Product:		HP WP100 Wireless Print Server
Manufacturer:		Hewlett-Packard
Price:		$299.99
Review by:		Marc Zeedar

On a lazy Saturday afternoon, Mischief purrs quietly and dozes in his favorite spot by the window. I'm out on the deck enjoying the cool breeze, finishing a design on my Titanium PowerBook. When I'm ready, I calmly press "print" -- and many yards away, in the house, the cat is startled awake as the nearby inkjet printer suddenly begins to feed paper and quietly print the page I sent.

Does that sound like a dream? It shouldn't: the age of wireless is here.

I recently converted to an Airport network, using my SMC Barricade Wireless Router to feed an Internet connection to all my computers. The one limiting factor was that to print from my laptop, I either had to physically connect it to a printer or transfer the file to my mini-tower and print from it.

But now a product from Hewlett-Packard does away with those wires. Connect the WP100 Wireless Print Server to a compatible printer (like the HP 990cse inkjet) and you can print from any Airport-enabled Macintosh within a 150 feet!

The WP100's default is a computer-to-computer network link, but it also supports Airport networks, so once you've programmed it to join your network, you'll be able to surf and print without having to change your configuration in any manner (as well as being able to print to it from multiple computers).

Setup Troubles
Physically the WP100 is extremely simple. It's a small plastic box with a wireless PC card inside (similar to an Apple Airport card). On the back there's a parallel port connection and a test button. There is no on-off switch: the unit is Energy Star compliant and uses just a handful of watts when it's not printing.

Once you've connected the WP100 to a printer, you plug in the AC cord while holding down the test button to reset it and print out a test page. The test page conveniently serves a double purpose as it details the print server's current settings.

The WP100 includes a CD-ROM with a PDF manual and a single application, a program which allows you to change settings on the server. There is no extension or driver required.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get my PowerBook to see the printer. Since there was no software to install, there was little I could do: either my Mac saw the printer or it didn't.

I finally resorted to calling Hewlett-Packard's technical support, which was, to put it kindly, disappointing. First, HP's "free" technical support is a toll call. While that's not the end of the world, for a product that didn't work out the box, that's frustrating. If I hadn't been motivated to get wireless printing working, I might have just returned the unit as broken. At minimum, HP needs a toll-free first call or separate installation help line.

My first call was on Saturday morning, where a recording told me HP was closed and their technical support hours were between 7:30 a.m and 5 p.m. on Saturdays. I'm in California, so I was definitely between those hours. Very odd.

I called again during the week, where I found myself in tech support hell. The toll number I dialed was the one indicated in the WP100 manual -- yet there was no "wireless print server" option in the touch tone menu. When I ended up talking to a human, they said I was in the wrong department and transferred me. So did the next person, and the next.

Finally I complained to a woman who answered, and she told me was "just an operator" and unable to help me. When I explained I was getting extremely irritated at spending a half hour on the phone on my dime being transferred from department to department, she rudely told me, "Well if you're going to have that kind of an attitude, I won't transfer you at all!"

In the end, she did transfer me, but that was a shockingly rude attitude and makes me think twice about ever buying anything with a Hewlett-Packard logo on it.

Finally I reached a very nice tech support man and explained the situation. Though he couldn't help me (like everyone else, he'd never heard of the WP100), he volunteered to get to the bottom of the situation, and promised he'd stay on the line with me until I'd reached the correct department.

Please note: this experience was when the product was first introduced. HP's website now has considerably more information on the WP100, including downloadable drivers for Mac OS X (which work wonderfully), and I suspect more tech support personnel would know about the product now. Also, they've recently introduced the wp110, a model that's compatible with both Windows and Macintosh.

Joy at Last
It turned out that the WP100 is a Mac-only product and thus I had to talk to someone in Mac technical support. Unfortunately, this was not made at all clear in the manual, and there were no menu options for the WP100 in the toll number I was told to call.

My problem also turned out to be simple. When connecting to the wireless printer via a computer-to-computer network, you must name the network correctly. In this case, the proper network name is "Hewlett-Packard" (case sensitive with no quotes). You must also set the channel to 3, which is the print server's default. Of course neither of these critical factors is mentioned in the manual which simply says, "Choose computer-to-computer network and click okay in the dialog box."

(One sad note: when I pointed out this flaw the technician, he essentially shrugged his shoulders and said, "Documentation is not my department." That doesn't give me much hope that HP will fix the situation. I'd have thought at minimum he'd have promised to let someone in documentation know.)

Once we'd established a wireless connection with the printer, it was a simple matter to run the included WP100 Utility and change its settings to "network" with WEP encryption active (and input my encryption passkey).

From that moment on, the WP100 has worked flawlessly. I can surf the Internet wirelessly and print at the same time, without modifying my networking setup at all. It's wonderful.

Printing via wireless isn't especially fast, however, especially photographs or pages with a lot of data (it can take five or ten minutes to print a photo, depending on the size and paper quality). But for simple black-and-white text it's quick and convenient.

I was surprised to discover how many items I was suddenly interested in printing from my laptop: before it was such a hassle to physically connect it to a printer or transfer a file to another computer that has a printer connected, that I rarely bothered printing anything. But with a permanent wireless connection to a printer, I find myself printing useful things like maps and web pages, even phone numbers (easier than hoping I wrote it down correctly).

Summary
The WP100 is a terrific product. It's extremely simple, requires no software, and when it works, it's a delight.

However, the manual omits key information that's vital for getting it working, and dealing with Hewlett-Packard's Byzantine technical support is frustrating and costly. These are simple errors to correct, though, so hopefully HP will include an addendum in the package and alert their tech support that this product exists.

Finally, the WP100 is on the pricey side, especially considering it will not work with just any printer (at first I could find no info on HP's website as to which printers are compatible, but recently they posted this document). If the WP100 worked with any Mac printer and cost a bit less, I'd give it an extra star.

If you already have a compatible HP printer or are looking for a new printer anyway, the WP100 might be just what you need. It's also ideal for a wireless office situation, where the cost could be divided between multiple users.

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