You need to buy one of these: my new love affair with the Brother HL-2270DW (thanks, @minimalmac)

About a week ago, I read a post on @minimalmac about a wireless laser printer that Patrick bought on Amazon for $99. It seemed too good to be true but, when I checked, the printer was still there at that price. I hemmed and hawed of course, long enough for it to disappear but, a couple of days later, I bought the HL-2270DW which is, as far as I can tell, the same printer with a different name for about $5 more.

It arrived yesterday and I installed it just now… what a pleasure! (There’s a phrase I never expected to use in regard to wireless networking!) I chose the Super-Geek-Setup-Method, just to see if I could actually get this fresh-from-the-box printer to work without a USB or ethernet cable and, while it was too complicated for my parents, it worked just fine. 

Aside: I loathe wireless devices that require plugging a laptop in just to set them up. The whole point of a wireless access point or printer is that I don’t want to plug in cables. Making me plug my MacBook Pro into an access point just to install it obviates the reason for having it in the first place! (Which is why my Belkin access point is still not configured to extend my wifi network. But I digress…

The printer’s setup process was straight-forward. I plugged it in to power and printed a test page then stuck the included CD-ROM into my MacBook Pro. I followed the steps, leaving my home network to join the ad-hoc SETUP network the printer created and printing two more test pages full of dense networking mumbo-jumbo to get it working. But, really, all I did was follow the instructions and now it works!

The printer claims 27 ppm and does full-duplex printing which, with five kids printing out homework, should save us some money in paper. We still have to keep the inkjet all-in-one around for scanning and faxing, but this will become the family workhorse and I couldn’t be happier. Thanks, Patrick, for the recommendation!