Wireless (air) Printers

[Cootie Brown]

I have an office on the 3rd floor with an old office computer and printer. Whenever my wife wants something printed she emails it to me and I go upstairs and print it off for her. Very inconvenient. Health wise she can’t negotiate climbing stairs anymore.

We were having lunch with our son and future DIL last week. My son printed something directly off of his iPhone. My obvious question was how did you do that? That is how I found out about air printers.

So, I jump on Amazon and find one on sale with good reviews and ordered it. It arrived, I’m admittedly not a computer tech but I can generally figure out how to set up computers, printers, and WiFi, so I was sure I could set it up.

This was an HP printer and I was apparently lucky enough to get a lemon. I accidentally hit Spanish for the language and could not find any instruction for how to go back to factory settings. Internet searches & YouTube videos did not produce a workable solution. I could not get the directory to work at all. I finally gave up and contacted HP directly.

There was a charge for their tech support but their tech couldn’t fix the problem either. I put it back in the box and sent it back to amazon. I also decided we didn’t need an air printer after all. We went to Costco yesterday. At the front entrance a big stack of printers were on sale. A better printer for less money was right there in front of me, so I decided to give it another try.

After all my internet and YouTube searches the day before I figured I had a pretty good idea for how these air printers work. The key is getting them to connect with our WiFi. I took it out of the box today and followed the instructions exactly. I downloaded the HP instruction app to my phone and followed the (simple) instructions.

Some two hours later, I could not get past step 2 in the instructions.The damn printer would not connect to our WiFi. My wife called my son when I said it was going back to Costco. My son came over and I told him what I’d done. My son laughed and said, “Well, the first step is to delete their instruction app and throw away their paper instructions.

It took him about thirty minutes to get it set up and connected to our internet, without looking at any instruction material. It works perfectly. I asked him how he did it without following the instructions. He said the printer will pretty much set itself up it you just follow the steps as they come up on the display. He went on to say if he’d followed HP’s instructions he would never had gotten it to work either.

[Ivy]

Love my air printer!! You can even print off your smart phone.

[Cootie Brown]

Yeah, it’s pretty cool. My wife loves it. I’ve been retired long enough now that I’ve lost track of what’s happening in the tech world. My old network office printer, that I have upstairs, cost a couple of thousand dollars. This new air printer cost $50 and it has more features than my office printer.

I saw a YouTube video, when I was trying to hookup this air printer, and the tech said HP will pretty much give away their printers because they make their money on the ink cartridges. He’s right the printer cost $50 the ink cost $63 at Costco.

[tarheel]

I am kind of in the same boat as Cootie. My office stuff is upstairs also. I guess I am just tight. I'll just continue to have my wife email me what she wants printed and I'll go upstairs and get it. Simple 3 in 1 printer from Costco.

[Ivy]

I am kind of in the same boat as Cootie. My office stuff is upstairs also. I guess I am just tight. I'll just continue to have my wife email me what she wants printed and I'll go upstairs and get it. Simple 3 in 1 printer from Costco.

Nothing wrong with that!! You get exercise going up the stairs...