Small Ethernet Print Server

The Hawking Technology Print Server (HPS1P) is a nice little parallel port to ethernet print server that can be configured to make a single printer available to multiple machines on a LAN (local area network). It supports a number of different protocols and can be configured through a web interface, or with a Windows based control application. There are disadvantages with hooking a printer up to a pc to share over a network. First, the pc that shares the printer has to be up and reliable. Second, that pc has to be in a convenient location to the printer.

(And the user of the pc must not mind traffic into their area.) A small print server like the Hawking Print server would be a great solution for someone wanting to bypass the pc connection. They also make usb versions of this adapter. Either USB or Parallel version is smaller than a deck of cards (2 inch square? and maybe 1/2 inch thick.) It uses an ac-dc transformer for 7.5 volt dc input.

All in all this is a nice print server. There are wireless versions available as well. The wired versions are between 50-60 dollars (US), the wireless are closer to $90. I just spent a couple days working with one (to discover what IP address it had been set to) and thought it was worth a comment because it does seem like a nice reliable print server. (The windows-based configuration tool is almost a necessity if you lose your IP address though.)