I don’t recommend wireless printers

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I think the idea of a wireless printer is magical. You set up your printer on an end table in your living room, it attaches to your router and you can magically print to this printer, WITHOUT WIRES!! This is all fine and great. But watch out. Here comes the disclaimer: Expecting this to work out flawlessly over the long term is like wishing to win the lottery. Forget it.

Here’s what happens: Most wireless printers ask your router dynamically for an address to join the Internet. this is called DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. And the router gives your printer an address. Then a driver is installed on your laptop or desktop that knows the address your router has assigned to the printer. Here’s the catch: When you have a power outage, like we all do occasionally, your router may not necessarily assign the printer the same address. This fouls things up completely. And the routines to fix this type of problem don’t work reliably. Sometimes you can get it to work and sometimes you can’t without taking drastic steps such as reloading operating systems. And you can spend hours talking to printer manufacturer support.

So don’t. If you have a laptop you can set up a desk with your printer and a USB cable that sticks out for attaching to your laptop. this is a much better solution than relying on wireless printing.