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.

I purchased this xPrintServer as hopefully an answer to my prayers of getting my Canon MF4370dn printer to be able to accept AirPrint. Well to sum that up...it doesn't. yes the server found my printer, it installed the drivers (well it installed Canon MF9200 series drivers) and I was able to see it on my AirPrint button, but when I would try to print from it. FAIL!!! So, I updated the firmware to be able to use with iOS 7 (which I use) and still nothing. After getting on the phone with technical support, this is when the guy on the other end tells me that, "When they first release the Lantronix that had almost a ton of Canon drivers, but after releasing it to the public, it was quickly realized that Lantronix didn't support Canon." I asked why to which he replied "Canon uses a proprietary driver software that Lantornix doesn't support (GOT ME on this one) and that my printer may have been a supported printer at first, but now it's not." Ok, I can accept this. I not disappointed, my printer is a great Multi-Function network printer, just not capable of AirPrint. So I told him that I just open this product 30 min ago and it's not working. He told me that he can take down the serial number and get a RMA together for me to send it back. that he will also send me a email to confirm the return has started and also the printer Label. I was impressed with Lantronix at this point. So far in the 45 min I have owned this product, the device was plug and play (Just didn't support my device), technical service answered the phone and it was a clearly speaking English man, and hey they even tried to get me started, explained why I couldn't use this product and was ready to send me the RMA. Well at this point is when I realized that they will be getting a 2 star rating. Shortly after hanging up with Lantronix I received this email, Hi *-OMITTED NAME-*, I apologize for the misinformation on the phone. I was under the impression that you had just received the unit and unboxed it this afternoon, and therefore owned it for less than 30 days. Did you purchase this device directly from Lantronix? Based on the serial number, our database tells us that this device had left our warehouse last 13 August 2013, and is way past the initial 30-day no questions asked return policy. It also shows that it was purchased from one of our distributors, not from Lantronix. I'm regret to tell you that we are unable to help you further with this issue. Please contact the company from which you purchased the unit and arrange for a return for refund with them. Regards, Pat LANTRONIX Technical Support Engineer 167 Technology Drive, Irvine, CA 92618 Phone: 800-422-7044 or 949-453-7198 I was like, WOW!!! I purchased this on Friday of last week, got it Tuesday of this week and it left their warehouse last 08/13/13. Ok I admit that this was a pre-owned model and yes I was not the original owner, but I did receive it and owned it for less then 45 min. So to me how was the original purchase my problem. Lantronix didn't want to stand behind a product that didn't work with my setup. So I am sending it back to Amazon and suggest to anybody with a Canon Printer that they should call Lantronix customer service first to see if their Printer is truly support otherwise you could be wasting $100 and they (Lantronix) will not take it back if you bought it form Amazon.

It is printing well to my old network printer, an HP LJ 4plus. However, it did not play well with my router, which is a Westell Model 9100EM which is what Verizon FIOS supplied. The xPrintServer could not pick up an IP address from this router using DHCP even though all the rest of my devices (computers, iPads, iPod touch, Kindle Fire HD) and my guests' devices worked fine with this router. I had a Linksys E3000 on my shelf so I connected it to my network and put it into router mode. The xPrintServer picked up an address right away from that Linksys. So I temporarily put a computer on the same subnet with the xPrintServer and gave the xPrinter server a static IP address on the Westell router's subnet. Then, when I put it on the Westell router's subnet everything worked fine. But it did not discover my printer on its own. I had to tell it what drivers to download and give the IP address of the printer. So I am giving the xPrinter 4 stars because it is not flexible enough to pick up an IP address from my main router and secondly because it didn't automatically find my printer as advertised.

I did my research, made sure that this product was compatible with my printer and placed my order. Amazon got the item to me in 2 days(fast), I read the instructions, installed the unit as per instructions, all seemed to be going smoothly, the X on the top of the unit turned orange and pulsed slowly(like it should) but low and behold my printer would not print from my ipad. I got online and looked up Lantronix, got to their help line and what do you know, it was past their business hours. I called Lantronix the next day, got hooked up with a gentleman named Kevin, he was very helpful but a little over my head on the computer lingo, he tried to help but of course I was at work and my printer and Lantronix device were at home so he emailed me some instructions to try when I got home. I tried doing everything that I had been instructed to try but I could not get the Lantronix print server to acknowledge my ipad or my husband's iphone. I wanted this device to work but in the end I returned it to Amazon(easy process) and got all my money refunded. I now have a printer with eprint capabilities and had I known before how easy it was to hook up and have my wireless devices (ipad, iphone, laptops, etc..) connected I don't think I would have messed around with the Lantronix print server. Two good things from this experience were, The folks at Lantronix are extremely helpful and follow through until the end and Amazon, once again proves that they can be trusted when they say easy returns! Thank you Amazon !

I purchased the Lantronix xprintserver home version so I could print from my iPad3 & iPhone 4S. This device works BUT only under certain circumstances. If you have a Verizon Fios wireless router IT WILL NOT WORK. In order to make it work you have to spend another $50 and buy an additional wireless router ( in my case Netgear). You than have to connect the Netgear to your Fios router and than it works. When wanting to print from my iPad, I than have to go into settings on the iPad, and switch from the Fios to the Netgear router. This is a real pain. The tech support from Lantronix were knowledge and helpful, but they agreed that they knew about the problem with Fios, yet no where is this mentioned either at Amazon or any Lantronix specs. It would have been cheaper for me to buy a new Airprint printer rather than go through this whole work around. At the end of the day I will keep the lantronix & Netgear as it would have been more trouble than it is worth to return everything. So, if you have Verizon Fios, do not buy this product. Lantronix needs to solve this problem as there will be more and more Fios routers coming on stream. One star for at least getting good tech support.

My environment: - iPad 3, iPhone 4, MacBook Air 2013 - all with current iOS or OS X versions. - Windows 7 laptop - Windows 8 laptop - HP Color LaserJet CM1015 Printer; USB only connectivity. - wireless 802.11g networking - wired 100BaseT Ethernet networking For several years, a 2007 vintage iMac has been serving as my print server on my home network. That system has begun to fail, and also having the need to print from iDevices without buying software like FingerPrint, I was pleased to see that some vendor was thinking about this. I removed the xPrintServer from its packaging and plugged it into the USB cable for my printer and into my wired network. Then I plugged in its power cable. My network assigned it an IP address at which point I took action to configure the IP as static on my home router so that the xPrintServer gets the same IP address every time even if it reboots. I also enabled multicast and UPnP on my wireless and main routers. Following that, I logged into the xPrintServer via a web browser pointed to its assigned IP address. I used the default credentials provided in the xPrintServer user guide. I ensured that only my CM1015 printer appeared as a valid printer - no others were in the list. I made some other configuration changes and restarted the xPrintServer. Following the restart, I attempted to print emails from my iPhone and iPad. All worked well and very quickly. Have to create/add this printer in OS X and Windows, and that process was quick and straightforward. Printing worked as expected. All in all, this saved me some time and money instead of pursuing a way to implement a print server using TomatoUSB with a USB capable wireless router (would need to buy a new one). And I would not have as much confidence that it works because Lantronix publishes a list of printers that the xPrintServer will work with. It fulfills the role of print server for all of my devices. And I can keep plugging along with a Linksys WRT54G router that I have had for almost seven years now running Tomato. No need to upgrade yet. I am not sure this will support scanning over a network but that is not a huge dealbreaker as I don't need that very often.