Lately, there’s been a lot of doom and gloom surrounding the Finish Line Blog. We’ve been talking about serious security implications for computers and routers, and damaging storms and their impacts on our equipment. It’s time to lighten things up a little. As I always stress in these posts, I don’t just make up the subject matter – I write about the challenges I’m faced with in the field…and at home. Today, my father was the inspiration. If you have (or are thinking about buying) an HP Printer and want to print from your smartphone, you might encounter a few headaches. With what I learned at my father’s house, I might be able to help you keep your sanity.
Printers are the bane of my existence. I don’t know what it is, but they aggravate me to no end. My father had an old HP Photosmart printer that certainly fit the bill. Sometimes it would print, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it would spit out a hundred blank sheets. I’m sure many of you can relate. Anyway, he had way more patience with it than I would have had, and only recently decided to buy a new printer. He asked me what to get, and I told him that an HP was the easiest to set up (while cringing when I told him HP after his last experience), and that Canon is sometimes hit or miss. I was at the grocery store one day when he texted me to get my thoughts on a Canon. I didn’t realize he had texted me until I got home. At that point I told him what I thought. He said that it was too late and that he’d bought an HP. The salesman explained how to set it up, and he said he’d try to do it himself and that he’d call me if he ran into trouble. Not surprisingly, he called.
My father is as good a machinist and mechanic as you’ll find. He knows a lot about a lot of things, but technology isn’t in his wheelhouse. I give him credit though for trying to keep up. When you initially set up an HP printer, HP recommends going to https://123.hp.com/us/en/ and entering the model number of your new printer. From there you’re taken to a download link so the correct driver and associated software may be installed on your computer. Alternatively, you can download the HP Smart App on your smartphone or tablet and install and manage the printer that way. I told my father to install the printer the old fashioned way and download the driver via the link I posted on his laptop. We were able to install the printer on the network over the phone without too much trouble. I then told him to grab his iPhone and try to print and e-mail. Of course, no AirPrint printers could be found.
Next, I sent him to the App Store to download the HP Smart App. After he finally remembered his Apple ID password, we were off to the races. Through the app we were able to see that the printer was available on the network (and it worked from the laptop), but he still couldn’t print from his phone. At this point, he was frustrated, and I waved the white flag and decided I had to go to his house to see what was going on. When I got there, I again opened the app, but noticed that we needed to confirm his location. In order to do that, we had to enter the latitude and longitude at his house! That was a first for me. I grabbed my iPhone and opened the Compass app which comes with any iOS device. If you don’t have Compass on your device, you can get it from the App Store. On an Android device, search for Compass on Google Play. When you open the Compass app, you’ll see the coordinates listed. After I entered them into the HP Smart App, dad’s phone finally connected to the printer, and we were able to print anything we wanted to without needing to go through the HP Smart App again.
I hope you found my story entertaining! Keep in mind that this was extremely condensed, and I removed all of the four letter words that flew during the installation. If you’re ever in a bind trying to get a printer to print from your phone, see if you can enter your coordinates. It worked for us!