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Rating: Summary: Don't waste your time/money Review: An update - I setup another one of these this weekend and it worked very well. This one I ordered from Amazon and it had more recent firmware and software. Additionally, the Hawking site had software and firmware upgrades that I could apply. Overall, much less tinkering, but still a little head scratching. For the price and ease of use with the new and improved interface, this is a pretty good deal.
I'd now rate this a 4 star product, but I can't change that.
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I setup this product for my home use, thinking I may use it for a client too. The documentation is pretty sparse and the CD manual is not easy to read. THe documentation says that this is a multi-ptorocol device. This is actually correct but not in the traditional sense. In this case it appears that multiple protocols are REQUIRED for the server to work. In my case I desired to just use TCP/IP in a windows XP environment. The device appears to follow the Microsoft lead of requiring some type of Netbios to be present.Not all of the admin tools work under XP, but enough work to get it functional. Overall for the cost, it works. It could be lots better but what really can you expect from a device the size of a printer dongle. (If you know what a dongle is, you have been in the business too long, like me. For the uniformed, it is a security device typically attached to the parallel port of a PC to counter software piracy. In this case, the "dongle" is on the printer, not the PC.)
Rating: Summary: Waste of time Review: Good news is that I Saved my Disk Partition before loading ANY Hawking S/W because I couldnt wait to get rid of all my Hawking S/W. After spending many hours trying to get this Print Server to work I gave up... Returning this today! You would think that Hawking would do something with their poor documentation / install after all the terrible comments about install on this product. Did they ever test this install? Never going to buy another Hawking product!
Rating: Summary: Waste of time Review: Good news is that I Saved my Disk Partition before loading ANY Hawking S/W because I couldnt wait to get rid of all my Hawking S/W. After spending many hours trying to get this Print Server to work I gave up... Returning this today! You would think that Hawking would do something with their poor documentation / install after all the terrible comments about install on this product. Did they ever test this install? Never going to buy another Hawking product!
Rating: Summary: Totally Smooth Review: I read the reviews here, but decided to try it out anyway, as it is the cheapest alternative I could find. Having read here and elsewhere about the need to disable WinXP's firewall, I tried to do that before I started the installation. However, I couldn't find it anywhere on my PC, so I decided to go ahead and see what happened without messing with the firewall. I was surprised at how easily this mini server installed. It took me less than 30 minutes to install it on three WinXP machines and one Win2000. I followed the instructions exactly as they were printed in the booklet, and didn't have to do anything extra. Very smooth and very easy. I highly recommend it... at least from my experience with it.
Rating: Summary: Totally Smooth Review: I read the reviews here, but decided to try it out anyway, as it is the cheapest alternative I could find. Having read here and elsewhere about the need to disable WinXP's firewall, I tried to do that before I started the installation. However, I couldn't find it anywhere on my PC, so I decided to go ahead and see what happened without messing with the firewall. I was surprised at how easily this mini server installed. It took me less than 30 minutes to install it on three WinXP machines and one Win2000. I followed the instructions exactly as they were printed in the booklet, and didn't have to do anything extra. Very smooth and very easy. I highly recommend it... at least from my experience with it.
Rating: Summary: Functional but not real friendly Review: I setup this product for my home use, thinking I may use it for a client too. The documentation is pretty sparse and the CD manual is not easy to read. THe documentation says that this is a multi-ptorocol device. This is actually correct but not in the traditional sense. In this case it appears that multiple protocols are REQUIRED for the server to work. In my case I desired to just use TCP/IP in a windows XP environment. The device appears to follow the Microsoft lead of requiring some type of Netbios to be present. Not all of the admin tools work under XP, but enough work to get it functional. Overall for the cost, it works. It could be lots better but what really can you expect from a device the size of a printer dongle. (If you know what a dongle is, you have been in the business too long, like me. For the uniformed, it is a security device typically attached to the parallel port of a PC to counter software piracy. In this case, the "dongle" is on the printer, not the PC.)
Rating: Summary: YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR Review: Setup documentation is missing fundamentally important points (such as, be sure to disable WindowsXP firewall before installing), their Tech Support doesn't answer the phone, online FAQ is dismally short, and their Customer Service does not answer emailed questions. Other than that, the product worked, once a longer-than-necessary trial and error installation process was over.
Rating: Summary: Don't waste your time/money Review: Very bad product. Documentation did not match installation software. Software gave errors. Hawking website doesn't show this model. Tech support wait time in excess of 45 minutes. Tried to push through the installation, and it failed. Returned product.
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