Thursday, December 13, 2007

Netgear PS121 Print Server - USB to LAN

The Netgear PS121

Easy to Use: The external USB interface makes connecting as close to a no-brainer as one can get. The ports, ethernet, the USB, and the power and none of them look similar enough to each other for home users to even connect cables to the wrong ports. The Smart Wizard install assistant makes it fast and simple to install on all latest and popular versions of Microsoft Windows. You can manage the print server or servers remotely with an easy, Web browser interface. Once setup, you can share a USB printer on your LAN without ahving to share your computer.




Ordering Part Number (United States) : PS121NA


The Netgear PS121 Printer Compatibility


Printer Compatibility List - http://kbserver.netgear.com/kb_web_files/n101216.asp

Sorry for such a long delay since my last post. I know many of you have been wondering what happened. I have a simple answer, I had to work in the Hawaii islands for a customer and unfortunately, after work hours were not spent blogging about computer components and my experiences with them. The project I was working on in the Hawaaii Island went great.

Yes, you heard right, Hawaii - it was ... awesome.


So back to the regular old stuff, not like there wasn't any of this in Hawaai but it's different there. A sustomer had gone tot he local retailer and picked out a print server for his USB printer. Well, actually picked it our for him online and told him what to get next time he was at the store. That's neither here not there.... So he has this print server from Netgear, the PS121 model, that's to replace the HP JetDirect that took a dive. That jet direct lasted a long time. It's one of the old dark grey 3 port jet directs.



The PS121 has DHCP enabled to pick up an ip address automatically once plugged into the network and to power. Now you may be thinking, if you've done enough of these little dopey devices, how am I going to find the ip address to connect to it. Well, Netgear has done the right thing. They provide on the cd a neat little utility to find the ps121 and it does very well in fact. Once found on the LAN, you can configure it with a static ip address. The Netgear utility that comes on the cd finds the Netgear ps 121 print server and connects to it allowing a reconfiguration of the IP address.





The other really nice thing I liked about how Netgear thought this little printer server gem out, was that you can configure the computer that's going to use the printer over the network with a local TCP/IP port. Yes, aside from the first computer, I did not run anything from the ps121 installation cd. That was great. I just added the printer to all the other computers in this small office and was done.

Netgear PS121 Print server. So, if your looking for a print server for your USB printer, look no further. For about 40 to 50 bucks (that's USD bucks, please check you local currency rate exchange for your costs...) , you can have any printer on the LAN. Take the the USB cable out of the computer and plug it into this little network printing wonder.



For PC Remote Support Software - https://www.4remotesupport.com/

Desktop Support Software - https://www.4remotesupport.com/

Computer Remote Support Software - https://www.4remotesupport.com/







3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those little print servers are great. They're cheap and they install in minutes - literally.
I needed to share a printer for several computers that were far enough apart from each other that using long USB connectors would have been sloppy and sharing the printer from the networked computer desktop, though it would have worked, meant I had to have the computer that had the shared printer powered on all the time to support the computer without a printer. With this server, I was able to network to the other computers. They all can now connect to it over the network.

Anonymous said...

The PS121 by Netgear is a great buy if you need to connect several desktops to a single printer. I used this print server in my home. I had three computers and a single printer. I didn't print that often to need another printer, or worse a printer per computer, so I just wanted use the same device for all three computers. This allowed me to network the three desktop computers to enable printing without even having to share the printer off of one of the computers for the other remote computers to access. This meant that I also didn't have to keep one of this systems constantly on as I would have if it were a shared printer on one of the desktops. Another plus for using a network solution versus a shared solution is that if another user signs into the system that has the computer attached to it the share has to be re-created for that desktop user's profile.

Anonymous said...

Thanks to your review of this print server I was able to buy three of them with confidence they would all work. The purchase was a clients whose computer desktops and servers I support both on site at their office and remotely via desktop support software that gives me the ability to remotely access and connect to their computers, desktops and servers through the web.

I put three of their USB printers on the network and shared them from a server. Everyone was quickly able to access those printers at any time with worrying if the computer they were previously attached to and shared from were powered on and onlien.