New printer HP LaserJet P1102w works with OSX & iOS

Our old HP Laserjet 1022n has run for many years but since about the time of Leopard a bug appeared in the driver, that still hasn't been fixed, where it will not print every other page sometimes. This drives me nuts.

For $80, at Officeworks, I purchased an HP Laserjet P1102w and after some messing about it's working really well.

First, there is a firmware update that you must install via USB. Second, the wireless setup, which you need to do via a web page configuration while connected on USB is a little non-obvious - particularly the bit where you click a double arrow button move your wireless network over to the left from the scan list.

An HP employee has put a video on Youtube demonstrating this.

Once on Wifi there is a blue wireless light that should be steady.

Now the printer works great on Lion and finds it's own driver. On Leopard I had to install the driver. Best of all I can print from iOS.

As with many printers these days, a toner cartridge costs more than the printer itself.

Important tip - use a static IP address


The printer goes to sleep quite quickly, which is good, but we've had a frequent problem of computers not being able to connect to the printer. What happens is that the printer's DHCP lease expires and presumably because it's asleep, the computers can't find it until you wake it up.

The fix is to allocate a fixed IP address for the printer. Much better now.