers
(iii) install the print server software.

Did this for all computers on the network, and
now I can print from anywhere (note that I did not
reconfigure the print server hardware each time, only
on the 1st computer, but I don't see the harm if one
does it for each computer as long as one is consistent
in placing the same settings each time).
(c) The installation of the print server software caused
my printer settings to go from "Use Printer Online"
to "Use Printer Offline". My printer swallowed all
my jobs because of that and no pages were coming out.
To remediate this go to the "Control Panel", "Printers",
"Viewed my installed printers",
right click the printer and select "Use Printer Online".
Did this for all computers.
Everything worked after that, with all firewalls reenabled.
Some day in the future, the network will go down
(power outage or other), and DHCP router might
assign a different dynamic IP address for the print server.
If that is the case, I'll have to point my computers to the
new IP address. To findout what your computer thinks the
printer address is: "Control Panel", "Printers",
"View installed printers", right click the printer and
select "Properties". Select the "Ports" tab,
then "Configure Port". Then compare the IP against the
new address your router gave to the print server
(go to your router's web page to find out). If they don't
match then you'll need to reconfigure. That said, I tested
a new IP address on the print server by power cycling it.
I then rebooted the computers and found that the new print
server address had been matched automatically on my
PCs. So things can fix themselves even if the network goes
down (the name of the port was still had the old address,
but the actual address it used was the new one...)
I've not tried this with IPP printing (remote location
printing, not did I test it under Linux or Mac).
The print server's web access is rather primitive.
But it has all I need. I intend to use this with Linux too.
The device worked as advertised and I am satisfied with it.


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IOgear GPSU21 Print Server GPSU21 Print Servers - Wired

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Canon CanoScan N1240U Flatbed Scanner Review

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(More customer reviews)This wonderful piece of technology really makes life easier! You can install it on your PC in a couple of minutes simply by following the instructions. It comes with a photo-editing software that you can use without consulting a manual. The digital pictures are crisp and the colors are nothing but stunning. The software makes it easy to scan photos at a high resolution and save them as files with a lower resolution if you want to email them to friends and relatives, or upload them onto your webpage.
If you are an old-fashioned photographer who is not yet fully convinced of the quality of digital photos, but you nevertheless want to use the internet to send photos, this scanner is an excellent choice.

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Offering rich 48-bit color and a full 8.5-by-11-inch scanning area, the CanoScan N1240U provides all sorts of creative possibilities for the home user or small office. Optical resolution is an impressive 1,200 x 2,400 dpi, which guarantees crisp detail and clear images. Plus, if your graphics needs require it, the N1240U can take your 1,200 x 2,400 dpi original and mathematically enhance it to 9,600 x 9,600 dpi.
Although the CanoScan stands just over 1 inch high, its unique Z-lid extends easily to make room for thicker originals such as books or magazines, while the single-cord USB connection (cable included) keeps desktops free from clutter. The USB connection also powers the scanner, so no bulky AC adapter is required.
Operation is a snap, thanks to dedicated one-touch buttons for scanning, copying, or e-mailing photos. The N1240U is compatible with both Macintosh and PC systems, and it comes with a one-year limited warranty and Canon's convenient Instant Exchange service.

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Canon LiDE200 Color Image Scanner (2924B002) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I decided to replace my old "all in one" printer which I was using as a scanner and a photocopying with the Canon LIDE200. I liked the specification: 4800x4800 dpi and a claimed 11 second scan rate.
The first thing I noticed as I was unpacking the scanner from the box was a mysterious WARNING about unlocking the lid of the scanner. The scanner was packed with the lid unlocked (as I found out later), and the instructions mentioned to keep the lid locked for travel or extensive handling. Fair enough, but it made me wonder if I had already done something bad to my scanner (I hadn't).
I then installed the software. I expected big things from Canon here, because generally they are pretty smart about software. The software, in terms of use, is much better than the software I had for scanning with my old scanner.The scanner has an "easy" setting that basically just scans at 300DPI without a fuss.If you want to scan at full resolution, you have to open the "driver" that exposes a page with all the bells and whistles to let you really fine tune your scan and set the highest resolutions.
All this was fair enough, however I found a few minor disturbing problems with the software. Firstly, once you've opened the "driver", it's not intuitive to figure out how to get back to the "no brainer" mode. Also, when you want to save your scan, it always seems to default to the scanning library it sets up. If you override it, it doesn't stay "changed". This is a slight pain. I always wonder who they hire to test and give feedback, because I always feel like I'm pointing out what should be the "obvious" to large companies like Canon (actually I really love Canon - so take no offense!).
As far as scanning speed is concerned, the scanner does indeed scan a 300 dpi page in about 11 seconds (that's pretty fast folks). However, the estimate does not include the 3 seconds the software takes to respond to the command to begin scanning (I'm running a duo core processor - no slouch) and the few seconds it takes to save the image. All in all, speed is impressive.
Now on to document quality. I tried scanning a few brochures and to be honest, at 300 DPI I wasn't super impressed with the result. So I went into the "driver" at set the scanning at maximum resolution (4800 x 4800). You get a pretty good result at that resolution, but by no means was I blown away. Perhaps more "tweaks" of the driver is needed. I noticed that the scanner attempts to "improve" the picture (which it does) but some of the detail of the text was a little off (brochure had images and text). I wondered if the lid of the scanner was making really good contact. Next time I will add a few pages of plain white paper behind the image and see if it makes a difference.
I tried scanning a printed document, and compared it to a printed document I scanned using my old scanner. I scanned the image to a PDF and low and behold, a major, major improvement (at 300 DPI).
So, I gave the scanner four "stars". Why not five? Well, the software is much easier to use than my old scanner, but still not without a few minor "quirks".This is a great scanner for scanning documents. How well it will actually scan and reproduce a photo is still in question, and perhaps I need to learn how to use the driver software better. I don't think I could scan an original photo without seeing some degradation in quality.
I'd be interested to hear other people's experiences regarding copying photos. I hope I'm wrong in my assessment, because I really expected a 4800x4800 scanner to reproduce "dead on" copies of a photo.

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Canon LiDE200 color image scanner has convenient features for easy scanning up to 4800 dpi.

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