Month: February 2011

Just bought a new HP LaserJet CP1525nw color laser printer for my home office. My wife and I have been making due for many years with an ancient HP inkjet printer that I had got second hand. Went it comes to needing something nice printed we relied on going to Kinkos or wherever. However, even small jobs end up taking more than 30 minutes at those places, so I finally decided that we needed to upgrade. And I wanted a laser printer because of the output quality and the more-practical toner cartridges as opposed to the unreliable and low-output ink cartridges.

You have to be a bit more selective when shopping for a printer when you are running Linux. But HP provides good drivers for their printers on Linux, so I looked at their offerings and found a too-good-to-be-true color pinter priced at $200 on sale at a local office supply store. I had originally planned on getting a black-only laser printer to avoid the high-cost of color laser printers, but prices have come down considerable since I last looked a few years ago. And the concept of a small printer that is network-ready is altogether new to me, but a great feature and one that lends printers to be more and more independent of any given operating system.

The HP LaserJet CP1525nw has turned out to be a very good choice for any home/office set up, but especially one running Linux. The HP packaging certainly doesn’t make it apparent that this machine will work with Linux, but it does just fine. Below I will provide a few pointers on getting this printer up and running on your home network.

The minimal printed documentation that comes with the printer is a joke. It basically instructs you how to plug your printer into the wall, then to your computer or router and then, with an illustration, how to put the provided CD/DVD into your computer’s optical drive. It’s ridiculous. No surprise the software auto-setup is only provided for Windows and Mac OSX. Fortunately, the setup is completely unnecessary.

The No-Bullshit Way To Setup Your HP CP1525nw For Wireless Printing

1. Unpack the printer, remove the tape and stuff and plug it into a power outlet. Check the built-in LCD monitor and wait for the printer to complete its self-setup.
2. Connect the printer to your router via ethernet cable.
3. At this point you might need to navigate via the LCD and printer buttons to the Network setup. It’s a simple menu tree that you navigate via clicking the arrow buttons and clicking OK. Just connect via Ethernet and use DHCP. It should connect itself to your network.
4. Once the printer connects to your network it will display its IP address on the printer’s built-in LCD screen.

5. 

   Enter that IP address into a web browser on a computer that is on the same network. After you click enter you will be presented with a web-based administration interface for your printer.

6. Click on the “Networking” tab.
7. Click on “Wireless Configuration” on the left-hand options.
8. Status should be “ON”
   Configuration Method should be “Join an existing network”.
   Network Name should present a list of available networks. Click on yours.
   Authentication should be set according to your network
9. Click APPLY and disconnect the wired connection to the router. The little wireless light on the front of the printer will start blinking as it connects to your router wirelessly. Once the light is solid the printer’s new IP address should be displayed on the built-in LCD display.
10. On your computer try adding the network-available printer. There is lots of documentation out there to do this for the most popular Linux distributions. I won’t repeat those instructions here. The HP Linux driver that’s currently available does not specifically include support for this model, but just look for the latest HP CP15XX model number and it will work fine.

That should be it. You should be able to run test prints and confirm that your printing settings are all correct. Hopefully this is helpful.

Addendum

If you like to pinch pennies like me, you probably turn off your printer when it’s sitting idle for long periods of time. I discovered that, using the DHCP mode, sometimes the printer would get a different IP address. This might not be a problem for some networks, but for me it would cause my Ubuntu desktops to automatically add a new printer at that different IP address.

To resolve this issue all you have to do is:

1. Set a Fixed IP Address
   If you know that your two or five computers on the network are relatively low in the IP range, pick an IP address for the printer that will most likely not interfere with other systems. Something like 192.168.1.50 would probably work. Regardless, decide on a number for the printer.
2. Configure the Printer’s IP Address
   From the on-printer LCD screen and simple navigation button, go to
   Network Setup > TCP/IP Config > Manual
   You can set the IP address with the left-right arrow and the OK button.

With that set up, your printer should be able to reconnect to the wireless network and every time you turn the printer off and on it will always have the same IP address.