Once we had the Belkin 2-port USB Wireless Print Server up and
running, it 'just worked,' which was refreshing. Once you have a printer set up
with this server, it's completely transparent to use.
The
printer attached to the Belkin server appears as a
printer on your computer system also, and printing to that device will send
the data out to the print server, which will pass it on to the
actual printer by way of the USB port.
There
was a little bit of oddness though, as this device has one
strange 'feature' which we failed to understand.
The wireless network adaptor
built into the print server will only function if the wired
Ethernet port is not in use. Effectively, this Belkin print server is
either wired or wireless, but not both at the same time. While it's not
a huge issue, we can't really understand why this was implemented as
it reduces the flexibility of the device.
The strength of the Belkin wireless USB print server's signal was not exceptional
either, but it proved adequate for testing in our medium
sized office. In a larger wireless network using multiple access
points, this should not be an issue.
To test the speed of the device, we sent a 75MB gray scale image to the print
server for printing on a Samsung CLP-550 laser printer. The
transmitting device was a Gigabyte 802.11g wireless access point. The
total time from the beginning of transfer to the file finishing
printing was just under two minutes, which we found
satisfactory. Simple text files began printing in no time at
all. On the whole, the Belkin wireless USB print server
will be slower at printing large files than a dedicated wired network
printer, but the speed is still adequate for all but large volumes of
images.
Conclusions
The Belkin 2-port USB Wireless Print Server simply does what it does.
It's not a sexy gadget, nor is it particularly flexible or full of complicated
options, but if you want to enable wireless printing throughout your home or
office, this product will let you accomplish that quickly and easily. The
addition of IP and FTP printing options is a nice bonus for business
users.
We experienced no issues with this device other than a
momentary problem with DHCP setup. If you use a DHCP server or home router to
assign IP addresses to your network, make sure it is active before you plug in
the Belkin print server and you will have no problems.
At about $135 USD ($165 CDN), the Belkin 2-port USB Wireless Print Server is targeted more at the business
user. It's not cheap, but if you need a wireless print server this product is easy to
recommend. It doesn't do anything else except serve printers, but it does
it wirelessly and well.
If you're interested in sharing your printers over a
network but don't think that this product is for you, check out PCstats Guide to
printer sharing here.
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