4 ms·

Just buy one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Silex-SX-DS-4000U2-Print-Server-800MHz-blau/dp/B006D3RCN6/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1444692814&sr=8-6&keywords=silex h

by roel_v 11y ago

Just buy one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Silex-SX-DS-4000U2-Print-Server-800MHz-blau/dp/B006D3RCN6/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1444692814&sr=8-6&keywords=silex http://www.amazon.com/Silex-SX-DS-4000U2-Print-Server-800MHz... . Works awesome, lets you buy the cheap non-workgroup version of pretty much everything (printer, scanner, label printer, ...) and still hook it up to a central server. I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 hooked up this way, which scans directly to Dropbox. Put the scanner anywhere where it's convenient to access, put paper in it, press scan button, by the time you walk back to your desk it's on the dropbox. Order of magnitude improvement over other setups.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
LordHog 11y ago
At ~ $150, that is an expensive solution, IMHO.
- roel_v 11y ago
  Depends what you compare it against, I guess. Seemed like a bargain to me.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    For a third of that price, you can get a box that's also got a built-in ethernet switch and two WiFi interfaces. You're paying a ton for software convenience.
    - cmurf 11y ago
      For example?
    - roel_v 11y ago
      What, a Raspberry Pi (which for that price doesn't have ethernet, wifi or a case for that matter), and on which I'll have to wait 5 minutes before the OCR is done that my central server takes 10 seconds to do; and which requires Windows 10 which didn't even exist when I first got my setup 2-3 years ago?
      - wtallis 11y ago
        Hell no. Just get any wireless router from the past 3-4 years and you've got USB and fast networking on a cheap box, and you can install a print server or usbip server depending on your preferences. That $150 box is probably even using the same 800MHz MIPS SoC as the $50 routers. (And what are you getting at with implying that using a RasPi instead of a turnkey solution would cause Windows-related trouble or require doing the heavy processing somewhere else than your current setup?)
      - laumars 11y ago
        I'm really not sure where you're getting your specs from, but all Raspberry Pi's are a fraction of that price, come with ethernet, and don't require Windows 10. Plus the newer RPi's are quad-core ARM with 1GB RAM, which I'd wager is more than your device comes with. I'm not trying to dismiss your device though. I do believe that it works well. But as another commenter stated, your device is priced up because of the software convenience rather than being a "bargain" in terms of hardware specifications.
  - decasteve 11y ago
    Being able to pdfgrep through years of documents has been a massive time-saver for me. My ix500 paid for itself in time saved and then some. Although, my setup is less than ideal since the ix500 does not play nicely with linux. I scan to a shared folder on my Linux Desktop from Windows 7 running in VirtualBox.
wyldfire 11y ago
I bought one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-2... It's dirt cheap ($10-20), easy to load linux on [1], and it can be a simple file server, it can run minidlna, google cloud print [2], all kinds of stuff. 800MHz is not a screamer, but most simple I/O tasks like A/V streaming and printing are a walk in the park. [1] http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-series-4 http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-series-4 [2] http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-airprint-cloudprint-print-chromebook-cloudprint-printer/ http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-airprint...
- plorg 11y ago
  Similarly, I found a used pogoplug at a thrift shop with a $5 sticker on it. I bought it knowing little about it but suspecting it could be hacked. At the checkout they told me the sticker color indicated it was half off, so it cost me less than $3. With the shipping software the pogoplugs are usually useless secondhand, as the web interface is hidden if you haven't registered the device with the company (and it can't be de-authed without the original owner's credentials). But the administrative interface is still available, if you know the path. Dropbear is already installed, so you can just start it, log in, overwrite the bootloader[0] and run one of several Linux distributions from a flash drive (I use Debian[1]). My unit[2] has a 700 MHz dual-ARMv6. It only has 256MB of built-in RAM, but it's simple to allocate 1GB of the OS flash drive as swap. Last year I picked up a number of old MIDI keyboards a local college was throwing out. I figured they were just old and the college had replaced them with something newer, but they worked fine for me under Linux. So I offered one of them to my brother, and he couldn't get it to work under Windows. Of course, it turns out the device is 15 years old and never had a 64-bit driver. So I've been experimenting with using the Python midistream package to stream MIDI over ethernet to a Windows host. Unfortunately, the package (since subsumed by a project called scenic[3]) hasn't had a new release since 2012. But it still works, and it makes for a pretty fun hack. [0] http://projects.doozan.com/uboot/ http://projects.doozan.com/uboot/ [1] http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044 http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044 [2] https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004TDY924 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004TDY924
xezpeleta 11y ago
You can do the same with a RaspberryPi: http://vmwarebits.com/content/virtualhere-raspberry-pi-usb-server http://vmwarebits.com/content/virtualhere-raspberry-pi-usb-s...
mseebach 11y ago
> lets you buy the cheap non-workgroup version of pretty much everything (printer, scanner, label printer, ...) and still hook it up to a central server. I would argue that this benefit is probably mostly historical by now. These days, the wifi-enabled versions of at least printers is generally within less than $150 of their non-networked cousins.

by roel_v 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

LordHog 11y ago

At ~ $150, that is an expensive solution, IMHO.

roel_v 11y ago
Depends what you compare it against, I guess. Seemed like a bargain to me.
- wtallis 11y ago
  For a third of that price, you can get a box that's also got a built-in ethernet switch and two WiFi interfaces. You're paying a ton for software convenience.
  - cmurf 11y ago
    For example?
  - roel_v 11y ago
    What, a Raspberry Pi (which for that price doesn't have ethernet, wifi or a case for that matter), and on which I'll have to wait 5 minutes before the OCR is done that my central server takes 10 seconds to do; and which requires Windows 10 which didn't even exist when I first got my setup 2-3 years ago?
    - wtallis 11y ago
      Hell no. Just get any wireless router from the past 3-4 years and you've got USB and fast networking on a cheap box, and you can install a print server or usbip server depending on your preferences. That $150 box is probably even using the same 800MHz MIPS SoC as the $50 routers. (And what are you getting at with implying that using a RasPi instead of a turnkey solution would cause Windows-related trouble or require doing the heavy processing somewhere else than your current setup?)
    - laumars 11y ago
      I'm really not sure where you're getting your specs from, but all Raspberry Pi's are a fraction of that price, come with ethernet, and don't require Windows 10. Plus the newer RPi's are quad-core ARM with 1GB RAM, which I'd wager is more than your device comes with. I'm not trying to dismiss your device though. I do believe that it works well. But as another commenter stated, your device is priced up because of the software convenience rather than being a "bargain" in terms of hardware specifications.
- decasteve 11y ago
  Being able to pdfgrep through years of documents has been a massive time-saver for me. My ix500 paid for itself in time saved and then some. Although, my setup is less than ideal since the ix500 does not play nicely with linux. I scan to a shared folder on my Linux Desktop from Windows 7 running in VirtualBox.

wyldfire 11y ago

I bought one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005GM1Q1O/?&tag=bcgpfeed-2... It's dirt cheap ($10-20), easy to load linux on [1], and it can be a simple file server, it can run minidlna, google cloud print [2], all kinds of stuff. 800MHz is not a screamer, but most simple I/O tasks like A/V streaming and printing are a walk in the park. [1] http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-series-4 http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv5/pogoplug-series-4 [2] http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-airprint-cloudprint-print-chromebook-cloudprint-printer/ http://geekvisit.com/hacking-pogoplug-mobile-adding-airprint...

plorg 11y ago
Similarly, I found a used pogoplug at a thrift shop with a $5 sticker on it. I bought it knowing little about it but suspecting it could be hacked. At the checkout they told me the sticker color indicated it was half off, so it cost me less than $3. With the shipping software the pogoplugs are usually useless secondhand, as the web interface is hidden if you haven't registered the device with the company (and it can't be de-authed without the original owner's credentials). But the administrative interface is still available, if you know the path. Dropbear is already installed, so you can just start it, log in, overwrite the bootloader[0] and run one of several Linux distributions from a flash drive (I use Debian[1]). My unit[2] has a 700 MHz dual-ARMv6. It only has 256MB of built-in RAM, but it's simple to allocate 1GB of the OS flash drive as swap. Last year I picked up a number of old MIDI keyboards a local college was throwing out. I figured they were just old and the college had replaced them with something newer, but they worked fine for me under Linux. So I offered one of them to my brother, and he couldn't get it to work under Windows. Of course, it turns out the device is 15 years old and never had a 64-bit driver. So I've been experimenting with using the Python midistream package to stream MIDI over ethernet to a Windows host. Unfortunately, the package (since subsumed by a project called scenic[3]) hasn't had a new release since 2012. But it still works, and it makes for a pretty fun hack. [0] http://projects.doozan.com/uboot/ http://projects.doozan.com/uboot/ [1] http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044 http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?2,16044 [2] https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004TDY924 https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B004TDY924

xezpeleta 11y ago

You can do the same with a RaspberryPi: http://vmwarebits.com/content/virtualhere-raspberry-pi-usb-server http://vmwarebits.com/content/virtualhere-raspberry-pi-usb-s...

mseebach 11y ago

> lets you buy the cheap non-workgroup version of pretty much everything (printer, scanner, label printer, ...) and still hook it up to a central server. I would argue that this benefit is probably mostly historical by now. These days, the wifi-enabled versions of at least printers is generally within less than $150 of their non-networked cousins.