D-Link DPR-1260 RangeBooster G Multifunction Print Server

At home, I have the most basic windows wireless network possible. Nothing fancy -- I do that all at work. I just want stuff to work so want the easy route. So I got an HP LaserJet 1018 -- a home USB model, similar to some we have at our office, and this wireless print server. It was not terribly bad to set up, assuming you know a lot about networks, wireless, and so on. The "wizard" is quite lame, and the diagnostic support is non-existant (no errors, or logs, or anything to help tell what's working or not). I was able to get it working fine with my wireless network without too much pain, but the last (presumably simple) step of plugging in the printer to the USB port and printing resulted in one of two states: either the print job just stuck in the print queue, or (after scanning the support site and trying a suggestion for a related printer) would just print into nowhere. No errors, no messages, no nothing. I tried with another printer and had exactly the same result. I sent detailed info to the support email address, and got a single "try this and report back" message in response, two days later (not even an attempt to solve, just to diagnose). It was far easier to return this bad product to Amazon than to do further battle. I suggest you look elsewhere and save yourself more than a few hours.

I purchased this unit with some trepidation as many of the wireless print-server reviews, including for the D-Link DPR-1260, indicated many strange problems and printer compatibility issues. Still, this unit had the best reviews, and before I bought it, I verified that my old HP Deskjet 5740 color printer was supported. D-Link's web site has full lists of supported equipment, something many vendors didn't provide. When I received the box, everything was inside: the server, the antenna, the wall wart, quick-install guide, miscellaneous mounting attachments, and CD. The quick-install guide supported Windows 2000 and Windows XP. I used the XP instructions with my Vista laptop without issue. I connected the print server to the laptop via the provided Ethernet cable, configured it to connect to my wireless-g network (WPA protected), and rebooted the print server. It connected to the network without issue. I did not use the CD at all (the instructions didn't prompt me to, either). Then I disconnected my DPR-1260 from my computer and let it function solely on the wireless. I then connected my printer. The printer was detected immediately. I followed the instructions to install the printer on my Vista laptop through the DPR-1260's web interface. The "installation" downloads an EXE file that sets up the raw socket port and creates the printer (no add-printer wizard to go through). Once set up, I printed a test page and it worked. I did not have a single problem with my printer. I gave the product 4 stars (I'd really like to give 4.5) because I also have a Mac and Linux machine and neither the instructions nor the website give any information for either of those platforms. The D-Link provides both raw-socket print capabilities and LPR/LPD queues. I was able to quickly Google and find the LPD setup procedure for a Mac online and use those instructions for both the Mac and Linux machines. D-Link should provide some basic instructions for the Mac or some generic LPR/LPD instructions. It would take maybe half a page of their quick-install guide. It's not entirely obvious how to do it. Not only did the unit work out of the box, but it's also very simple and clean looking. It can lie flat as pictured. It comes with a snap-on stand so it can stand vertically (how I have it setup). It also comes with screws and small drywall anchors for mounting the unit on a wall or under a desk. The unit is about the size of your hand, so it's unobtrusive, and it's black and silver finish doesn't stand out in a modern office. All in all, this was a great purchase.

Looking at the other reviews, I was a bit skeptical. However, for me the printserver worked like a charm - well kind of. Its true that the instructions aren't one of the best I have seen out there. But if you are a little "Handy" with computers, the setup is fairly simple. There are a few things to keep in mind (some of them are obvious but I will list them anyways): 1. Ensure that your printer is supported - look at the list of printers at the D Link site. Other printers may also work, but then you are taking a chance and you don't want to come to the review section later with a one star rating. 2. Don't forget that the MAC ID of the printer is on the box and if you have a secure wireless setup with MAC filtering, you will do well to include the server's MAC ID in the security setup of your router as the first step in the setup. 3. Can't believe I did this - my first computer was setup in a flash while the printserver CD in the CD ROM. When I went to other computers to setup - it just won't work, even when the CD was in the CD ROM. Well, you need the printer CD (not the printserver CD - which has just the dcouments) in the CD ROM. Well, then how did it work for the first computer. Becuase, that machine already had all the printer drivers as the printer was locally attached to it. Duh! Apart from keeping the above in mind, the setup completed with ease. All the machines can print wirelessly and perfectly. And it comes with a little plastic platform, to stick it to a wall (though I did not use it. With $20 rebate, this thing is a steal!

Well, as the title mentions, I did get this print server to work with my Dymo LabelWriter 450 TwinTurbo printer - so I'm actually pretty happy with it. It also works fine using WPA2 security on my network. The setup was somewhat of a pain, so I figured I should briefly go through some of the steps I had to go through. None of the D-Link auto-config tools will work with the x64 version of Windows 7, so you should probably steer clear of this product unless you're pretty familiar with setting up network devices manually. Before getting into the step-by-step instructions for how I got the DPR-1260 to work, I should mention that mine didn't ship with the latest firmware. The funny thing is that the "newest" firmware was released in 2004. The included manual says it was printed in 2007, so I'm not sure why the firmware wasn't updated... *** Wireless Network Connection *** This device connected just fine to my wireless network using WPA2 security. Here are the steps I followed to get it working: 1) First, I plugged the DPR-1260 into my network using a standard network cable (instead of wireless) and let it pick up an IP address from my DHCP server. 2) I determined which IP address the DPR-1260 was using by looking at the reservations in my DHCP server. You can also access it using the name "dlink-xxxxxx", where the x's represent the last 6 digits of the MAC address. 3) I logged into the DPR-1260 directly from my web browser at [...]. (The DPR-1260 is shipped with no password - so just hit enter when prompted.) 4) From there, I setup the wireless setting to attach to my network with WPA2. Once configured, I rebooted and unplugged the Ethernet cable. The DPR-1260 apparently uses the same MAC address for both the wired and wireless connections because it came up on the wireless with the same IP address. 5) Finally, I setup a DHCP reservation so the IP address of the print server won't change. *** Printer Setup *** I struggle for a bit on this, but here are the steps I followed to make my printer work without the D-Link setup utility: 1) Go to your web browser and look at the "Device Info" page from the DPR-1260. The setting you will need to remember is the "LPR Queue Name". 2) Open the "Devices and Printers" dialog and click "Add a Printer". 3) On the "Add Printer" dialog, click "Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer". 4) After it says "No printers were found.", click "The printer that I want isn't listed". 5) Click "Add a printer using a TCP/IP address or hostname". This is the last obvious step... 6) Type in the IP address of the print server - DON'T TRY TO GET IT TO CONNECT DIRECTLY TO THE PRINTER. 7) On the "Additional port information required" dialog, click "Custom" and then click "Settings..." 8) On this dialog, you need to select the LPR protocol, and then set the "Queue Name" to the name you got in step #1. Then click OK. That's it! Finish out the wizard and you should be good to go. *** Conclusion *** Although I'll admit the setup process is a hassle, and the directions are poorly written, the DPR-1260 does work pretty well if you can get it configured. If you've setup some of the old-school network routers that didn't have auto-config utilities, then you can probably get this working too. Overall, I'm giving it 3 stars. Basically, it works fine (with a printer I'm SURE they never tested with), but it's a pain to get setup.

Have had this item for 1 year, 2 months, used it very little (it's a print server for my home network, and we've printed maybe 20 times during that time frame). I've had it on a UPS the entire time, so it had clean power, and I had it in a large room so the temperatures were never excessive. By rights, this device should have lasted several years at least under those conditions, but it's just decided to do the "flashing green power light" of death, from which not even a hard reset will recover. Now I have a brick and a sour attitude towards D-Link. I'm not sure why I keep taking chances with hardware from this company - every single item I've bought from them has been a disappointment.

Pros: Combination wireless 4 port USB print server, scanner interface, and single port bridge. So far, the bridge's single ethernet port has worked flawlessly. Printing, once I got past the configuration nightmare, works great using a Kyocera FS-1010 laser printer and a HP-6110 Office Jet MFP from either Win XP or Linux/CUPS. Supports scanning for some HP and Epson products, but not all. Check the D-Link web site and users' web reviews to see if yours is supported. Ditto for printers. Works with some "problem" printers that other USB print servers either can't handle at all, or handle poorly. This unit replaced a D-Link DP-311U that had to be reset after every print job on my FS-1010. A SMC 2621W-U wireless print server would not work at all with that particular printer. Supports WPA and WPA2 encryption. Anything less is really not secure. This has allowed us to retire a separate WEP encrypted wireless system that we used just for printers. Works with most OS's, including Linux. Once it is set up, it doesn't know or care what operating system you are running, at least for printing. Cons: Absolutely the worst setup possible. Out of the box it only works with DHCP. No default fixed IP whatsoever, even after a timeout. Wireless encryption must be off. SSID must be "D-Link" This thing's setup requires that your wireless network conforms to its requirements, instead of the other way around. It is absurd. Scanning is browser based, not HP or Epson native, and it doesn't work properly with all browsers. Linux is worse than Windows. IE and Firefox worked OK for me on Windows, Opera did not. Nothing was 100% on Linux. Scanning resolution was less than the scanner was capable of, even at the highest setting. White tone scans to a light blue color. Completely inadequate documentation. Most of the set up info in this review is either not mentioned, or is buried in useless garbage. Nothing at all on browser javascript requirements for scanning. User interface inadequate. There is no signal level indicator. You can't tell how well the unit is receiving, other than the wireless LED id lit. The printer wizard doesn't always provide an error message when it is unable to function. It just returns and sits there silently. The pages require a manual refresh to update. It does not work properly with all browsers. No telnet interface. [ If you don't understand that, you won't care; it's a command line thing. :-) ] Other Points Typical Of Wireless Print Servers, Neither Pro Nor Con: It can't work with so called winprinters, also known as GDI printers, or host based printers. These cheapies lack internal smarts, and rely on Windows for ALL their processing. That's not D-Link's fault. Ink level reporting and fax functions of multi function devices aren't supported, as D-Link states. The USB ports are for printers only. They can not handle other USB devices. A printer driver has to be installed on every PC on the network for EACH printer connected to the print server, unless there is no need for a particular PC to print to a particular printer. A printer instance (print server connected printer) also has to be created in the Printers and Faxes folder, or its equivalent, on each PC. This can be a lot of work and seems to be frequently misunderstood. The Basics Of How To Set Up A DPR-1260: This is the stuff that is either missing or not readily apparent in the documentation. 1. Your network MUST have a DHCP server running. If you don't know what this means, you almost certainly have one running already. 2. Either set your wireless to unencrypted and broadcast an SSID of "D-Link" (caps matter) OR connect an ethernet cable between your DPR-1260 and your router/hub/switch. I recommend the latter. That way, it's less likely that you will end up with your print server connected to your neighbor's unsecure-default-settings D-Link based wireless network, which is entirely possible. 3. If you DID NOT use the cable method, the wireless LED on the unit MUST be on solid to proceed. That indicates that the DPR-1260 has associated with your (you hope) wireless network and can get an IP via DHCP. If not, recheck steps 1 and 2. 4. Follow the Install Guide's procedure for connecting to the print server, which might work, OR log into whatever box has the DHCP server and note which IP was served to the DPR-1260. Paste the IP into a browser to bring up the print server's user interface, which will work. If you have the print server cabled to the network, you should be able leave it there for the rest of the setup (except firmware updates) if you like. Otherwise, connect a PC to the print server's ethernet port. 5. I strongly recommend that you assign a fixed IP to the print server, so that you can always find it with a known IP address that can be bookmarked. Naturally, I also recommend you use WPA encryption or better on your network, and change its SSID to something other than D-Link. 6. If the printer wizard doesn't work properly, reduce the security settings on IE. Other browsers don't seem to work here, BTW. The print server will download a windows executable, which will run on your PC and set up a wireless printer instance. It works best if you install a standard driver first, so you may have to temporarily move the printer to the machine first, or vice versa. Linux users use CUPS, instead. It is much, much easier. Final Thoughts: The javascript that drives the user interface shows a lot of errors on browsers that can report that sort of thing. It appears that D-Link has written the scripts for Internet Explorer instead of using standards based code. They need to fix this. They also need to fix the ugly light blue/gray that passes for white in the scans. My unit came with firmware v1.20. I updated to v1.21. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the update did not reset the unit to the factory defaults. Hopefully, further update releases will improve scanning and the UI. This is badly needed. D-Link should absolutely provide a documented default fixed IP after DHCP timeout in the next software release If you have a D-Link based wireless network running no security and all the original default settings, the DPR-1260 will probably work right out of the box, and you will think it is wonderful and give it a five star rating. ;-) On the other hand, if the last paragraph doesn't describe you, then you have some degree of work ahead of you. How much depends on your networking knowledge, and to some degree, how well we users have written our reviews, which is a good indicator of how poor the documentation is. Two stars for the functionality it does have. Nothing for setup, documentation, or user interface. Our wireless is almost 100% D-Link. Nevertheless, they have convinced me to look elsewhere for wireless products in the future. No wireless device should require that the network be made insecure in order to install it, even temporarily, and nothing should be so poorly documented.

After looking into all the reviews for other wireless multifunction print servers, the DPR-1260 had more positive feedbacks. Not to say that it didn't have it's fair share of negative ones. I took a slight leap of faith and went ahead and purchased it since I'm not new to networking devices. The package from amazon was delivered pretty quick, something like 2 business days. I'm impressed. Anyways, like most have stated, the manual and d-link support site offered very little guidance on how to set this product up. Everything seemed irrelevant to the problems I was running into. Sometimes I wonder who are writing these manuals, definitely not the people who designed and built this product. You would think to have a bunch of product testers write the manual and have a combination of technological inclined and not so inclined users go through the motions of setting it up using the manual. Ok ok, i'm done venting. With that said, the dpr-1260 was not that hard to set up. I just plugged everything in. Set up the UPnP and SDDP Discovery Services (found in Administrative services) to have it run automatically. Went to My Network Places and made sure that the device showed up. Double clicked on it to "invoke" the dpr-1260's setup page to show up in the web browser. Luckily for me, the device detected my HP D145 Officejet Multifunction printer right away. Now what the manual failed to mention was how to setup the printer on your actual computer. To do this, I went to "Add Printer" somewhere in the Control Panel window. The important part is to make sure that in the wizard, you choose Local Printer, uncheck Automatic Detect, click next. Then in the "Select a Printer Port" window, choose "Create a new port" and in the pull down menu choose TCP/IP Port. Next. When it asks you what IP, make sure to enter the IP address that your router's DHCP server gave your DPR-1260 (should be the IP address that you use to view the DPR-1260 settings). All in all, once set up the device works great and the scan function although very basic, works. I'm giving this product a 4 star because I'm not going to blame the device, but the manual writers. Hope this helps somebody.

This wireless print server is one of the easiest that I could find to set up and configure. Of course, as with most any wireless print server, you have to know your way around home networking basics. But if you do, setting this up should be a snap. I used mine with a Dell laser printer and liked the ease of use so much that I went ahead and bought another one to replace a Netgear print server that was used to connect an older HP printer in a different part of my house. Both of these are set up using WPA security on my home network. Now, once set up, both keep on running without needing any resetting on my part. The Netgear needed resetting from time to time, and anytime I added a new printer or a new computer to my network it was a pain to reconfigure everything. With the DPR-1260 all I have to do is point the web browser to the IP adress of the server, or find it using My Network Places in Windows, and I can set up a new computer in a matter of seconds. The config software resides on board the server and can be accessed through your web browser. I find that using IE Explorer works best in running the on board software. Having the config software on board means that I don't have to go search for the software CD to install a new printer or set up a new computer to use a printer attached to a print server. I have used these successfully with Win 2000, Win XP and Win Vista without any problems. I have not yet installed two printers on the same server so I don't know how that will work, but presumably that should be a snap as well. As for range, well...one is situated about 15 feet away from the wireless router, and the other is in the far end of the house on a different floor, and I have had no issues with wireless connectivity so far. All in all, highly recommended based on my experience.

Having used various DRP-1260 over the years there are bound to be lemons. It is old tech but is simple and usually doesn't fail. My recent purchase drops its IPv4 address (static and DHCP) and fails after 2 days running. Not sure if the seller would actually support within 30 days but they for sure won't anytime after that.

moved into a new place and my wireless router/modem are in the basement, but I wanted the Printer (Lexmark E232) on the main Floor where my wife and I do our work on our computers. It was pretty quick to set it up and get it up and running. Hooked it up to my router using a cable then i used the URL that dlink provides you. Went into the control panel, set a static IP address and connected it to my already setup wireless network using the Wireless setup on the DPR-1260. Disconnected all the cables and went back to living room, connected the DPR-1260 to the printer using USB port and set my laptop up. Installed driver on my laptop using the Lexmark E232 driver already on the system (Windows 7 Pro) and installed it as a Network Printer. Set the IP address and done. Now able to print from both my laptop and my wife's laptop. Dlink has a list of printers that this server works with and mine worked no problem even though it wasnt on the list. Upgrading the firmware to the latest stable firmware from dlink never hurts either.