Reg Hardware

Comments on: Samsung ML-1630W wireless network mono laser printer

Thought I'd better add... 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 09:17 GMT

Coat

Coyly hinted at throughout the article, but as far as I can see never actually given anywhere - the going rate for this little shiner seems to be a bit over £100.

They're going to edit in a price and make me look like a blind dolt now, aren't they? :(

@All 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 09:50 GMT

(Written by Reg staff.)

A slight coding cock-up ensured the Verdict box was missing from the end of the review. This has now been fixed. Apologies for that.

oooooh shiny 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 10:29 GMT

i like it a lot

i'm trying to find a reason for needing a mono laser printer instead of a colour inkjet, and i can't yet

but when i do, i think i'll be getting this one

Limited printing 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 10:33 GMT

Thumb Down

I downloaded the user guide to see if Linux is supported and yea, they supply Linux and Mac drivers! Then I noticed a warning on page 4.3. This thing won't print envelopes!

A nice looking printer for home/small business but it won't print envelopes.

That immediately relegates it to junk status. I'm not sending out business stuff in hand-written envelopes.

Linux? 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 11:08 GMT

IT Angle

Having had oooooooooooooooooooooodles of printer problems with Linux the million dollar question is whether this thing will work on a predominantly Ubuntu network

@ Limited printing 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 12:32 GMT

I've always found it fiddling to feed envelopes into any printer. Easier to use window envelopes, or a dedicated label printer.

agreed on the wifi setup 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 16:17 GMT

I got a Samsung CLP310 color laser a few months ago - US$196, incl tax and free shipping - rather nice-looking compact black unit, fairly light for a color laser @ 27 lbs., fairly quiet, too.

Have to agree with the rather painful wifi setup. The 'easy' setup didn't work, due to the printer being assigned a strange default IP address - a 191. iirc rather than the standard 192. that most home networks use.

Had to use a crossover ether cable (fortunately, supplied) to connect it directly to my PC, then use a little program on the install CD to manually assign a new address. Then I could at least see the printer.

However, the web-based interface refused to correctly load the Settings page to set up the wifi info (WPA passkey, etc.), returning an error message, using IE6 on w2k; using IE6 on XP did the trick. Still not sure why that should make a difference, unless it's some .NET thing.

Once set up, it works a charm.

B&W printing quality is, as on your reviewed model, lovely. Color is ... meh (and pokey, @ 4ppm) but, hey, it *is* color.

CLP-510, Ubuntu 

Posted Friday 14th November 2008 19:35 GMT

I've got a CLP-510. Unlike the CLP-310, it's a bit of a boatanchor (check out online photos, it's like twice as big and probably 10x as big as the ML-1630W). But, I got it for like $250, color, duplex, works well for me. Don't know about the ML-1630W, but the CLP-510 uses a Xerox print engine. Ubuntu has a driver for it, when I used it about a year ago the color was a little off (I think that's fixed now). Samsung *also* has a binary-blob Linux driver for their printers, which hooked into cups nicely so it just shows as another choice of printer model (my recollection is the Ubuntu-supplied stuff was listed under "Samsung" and the company-supplied were under "SAMSUNG" 8-)

Since I'm on an Ubuntu box I looked, ML-1630 is listed. 1630W isn't, but it appears that's just the 1630 with wireless. JBR, I think you're in good shape!

2 to 3p a sheet? 

Posted Monday 17th November 2008 09:32 GMT

Ouch. Even our all-in-one ink jet does better than that, albeit using non-Canon cartridges. Bet it's better at photo-printing too. Sure, it'll be slower, but you don't buy a laser like this one for high volume printing where speed really matters.