xPrintServer Review- Part 1

By Bayle Emlein

What’s in the Box

xPrintServer, 3-foot RJ45 cable; international power adapter; mounting bracket; 4 rubber feet; quick-start guide.

xPrintServer comes in two flavors: “Home” and “Office.” As with many current applications, read “Home” as “basic” or “lite.” Office refers to a configuration such as a small office (any number of iOS devices, up to 10 network or 8 USB printers suggested–USB hub not included). So far this matches my set-up.

The stated purpose of this piece of equipment is to enable printing from an iPad or iPhone. For those not used to iDevices: there is no direct way to print. If you have access to a bluetooth printer that the device recognizes, you can use that connection. Or you can email or otherwise export your document to a computer (e.g., via Google Docs or Evernote) and then print. Unacceptably clunky in the Universe of Apple.

The scenario is that I am trying to print from an iPad 3 to an HP Officejet ProL7680. Because this printer is not in the list of WiFi enabled printers, I need to connect through my computer’s WiFi. The computer is running Windows XP. Page 3 of the Quick Start Guide lets me know that to coordinate an iDevice with a Windows printer, I’ll need to download and install a driver from Apple.

Life in the global economy is so complicated. The carton says, “Designed by Lantronix in California. Made in China.” I’ll have to think about how American that leaves this product. Am glad to see that the US telephone hours reflect at least some time that I’m not scheduled to be at work on other tasks, though now I’m wondering what kind of accent I’ll get if I call the Sales number and which holidays are excluded. Do they celebrate Susan B. Anthony? Malcolm X? Chinese New Year? Each is a valid “holiday” in some part of the Pacific Rim.

The carton is the trade-mark white of a certain set of Fruit-based devices. The lure on the still-shrink-wrapped box reads, “iPad® & iPhone® Printing Made Easy: Print From All Your iOS Devices to Virtually Any Printer!” (Excitement! And capitalization conventions theirs). Android and Windows users, just go on about your business while the iFruit company figures out that some of us do more than ephemeral Tweets.

To be continued.......