I hate everything about printers. I especially hate the modern printer with bloatware, crapware, spyware, and who knows what else that they are going to push on you. So, since it became apparent that I ought to get a new printer lately, I ended up trying to get a printer going without any of the HP bloatware that occasionally puts up dialog boxes that require me to carefully read through so I don’t agree to some sort of weird billing plan that will eventually brick my printer.
I should note that I live fairly close to an HP facility. The thought did occur to me that, instead of doing the responsible thing and taking it to e-Waste disposal, I could tape a nasty note to it and chuck it over the fence. It would very likely make me feel better, even if it’s quite clear that nobody who is responsible for making decisions at HP can be shamed in any practical way so it wouldn’t do much good there. However, because of the aforementioned HP bloatware, it was way too likely that somewhere there was enough information to be reconstructed encoded within the printer.
I told this to my wife and she said “Wait, you seriously considered it? I thought you were just kidding around!” and I told her that sarcasm was frequently what happens when you wanted to do something but really ought not to.
Anyway, back to the problem at hand.
After looking at the reviews, it looks like the color laser printer that doesn’t suck is, unfortunately, the HP one, so I’m rewarding the crime, but whatevers. A lot of the reviews were all about the M283fdw, but I don’t want the scanner part, so we’re at the M255dw instead and it’s cheaper and lighter and smaller which is all a plus because I like keeping my printer next to me in case it looks like it might be getting ideas so I can discharge a few rounds of buckshot into it to teach it a good lesson.
Did I get distracted again? Oh yeah. Then again, I hate printers.
The page to check out, at least for mine, is on the HP support site in the section on using the built-in-driver but since I’m suspecting the link will break, I’ll cover it here.
- Do the mechanical setup for the printer — take it out of the box, remove the tape, add some paper, and plug it into the wall.
- Turn on the printer. It’ll clank and clatter for a bit and you’ll have to resist the temptation to unload some buckshot into it.
- Select the desired language, the country/region, and then you want it to be set up as a “Self-Managed” printer.
- Open the Setup, Network, or Wireless Settings menu, select the “Wireless Setup Wizard” and then you can select a network and type in the password. It’ll connect.
- If you are running Home Assistant, it’ll discover your printer, which lets you set an alarm to remind you when the toner’s low.
- I was then able on my Windows machine to just go to the Printers & Scanners control panel and it was able to find the printer. It does pop up a menu that will invite you to go to the Windows store and download an app, which you don’t want to do.
- If you want to do any real settings management, you just go to the printer’s IP address and/or use the control panel.