# Does your wireless printer EVER wake up?



## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

So, I have this Lexmark Pro 901 wireless printer. It prints great...scans great...copies great...but it's an Eco compliant device, so it goes to sleep to save power. I'm being gracious when I say sleep...cause I can't find an electronic way to wake it up. Lexmark says that's how the ISO standard for Eco compliant devices is stated...HUH???? Folks have told me that the device "wakes up" when a print job arrives....cept, in "sleep" mode, the damn WiFi light goes off and it's not connected to the router.


As far as I'm concerned, it's off. I have to go to the printer face and push a button to wake it up. It wakes up...connects to the router...after a minute, I'm ready to print. It takes a while for the network to understand the printer is there. Frankly...that's NOT what I expected. I expected to have a wireless printer that I could print to whenever I wanted without having to walk over to it.


Does everyone have this same experience with their Eco friendly wireless printers? .... or am I just screwed?


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## John J (Dec 29, 2007)

I have a brother MFC 490 cw. It does everything, Scan Fax Print it sleeps most of the time. It comes to life when I receive a fax, and when I go to print something. I have three desktops and two laptops linked to it. 

Some times when there is a power failure I have to go and re start it. but not that much. 

JJ


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## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

I also have a Brother - a color laser. It too wakes up automatically whenever I print something.


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

Do those printers have the Eco rating????


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

JJ and Dwight, are your printers wireless? I think the problem here is the wireless part going to sleep. 

BTW, I HATE wireless printers, they are a pain in the butt. 

Greg


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Posted By Mike Reilley on 08 Nov 2011 08:07 PM 
So, I have this Lexmark Pro 901 wireless printer. It prints great...scans great...copies great...but it's an Eco compliant device, so it goes to sleep to save power. I'm being gracious when I say sleep...cause I can't find an electronic way to wake it up. Lexmark says that's how the ISO standard for Eco compliant devices is stated...HUH???? Folks have told me that the device "wakes up" when a print job arrives....cept, in "sleep" mode, the damn WiFi light goes off and it's not connected to the router.


As far as I'm concerned, it's off. I have to go to the printer face and push a button to wake it up. It wakes up...connects to the router...after a minute, I'm ready to print. It takes a while for the network to understand the printer is there. Frankly...that's NOT what I expected. I expected to have a wireless printer that I could print to whenever I wanted without having to walk over to it.


Does everyone have this same experience with their Eco friendly wireless printers? .... or am I just screwed?


From what I can find, this is a deficiency of this printer - it's mentioned in some of that printer's reviews.

The ECO requirement for printers relates to the use of environmental friendly material, to quote from one article:

_There are a number of product groups that have agreed to include the Eco Label. These encompass cleaning products, clothing, DIY paints, electronic equipment, floor covering and furniture. Currently printed paper products are being reviewed and it is expected to be agreed 2012/13. To qualify for such a label the printer will be restricted to certain types of paper and the inks and other consumables that can be used. These will exclude chemicals with certain hazardous risk phrases and definitely any chemicals that are designated as being environmentally hazardous.







_

http://www.fespa.com/new-community/...g-fact-or-fiction.html?print=1&tmpl=component


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## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

JJ and Dwight, are your printers wireless? I think the problem here is the wireless part going to sleep.Yes, it's wireless. Works terrific! In fact, I've been moving stuff to a new Win7 64-bit mobile workstation the last couple of days, and I just now finished installing the printer driver/software and sent a test page. The printer woke right up and printed it just fine. Still need to get my remote access to the shop working.


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By krs on 08 Nov 2011 09:53 PM 
Posted By Mike Reilley on 08 Nov 2011 08:07 PM 
So, I have this Lexmark Pro 901 wireless printer. It prints great...scans great...copies great...but it's an Eco compliant device, so it goes to sleep to save power. I'm being gracious when I say sleep...cause I can't find an electronic way to wake it up. Lexmark says that's how the ISO standard for Eco compliant devices is stated...HUH???? Folks have told me that the device "wakes up" when a print job arrives....cept, in "sleep" mode, the damn WiFi light goes off and it's not connected to the router.


As far as I'm concerned, it's off. I have to go to the printer face and push a button to wake it up. It wakes up...connects to the router...after a minute, I'm ready to print. It takes a while for the network to understand the printer is there. Frankly...that's NOT what I expected. I expected to have a wireless printer that I could print to whenever I wanted without having to walk over to it.


Does everyone have this same experience with their Eco friendly wireless printers? .... or am I just screwed?


From what I can find, this is a deficiency of this printer - it's mentioned in some of that printer's reviews.

The ECO requirement for printers relates to the use of environmental friendly material, to quote from one article:

_There are a number of product groups that have agreed to include the Eco Label. These encompass cleaning products, clothing, DIY paints, electronic equipment, floor covering and furniture. Currently printed paper products are being reviewed and it is expected to be agreed 2012/13. To qualify for such a label the printer will be restricted to certain types of paper and the inks and other consumables that can be used. These will exclude chemicals with certain hazardous risk phrases and definitely any chemicals that are designated as being environmentally hazardous.







_

http://www.fespa.com/new-community/...g-fact-or-fiction.html?print=1&tmpl=component 
Thanks....you got me looking in another area. It could be the router I have...a NETGEAR 3700. There are reports on the NETGEAR forums about my printer NOT waking up...and it being a possible router problem associated with the Guest Network feature. I turned that off and we'll see if that improves anything.


I'm still hoping to find a solution short of cycling the power on the printer...which does restore communications. The weird part of this is that the printer shows up as attached on the router pages....but not as an attached device on the Windows pages. 

I need to do more testing, but there is a method described in one of the blogs on how to reset the wireless on the router...which causes communications to be restarted. That might be a workaround to me having to hike into the shop to get to the printer...then waiting a few minutes for it to reboot.


One the Eco front, the tech at Lexmark told me that there is an ISO requirement now for the Eco label...one that deals with power saving...not just environmentally unfriendly chemicals. I questioned that...and he was firm. Now, after reading the blogs, I can tell that this "doesn't wake up" issue is well known at Lexmark. Perhaps, the tech was instructed to give me the ISO excuse. I noticed that Lexmark shut their blog down...looked like there was a lot of pissed off customers because of this issue...and the printhead...which I've fixed...I think.


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## aceinspp (Jan 2, 2008)

Well I have an HP wireless printer and it works great. Later RJD


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

Don't worry, it won't for long. Been through 3 HP printers in the last five years...that's what led me to this Lexmark. All of my HP printers just crapped out...stopped working...zonk. Something went wrong inside and they wouldn't boot anymore...and I've had better conversations with walls than I've had with HP tech support. I KNOW I'm done with HP printers...still trying to figure out if the problem I'm having is with Lexmark's printer or Netgear's router.


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

I had a Lexmark printer that was costing me up to $12.50 per page to print. It was a wet ink system and I printed only one or two pages per month and every time I wanted to print something I had to go buy a new print cartridge to the tune of around $12.49, since the old one had crusted over and no amount of soaking in various solvents would open up the pores to let the ink out.

I now have an HP dry ink (laser printer) printer and my cost is down closer to $0.10 per page, since I have printed just over 1000 pages so far and had to replace the black cartridge at about $89.00 for it. I also can print color, but I keep that to a minimum since the 3 color cartridges are a bit more expensive -- $95.00 each.

I just wish I could get it to work over the home network.

The drivers for it won't work in Win 7 (and no clue if they will ever be updated) so I have to keep an old XP machine next to the printer and use memory sticks to transfer files to it, so your having to go cycle the power on your printer seems to be a much simpler thing to do. I have to "print" the data that I want on paper, first to a PDF (Adobe format) file, then copy that to a memory stick, then go turn on the printer and the XP PC and wait for it to boot while the printer warms up, then plug in the memory stick and print the file, and when done, I shut all of it down again since the printer draws up to 7 Amps to keep the fuser warm (not to mention the power required to run the computer!) and I cannot afford that kind of electrical bill just so I can waste a piece of paper printing something once or twice a month, that I will probably throw away in a few days (or have to reprint when I find the inevitible error I have made in typing the information).

Yes, I could link the PCs on the home network, but I would still have to go turn on the print server PC and the printer when I want to print and I'd still not be able to use the interactive program to read the printer status (it won't work over a network... dunno why!), so I just keep plugging away using the sneaker net to transfer files for printing.

Besides...The hassle of printing is enough to keep my printing costs down to a minimum.


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## krs (Feb 29, 2008)

Mike - 

I would call Lexmark support again - yu probably get some other technician and you can see what he/she has to say about that problem. 
If they give you that ECO BS again, I would just quote from the Net article I posted above - that ECO ompliance has nothing to do with connectivity or even anything electrical. Maybe the previous tech was thinking about Energy Star. 
I had a problem with my internet connection and it took me four calls to tech support until I found someone who finally agreed it was a problem on their end and he fixed it in a few minutes. 
Some of these techs don't know what they are talking about or are just plain lazy or have been told by the company not to admit to any deficiencies in their product. 
I bought an Epson Workforce 600 AIO a while back and hooked that up wirelessly. 
Worked fine for all functions except one couldn't read USB sticks and/or SD cards which was one of the capabilities. That worked with USB but not wireless. 
Then needed another printer and ended up with an Epson Workforce 610, hooked that one up and the wireless connectivity to read USB sticks and SD cards now worked the way it should have on the 600. 
Point is that manufacturers do make design errors and they are not keen to have hundreds of thousands of units shipped back so they come up with some strange justification why the way something works is correct or at least acceptable. 
I use WiFi on the printer because running a USB cable isn't practical. I assume it's similar in your case. The printer is located away from where you are. 
So having to walk over there to keep turning it on defeats the whole purpose of having a wireless connection which, you can argue, you paid more for. 

As I said in my first post - this sure sounds like a design deficiency in the product, I would expect the manufacturer to fix that unless there is something specifically in the manual that this is correct operation. 
But even then - manufacturers need to tell me about quirks like this before I buy - like on the outside of the package - not after the fact.


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## stanman (Jan 4, 2008)

No wakeup problem with either HP printer. One of them - Photosmart D110 - has ePrint capability. I even print to it from my iPad.


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Semp, did you try: 

1. compatability mode 
2. XP mode 
3. a virtual XP system 

on your win 7 computer? 

Greg


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## Semper Vaporo (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Greg Elmassian on 10 Nov 2011 08:33 PM 
Semp, did you try: 

1. compatability mode 
2. XP mode 
3. a virtual XP system 

on your win 7 computer? 

Greg 

Since I only have Windows 7 Home Premium I do not qualify for the XP compatibilbity utilities. I can upgrade to Pro, but that takes dollars that I don't want to part with. There are some 3rd party tools, but so far I have not found one cheap enough to try that will work.

Not only that, and I admit I have not tried recently, but back when I got Win 7 and found that my printer would not work I found several blogs and forums that mentioned this problem and none of them indicated any success with any of the compatiblity utilities at that time.

Considering that I still don't print but once or twice a month, my present method works well enough, and since it does present a hassle, I don't print unless I am really sure I "need" to, so I will probably leave the whole mess like it is until the printer breaks (or I cannot get cartridges for it anymore) and have to buy a new one. Then maybe the new one will work with Win 7, but I bet by then I will have a new computer (twice over) and will be running Windows 9 or Q or some other whoopteedoo name and then the printer I get will not be compatible with that system.


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