Samsung 1630 W
I was out shopping with the M-I-L to be the other day and we decided to buy her a printer.
The SAMSUNG ML-1630W looked the business. Cute, black, wireless, quiet and it doesn't look like a printer.
Great, we thought.
Yesterday, I took it round to her house to install it.
Things did not go well.
Firstly, I missed the "Quick setup" instructions, as they looked like a liner rather than anything useful. When I did finally discover them, they had nothing novel on them anyway. (Certainly nothing useful like - "Do you see that thing that looks like an Ethernet cable in the box - just be aware that it's actually a cross-over cable won't you")
Secondly, the supplied Ethernet cable is a Cross-Over cable. Useful. Of course, this took a long time to work out. (Look at page 8 of the booklet, under "Resetting Factory Default Values" - it's there)
Thirdly, there was no General User guide supplied in printed format - although there was a booklet about how to do advanced stuff like wireless network printing in the obligatory 27 languages.
Fourthly, as I did want to do the thing wireless, I tried to follow the instructions in the booklet. First thing to do is, and I quote, "... pressing and holding the Stop/Clear button of your machine as the LED display cycles through until it reaches RNC."
There are no buttons on the device at all. There is an on/off switch and there are a couple of catches to open paper and toner trays, but not a single button. As it turns out, there's a touch sensitive pad at the front right. This is the Stop/Clear button. You can tell this, because there's a circle with a triangle inside it embossed in the plastic. If you load the CD-ROM and navigate down three directories to find the manual as a PDF file, it is actually explained on page 1.4. More fool me.
Now, "as the LED display cycles". If you let the thing settle down (and it doesn't repeatedly reboot itself) then, if you leave your finger on the pad, it cycles through "RSD", "RDP", "RSI", "RER", "RNC" and then stops on a flashing "T". Letting your finger off the pad whilst one of the "R*" options is displayed means that the selected report will be printed (eventually). To confuse you, the display shows "00" when you let go. Maybe a minute later a bit of paper pops out and the display changes to "01".
RSD: Configuration Report
RDP: Marketing gack
RSI: Supplies Information Report
RER: Error Information Report
RNC: Network Configuration Report
So, we print a Network Configuration Report, so that we know the IP address to go to to get to the SyncThru Web page. This is where we can set the wireless settings.
During my abortive attempts to understand what "as the LED display cycles" actually meant, I tried leaving my finger on the Pad as it powered up. That did weird things. I don't recommend it.
So, I had a machine that was repeatedly re-booting itself. Very annoying. It was doing this disconnected, connected via USB and connected via Ethernet. Somehow I coaxed it back into stable life and tried again.
Now I got to the SyncThru page. "Network Settings" - "Wireless". Ooops, no "Wireless". Being thoroughly hacked off with the machine by now, I called Samsung. They made me read out the Model number from about 4 different places and then told me just to take it back as it was obviously broken.
So, A broken machine, that's fair enough, mistakes happen. But discovering this was really hampered by a non-intuitive user interface and an almost total lack of instructions. My guess was that somebody decided not to provide the basic user guide to save some pennies, but this meant that the thing was almost unusable. Why they printed the advanced booklet (which a techie would easily find on the CD anyway) which assumes that you understand the contents of the basic booklet (which isn't printed out) I do not know.
Is it a good printer. I don't know. But it has managed to annoy me enough to resurrect my blog.
The SAMSUNG ML-1630W looked the business. Cute, black, wireless, quiet and it doesn't look like a printer.
Great, we thought.
Yesterday, I took it round to her house to install it.
Things did not go well.
Firstly, I missed the "Quick setup" instructions, as they looked like a liner rather than anything useful. When I did finally discover them, they had nothing novel on them anyway. (Certainly nothing useful like - "Do you see that thing that looks like an Ethernet cable in the box - just be aware that it's actually a cross-over cable won't you")
Secondly, the supplied Ethernet cable is a Cross-Over cable. Useful. Of course, this took a long time to work out. (Look at page 8 of the booklet, under "Resetting Factory Default Values" - it's there)
Thirdly, there was no General User guide supplied in printed format - although there was a booklet about how to do advanced stuff like wireless network printing in the obligatory 27 languages.
Fourthly, as I did want to do the thing wireless, I tried to follow the instructions in the booklet. First thing to do is, and I quote, "... pressing and holding the Stop/Clear button of your machine as the LED display cycles through until it reaches RNC."
There are no buttons on the device at all. There is an on/off switch and there are a couple of catches to open paper and toner trays, but not a single button. As it turns out, there's a touch sensitive pad at the front right. This is the Stop/Clear button. You can tell this, because there's a circle with a triangle inside it embossed in the plastic. If you load the CD-ROM and navigate down three directories to find the manual as a PDF file, it is actually explained on page 1.4. More fool me.
Now, "as the LED display cycles". If you let the thing settle down (and it doesn't repeatedly reboot itself) then, if you leave your finger on the pad, it cycles through "RSD", "RDP", "RSI", "RER", "RNC" and then stops on a flashing "T". Letting your finger off the pad whilst one of the "R*" options is displayed means that the selected report will be printed (eventually). To confuse you, the display shows "00" when you let go. Maybe a minute later a bit of paper pops out and the display changes to "01".
RSD: Configuration Report
RDP: Marketing gack
RSI: Supplies Information Report
RER: Error Information Report
RNC: Network Configuration Report
So, we print a Network Configuration Report, so that we know the IP address to go to to get to the SyncThru Web page. This is where we can set the wireless settings.
During my abortive attempts to understand what "as the LED display cycles" actually meant, I tried leaving my finger on the Pad as it powered up. That did weird things. I don't recommend it.
So, I had a machine that was repeatedly re-booting itself. Very annoying. It was doing this disconnected, connected via USB and connected via Ethernet. Somehow I coaxed it back into stable life and tried again.
Now I got to the SyncThru page. "Network Settings" - "Wireless". Ooops, no "Wireless". Being thoroughly hacked off with the machine by now, I called Samsung. They made me read out the Model number from about 4 different places and then told me just to take it back as it was obviously broken.
So, A broken machine, that's fair enough, mistakes happen. But discovering this was really hampered by a non-intuitive user interface and an almost total lack of instructions. My guess was that somebody decided not to provide the basic user guide to save some pennies, but this meant that the thing was almost unusable. Why they printed the advanced booklet (which a techie would easily find on the CD anyway) which assumes that you understand the contents of the basic booklet (which isn't printed out) I do not know.
Is it a good printer. I don't know. But it has managed to annoy me enough to resurrect my blog.
posted by pfh | 7:19 AM
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