It is easy to do when you use printers that have Wifi Direct.
Wifi Direct is a feature of HP printers that allows devices that connect wirelessly to connect to itself. It has a hotspot built in, and that means that you don’t have to have to set it up through an existing Wifi network. This is especially helpful for small offices or branches that may not have a reliable wifi network, it will just work.
When you turn Wifi Direct on, it sends out a wifi signal that anyone can connect to. It has an easy default password of 12345678 and once you put in that password you are connected to the wifi network of the printer. At that point your printer is available on your device because it will automatically set it up. I demonstrated this with an iPhone and it was really smooth.
This is something that has been available for years but you never hear much about it. I think it is because people who have wifi at home try to set up their printers through their existing wifi network. The problem with that is that it makes the setup of devices to print to it much more difficult. If you set up a printer to be a wireless client, then for windows devices it isn’t a smooth process of printing. For an iPhone/iPad it is a simple matter.
Apple has always made setting up and connecting to printers so easy. Generally on an apple computer, it will find the printer and automatically set them up no matter how they are connected to your network. When you use an Windows machine, then it can be more effort. This is not difficult for IT people, but for the average person it is more difficult than it needs to be.
Apples ability to recognize printers is one of the reasons that I enjoy using it over Windows. I think its is really thoughtful how they make things easy for users, and its fun to see the intelligence of the software do its job. One day things will configure themselves and then I will be out of a job. Oh well, move on to something else then.
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