Lantronix xPrintServer Home Edition for iOS Printing - XPS1002HM-01-S

I bought an xPrintServer to print from my iPad to an HP Color LaserJet 2600n. I did my homework in advance and confirmed that my printer was supported by checking Lantronix's website - it was (and still is) listed as a supported printer. Bluntly: that was a lie. When the xPrintServer couldn't print a test page, I wrote to Lantronix tech support to ask for help and got this reply: "The 2600n is one of a handful of HP models that requires a proprietary for which HP cannot provide the source, since it was developed by a third party. The 2600n is the only one of that group for which we were able to reverse engineer the appropriate plug-in. However, in order to gain this support, you will need to update to the latest beta firmware." I gritted my teeth and installed the beta firmware as instructed. Who cares as long as it works, right? Well, it didn't work. Pages printed at half their regular size and the colors were washed out and almost invisible. I got another suggestion from tech support to switch to a black-and-white-only driver, but that didn't work at all. At that point, I gave up and returned the device to Amazon. On a positive note, tech support was great. I dealt with people who clearly know their product well and tried hard to help me. I appreciate that! Unfortunately, I wasted a lot of time trying to get the setup going because their website incorrectly said that my printer would work with it. If it wasn't listed as supported and I bought it without researching first, then I would've given the device 5 stars for build quality, ease of setup, and great tech support. I don't like that I was deliberately mislead into buying something known not to work, though.

Let me start by saying that I purchased the xPrintServer with high expectations. I originally had print sharing setup on my Vista desktop. I had several problems with this (mostly centered on difficulties of working with various OS'). Although the iOS printing looked nice, I was primarily wanting to get my printer to play nicely with Vista, Windows 7, Mountain Lion, Gentoo, and Kubuntu all at the same time (yeah, I have a diverse household). More to the chase, when the product arrived I found the installation very straightforward (plug in printer to device via USB, plug in ethernet cable, and plug in power adapter). I went to my wife's laptop with Mountain Lion first. Setup was as simple as it described and the OS found the printer instantly. My Vista desktop required installing Bonjour, but after doing so it found the printer without any trouble. My kubuntu installation (on my laptop) actually had the printer listed in the printers list before I even needed to search for it. There are still several other devices I will test, but so far I'm very impressed. The only downside I've found is that there is a long pause between hitting 'print' and the printer actually doing anything. I'm looking into it now, but it took almost 5 minutes (not an exaggeration) for anything to print. This is the only reason I'm not rating this a full 5 stars. The setup was extraordinarily simple, the printer list is as versatile as CUPS is able to provide, and the device seamlessly communicated with every device I've thrown at it so far. I'm impressed, but the slow printing is a big concern. If you're looking to be able to connect devices to your printer (or printers, as it can communicate with up to 8 printers if you have a USB hub connected to it) without much hassle this product will work well for you. I would suggest, however, to look into whether new drivers/firmware/settings can be updated to help it print faster (I expect it will happen soon, if not already, but I haven't found it yet). I had high expectations for this little guy, but it only barely didn't hit that mark. **UPDATE** I did end up looking into the slow printing and got a response from their customer support within 24 hours (fairly quick, in my opinion). They did provide a warning that some older printers WILL be slow on a network due to how they process print jobs, but they said this is mostly serial port printers. As mine is a USB connection they suggested I try using a beta version of the firmware (Which is very easy to install, by the way). Within 5 minutes I was printing as though the printer was still plugged into my PC. I'm updating my review to 5 stars. This is exactly what I hoped for and was as simple as I could have wanted it.

I've had the xPrintServer Home for several months now. If I had known what I know now, I would have returned it. This device does install easy and I can now print from all my IOS devices some of the time. I don't print very often and most of the time when I try to print my printers do not show up. I have to go downstairs and unplug the xPrintserver and plug it back in. Then it works. This is very frustrating. It will never work following a power blip or outage without the plug/replug routine. Just be aware that all is not as it should be with this product.