Search This Blog

Sunday, September 16, 2012

New acquisition: Samsung ML-2165w printer

Last week I ordered a laser printer for me in a Brazilian web site (I live Brazil by the way). I made the order on last Monday night and it arrived here last Saturday morning, that's half of the ETA :-) I chose ML-2165w because it is cheap (around USD 125 with shipping) and is wireless. I am not going to print a lot of documents, but some of them contain sensitive data that I prefer to print at home. My brother also own an ink jet printer, but it is usually out of order because its cartridge ink is dry (not empty, the ink is not fluid after several weeks without using it).

It took me sometime to find the correct driver for the printer, believe or not it is on Samsung's website [1] :-) Unfortunately, Gentoo does not come with an ebuild (package) to install the driver. The calculate overlay [2] contains an ebuild to install an old version of the driver (net-print/samsung-unified-linux-driver/samsung-unified-linux-driver-1.01.ebuild), so I copied the ebuild from there to my personal overlay, edit it to updated SRC_URI url to [1], commented the part that install sane configuration, which this newer version of the driver does not have anymore, run ebuild digest comand to calculate the checksums used to check the source code integrity used by the ebuild, installed the new ebuild and voilà. cups-1.6.1 recognised the printer and after configuring it as network printer (URI == socket://:9100) it printed my test document like a charm.

A short review of this printer:

PROS:

. the printer is cheap. However, the toner is very expensive, in some cases more expensive than the printer.
. toner lasts longer than ink cartridges when not used for long periods of time. That is the main reason I bought a laser printer, besides the fact that the cost per page of a toner is better than ink cartridges.
. comes with USB cable. You must be asking why USB cable if it is a wireless printer, well, you need the USB cable to configure the wireless part :-) If you have an access point that supports WPS (Wifi Protected Setup) then you do not need USB cable, that is not my case though.
. it is small and fast.
. it is wireless.
. I think the printing is very good even in toner economy mode.
. it is easy to configure even in Linux :-D as long as you know where to find the driver. As a side note even Win7 does not come with the driver for this printer, I needed to use the supplied DVD to install it in the Win7 that came with my notebook. OBS: when in doubt always reset the  network configuration and start from zero instead of overriding the current configuration. It took me sometime to re-configure the wifi configuration because of that detail.
. I read on the Internet that Samsung implemented the Easy Printer software for Linux as well. That is the software used to configure the printer on Windows. I have not tried it though. I used its Windows version to set up the wireless (wifi) configuration, if you do not have a Windows computer or a special access point that supports WPS you will probably need to install the Linux version of Easy Printer to set up the printer's wifi configuration. I also fixed the printer's IP on my wifi router, so it will always get the same IP from my router's dhcp server.


CONS:

. toner is very expensive.
. supplied toner prints up to 700 pages. That is enough for me, may not be for everyone.
. manual duplex printing, like most cheap printers.
. it consumes a considerable amount of energy (gets hot easily too).
. curles the paper considerably.
. does not come with printed manual, which is available on Samsung's website.
. documentation is a bit confusing regarding wireless configuration. It explains how to configure it but do not explain how to re-configure the wireless part. Repeating the configuration process does not work (it never associates to the access point even though it finds it when scanning) until you reset the printer's network configuration using Easy Printer. That crutial detail is not written in the manual.

[1] http://org.downloadcenter.samsung.com/downloadfile/ContentsFile.aspx?VPath=DR/201110/20111019151150392/UnifiedLinuxDriver_1.01.tar.gz

[2] overlays are like unofficial repositories, usually with unstable programs or data (firmware, drivers, etc).

Monday, September 10, 2012

Plasma NM 0.9.0.5


Plasma NM 0.9.0.5

SHA256Sum: aa7a467f1f2a0e1ad22486381284bfb1350d644d5fcf61f8449c475dbec963eb

Changelog:

307496: Allow empty string in 'Subject Match' and 'Alternative Subject Matches' fields in wifi WPA2 enterprise dialog.
306132: Add storage type combo box for gsm password in GsmWidget.
307517: Fix crash when importing OpenVPN configuration file.
. Enable additional DNS details for IPv4 and IPv6 Automatic Method configuration.
. Added a title and icon to the dialog so that it's clear when it pops up to the user what the prompt is from.
. Fix a bug in which the wireless password prompt dialog would be shown at an incorrect size
. Fix insertion of new connections (such as VPN) in wrong position when no wireless interface is enabled.
303524: fix crash if opening kwallet fails. This fix the crash not the kwallet failing to open.
. Fix problem with system tray icon not showing status overlay.
298974: if a connection is restricted to one interface do not show it for other interfaces in interface details.
305077: Escape ampersands in connection list since Plasma::IconWidget::setText() automatically removes accelerators (ampersands).
. Do not display connections for unmanaged interfaces.
. Do not list unmanaged interfaces in system tray's tooltip.
304873: Read/Save EAP configuration in PPP tab for mobile broadband and bluetooth connections.

The following languages have more than 80% of strings translated:

ca cs da de el es et fi hu it kk km lt nb nds nl pl pt pt_BR ru sk sr sr@ijekavian sr@ijekavianlatin sr@latin sv uk zh_TW

Also read some usefull information about Plasma NM in my past posts.