Print servers for photo printers?

[Don Day]

I bought a Hawking HWPS12UG wireless print server last week based on its being able to run up to 3 printers from across the room, hoping to make much better use of my limited office space. Got it installed today, and it works... but it is dreadfully, painfully, discouragingly slow, about 1/7th to 1/9th the usual speed, with no feedback on ink levels. Yes, I can output to both USB-connected printers wirelessly, but at a tremendous hit to throughput and awareness of printer stats. This throughput is only barely able to print the Windows test page (itself mostly text) at normal speeds, and just flat bogs at any graphics.

I upgraded the firmware, then cabled the unit directly to the LAN, but with no significant improvement. Now I am wondering--could LAN throughput be the problem? I did not have such issues when I was driving a photo printer from a different computer via print sharing on the LAN--the only sensible difference is computer vs dedicated print server, but the protocols and infrastructure are the same.  If you are using a dedicated print server unit (not a PC) for photo printing (8x10 or bigger), what you using, and how do you rate it?

[jake]

I have an Airport Extreme Base Station. It is a WIFI router that allows the attachment of a USB printer directly to the router. The AE uses Apple's Bonjour wireless printer sharing protocol, software I also used when I was using a Netgear router and PC computers. The Bonjour program is really pretty simple. You just install the drivers for the computers on the computer you are using (PC only, Apple typically already has the drivers,) then tell Bonjour to go look for them. Then you install as your printers.

I also have a Airport Express in my wife's office, which also allows for an additional printer to be attached. Worked great in our other apartment, but unfortunately, the laser printer is behind a piece of metal in the house here. Signal drops out. No worries. I connected it directly to her computer, an IMac, and set it to be shared through the Airport (WIFI) card in her computer, and now I can print wirelessly on that printer too, just like it was connected to my computer - same print speed.

My Epson 2100 is connected directly to my computer and that is the printer that does all my photo printing. The printer attached to the Airport Extreme is my draft and wordprocessing printer. I have, however, printed wirelessly from my wife's computer to the Epson 2100, which is set up for sharing similarly to the laser printer in her office, and the print speed is really no different (or only slightly slower) than direct attachment.

I think this may be a case where Apple just does it better.

Try Apple Bonjour. It's free and works really well. It may be able to take the place of software associated with your print server that is cludgy and slow. Or you may be able to do away with the print server and just run everything off a wireless router, or even (if this is possible for your printers) use WIFI to print wirelessly to each of your printers individually.

[Don Day]

The Hawking print server is back in its box, ready to take back to the store. I made the decision after putting a little mini-ITX system in its place and watching it zip its shared printers through remote print jobs nearly as fast as when printing locally. Same WLAN, same jobs. I'm not totally down on dedicated printservers, but I still haven't found what I've been looking for in those, so I'll test drive the Epia 9000 board for a bit in this role.