HP Web Jetadmin

HP Web Jetadmin is HP’s enterprise tool for printer management. It is free though, so i gave it a try. Turns out it really is an enterprise tool, and much too convoluted for SMB use. I like that it has the ability to at least manage some features from printers made by different manufacturers (in my case, Lexmark). You don’t see that every day. I can’t give a full review of the product, because i only invested half an hour in it, only to find out that it is too big for our environment.

It offers all the features one could possibly need – it can monitor toner, media, configuration, time firmware upgrades and can even be used to configure and maintain print servers. With all these features, deployment of this tool is most likely not going to be a short process. You’ll need to invest a few days to find out about all the kinks, functionality and integrate it into your environment meaningfully.

HP Easy Printer Care

HP Easy Printer Care is HP’s Small Business printer management tool. It only supports up to 15 printers, which is not a problem if you’re a small business that uses workgroup printers. For companies that are using a printer on every desktop, 15 might be too low.

The software is meant for use on a desktop computer, not on a server. I see this as a bit of a drawback, as we usually use Microsoft Small Business Servers at our smaller customers, but you can also install the software on a server – it just can’t send emails and notifications (though most of the larger HP printers can mail notifications!).

The tool can not manage the printer firmware, which is a huge drawback. But it allows easy configuration of several settings even by end users, which are sometimes intimidated by the printer menu or the printer web interface. It also allows rudimentary printer accounting on selected (not all) printers (If you’re looking for a more complete printer account software, i can recommend PaperCut NG).

While i think that Web Jetadmin is overkill for any SMB, Easy Printer Care is sometimes too light on functionality. But i like it’s end user oriented design. If HP adds a few nudges to EPC (like mail, firmware management and minimal third party printer support), it could very well become a good tool for SMBs.

HP Download Manager

Using HP Download Manager is like stabbing a fork into your eye. It’s not pleasant, and after the pain stops you’re blind. Okay, so this might’ve been a bit colorful, but the point still stands. This software is junk, mostly because it doesn’t work. HP Download Manager is a firmware management solution for JetDirect print servers that are either stand alone or embedded into printers. It can’t manage printer firmware, which HP Web JetAdmin can.

Internet mode is broken since ages, there are numerous references about this on the web. Using Wireshark, a web server, and the hosts file will get the software to at least download firmware, but it won’t be able to install the software, complaining about “no firmware file”. It could download the file just fine, and manually applying the file using the JetDirect Webinterface worked just dandy.

As such, i can’t recommend this tool. Don’t install it, it doesn’t work right, and will probably eat your eyes.

Conclusion

HP’s Easy Printer Care is a step in the right direction, HP Download Manager doesn’t work, and HP Web Jetadmin is most likely overkill. My hope is that HP improves Easy Printer Care, allowing it to takeover the functions that HP Download Manager should do.

A customer received a new HP LaserJet Color P4005n about two months ago. Everything worked as expected, and everyone was happy. But when the customer printed some full size booklets, he noticed that the content wasn’t centered correctly, and roughly 7mm off to the left side.

I arrived at the customers site, and used a testing document – sure enough, the center was 7mm off. I couldn’t explain this to myself, so i started with the usual routine of upgrading drivers and printer firmware, which didn’t fix the issue.

I checked all the printer and page size settings, but in the end i was sure that everything was configured correctly. Then i started the printer’s web interface, and the solution became obvious immediately:

Someone has adjusted the x/y tray adjustments (see screenshot to the right) – probably to adjust for some special labels to be printed.

In hinsight, the solution is obvious, very obvious. But i’ve never encountered the symptopms before, so this stumped me for a few minutes.

We’ve primarely used Lexmark err IBM printers before, like the InfoPrint 1532. The first and most important difference between the IBM and the HP printers is the tray numbering – HP usually counts the multipurpose tray as “Tray 1″, while IBM counts the first real tray as “Tray 1″. This is especially important for users which are not accustomed to this. In fact, i still prefer the naming scheme IBM/Lexmark used here, it just so much more intuitive. One of the reasons for moving away from the IBM printers are the slightly higher cost, but also the exorbitant delivery times (a normal IP1532 can take up to a month, while Also usually has all HP printers on stock and can ship overnight).

In a System i environment, it’s important to note that HP offers their own IPDS modules for these printers, though these didn’t work as expected. We usually ship our HP printers with an ExcelliPrint license, which can be used even after we’ve replaced a printer with a newer model, thus lowering costs for our customers and still having a high quality IPDS interface from our System i. I’ve written aboute ExcelliPrint before, especially what needs to be done when using OCR-B with ExcelliPrint and HP printers without a builtin OCR-B font.

In a Windows environment, the HP LaserJet ships with rather well done Windows drivers, which is quite the norm for HP’s business printers, and no-frills printer drivers are even starting to appear for some DeskJet printers. One of the features i like most about the HP windows driver is that it allows you to predefine some paper settings on the server, name them however you want, and have them automatically published to all clients. This gives you the possibility to save your office workers time and reduce errors when you’re using some standard settings to print certain documents.