Alain Fontaine’s Jabberbox

So, today Apple announced their new iPad 2, set to conquer the world. Again. I’m glad to have resisted buying the iPad 1 so that I can now spend the money on the new, better version – as if we needed anything better. Anyway!

When surfing on the Apple website, I also read about the upcoming iOS 4.3 update, which will bring a very interesting featured called Personal Hotspot. It basically transforms your iPhone, or other compatible device, into a small WIFI hotspot that up to 5 devices can access to share a 3G internet connection.

This is great news, because I won’t have to worry about Internet access for me and my colleagues during meetings at customer premises which don’t have guest Wifi access.

This is probably one of the best feature addons since I got my iPhone 4 a couple of months ago. Good stuff Apple. Needless to say that Android devices have this for quite some time now, but hey – better late than never.

I recenty purchased an EPSON SX600FW all-in-one printer for home use. It does pretty good quality printing, as well as scanning, and fax, and it comes with USB, ethernet, bluetooth and WIFI connectivity – what do you need more?

I’m writing this article to tell you how easy the network installation was. I prepared myself for installation-hell like I was used to with HP printers. But this one was very easy.

1. Setup the printer physically.
2. Use the integrated LCD screen to setup WIFI settings.
3. Download driver software from Epson’s website.
4. Add a TCP/IP printer port to Vista.
5. Install the downloaded drivers (and scan software) and tell it to use the added TCP/IP port.
6. Done! Everything works – network (Wifi) printing, scanning, faxing… very cool!

Here’s the link to the printer’s page on the Epson website.