networking

We need to buy a new printer

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Photo of the HP Deskjet All-in-One F2140 printer

Here’s a photo of our current printer. It’s a HP Deskjet All-in-one F2140, and I think it dates from around 2008. Suffice to say, it predates the computer that it’s connected to, has been through several house moves and periods in storage, and even predates my relationship with Christine. You can also see how much dust is on top of it, and I’ll admit to having to shift a pile of documents stacked up on top of it to get the photo.

Okay, so we don’t use it very often. But having a printer is useful from time to time, and we use the scanner every now and then. Christine and I recently scanned all of our qualification certificates, so that we had electronic copies on hand in our shared Dropbox folder.

So why the need for a new printer? It still works, and we can still get hold of new cartridges easily.

The issue is networking.

Christine’s new laptop

Christine recently bought herself a new laptop – a very lightweight Lenovo Ideapad 320S. She’s doing a part-time university course, and her previous laptop bought in 2010 (when we first started dating) was getting too slow. It’s also big and bulky compared with what you can buy new nowadays. As she will need to print from time to time, she tasked me with setting up the printer on her laptop.

Our HP printer isn’t wireless, and so it’s connected to my Mac Mini (also dating from 2010) by a USB cable. I’ve been using Apple’s Bonjour network sharing protocol to share it across our Wifi network. For Windows, Apple offers a Bonjour Print Services utility that will discover any printers shared using Bonjour. And on Christine’s old laptop, this worked fine.

But I couldn’t get it to work on her new laptop. I think the core issue is that Apple last updated the Bonjour Print Services tool in 2010, and so it pre-dates Windows 10 by some time. Her old laptop was set up under Windows 7 and so was fine. Despite following my own printer sharing guide, and manually installing HP’s Windows 10 drivers, I could not get the Bonjour Printer Wizard to complete without failing with a permissions error (even when running as Administrator).

Whilst my Mac is generally on all of the time, it’s probably about time that we replaced it with a proper wireless printer. To get it to work with my iPhone and iPad, I’m using Printopia, which works okay but it’s a bit of a hack. Having a proper wireless printer, which works with all of our devices (Windows, Mac, iOS and Android) would be a big improvement. Especially when it comes to scanning, which we can currently only do on my very slow Mac.

A custom solution?

New wireless printers start at £30, so it wouldn’t be a big expense. In fact, it’d be about the same price as buying a new Raspberry Pi and setting up some kind of bespoke solution. Which, whilst appealing to my geeky side, would probably take a lot of the very little free time that I have nowadays. Plus, there would be the added ‘fun’ of trying to find a way of scanning documents on the Raspberry Pi, and then have them available to use on our other devices. I’m sure it’s possible, but what’s the point when you can buy an off-the-shelf product that already does this?

I could also look at buying a printer sharing hub, but again, the cost would probably be about the same as a new printer. So I might as well just buy a new printer.

We’ll have a look out for any good deals and will buy a new printer soon.

TP-Link Gigabit Powerline Starter Kit review

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A photo of one of the TP-Link Gigabit Powerline adaptors

Today I’m reviewing the pair of TP-Link 1000 Mbps Gigabit Powerline Starter Kits that I bought earlier this year to improve our network at home. If you haven’t already, please read yesterday’s post for some context, although I’ll summarise here too.

My aim was to improve the network speeds on some of the devices that I own, thus freeing up Wifi capacity. I went with Powerline (also known as HomePlug) because it would be less disruptive to install than Ethernet cables.

The TP-Link units were well-reviewed on Amazon, averaging 4.5 stars with over 1000 reviews at time of writing. I needed three adaptors; unfortunately I could only find them in packs of two, and so ended up buying four. At the time, this set me back £80, but they’re now down to £36 for a pack (so £72 for two).

Installing the Powerline adaptors

Setup is a doddle. Each starter pack includes two Powerline adaptors, and two standard two metre Ethernet cables. You plug one adaptor into a wall socket near your router and connect it up with an Ethernet cable, and then use the other adaptor and cable to connect to your device in another room. Ensure the adaptors are switched on at the wall, and your device should connect, just like it would if there was a direct Ethernet cable linking it to the router. Repeat this for any additional adaptors – you can use more than two in the same home.

There’s no special software to install, and unlike Wi-Fi routers, there’s no configuration either. It’s literally just ‘plug and play’.

That being said, each adaptor has a ‘Pair’ button, and it’s recommended that you press this on each adaptor in turn. This encrypts the signal between each adaptor, so if there’s any signal leakage with a neighbour, their Powerline adaptors won’t be able to connect to your network and vice versa. It’s a bit like enabling WPA on your Wi-Fi, and it doesn’t seem to have any discernible effect on performance.

Performance

Speaking of performance, the TP-Link adaptors seem to work well. The speeds and latency are certainly better than I was getting over Wifi. Internet-based tests like Ookla’s Speedtest seem to suggest that I’m able to take full advantage of my internet’s connection speed.

As I mentioned yesterday, our household electrical wiring is of variable quality and I was concerned that the older wiring would affect speeds. This doesn’t look to be the case, and the Powerline signal works across our fuse box to serve different electrical rings.

It is worth pointing out that you ‘lose’ an electrical socket when using these adaptors. This isn’t much of a problem for us; when we had the downstairs rewired, we deliberately installed far more sockets than we needed. If you are short of sockets, then you can pay extra for adaptors with a pass-through capability. They work the same but you can still plug another AC device in; however, they cost £50 for a pair, rather than £36.

Compatibility

As I was starting from scratch, I deliberately bought two pairs of adaptors from the same manufacturer. The good news is that HomePlug is an agreed standard (IEEE 1901), and these TP-Link adaptors comply with the HomePlug AV2 specification. This means that if I wanted to expand the network even further, I could theoretically use any HomePlug AV2 compliant hardware to do so – I wouldn’t necessarily need to buy TP-Link equipment again. As it is, I have a spare adaptor since I only needed three.

Conclusion

I’m really impressed with the TP-Link Powerline units. They deliver a good, fast connection, and have worked well in the couple of months that I’ve had them. Whilst it would have been nice to save a bit of money and buy a pack of three adaptors, rather than two pairs, at least I have a spare adaptor for future expansion.

If you have problems with your Wi-Fi speeds or signal strength – especially if your home is around 100 years old and built of stone, like ours – then Powerline adaptors may be a good solution for you.

Update (January 2025): this model is no longer available, but here’s a sponsored link to some newer ones on Amazon.