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I have an HP wireless printer shared by two linux boxes. The fact is this printer works flawlessly. The fact is it was very easy and fast to setup. The fact is, if ever I should by another printer, Wi-Fi will be a must have feature. But these are my facts, and facts, strangely enough, are too volatile; and computer facts are specially subjective.

Great. Sounds like you lucked out. If it works well and it's what you want, then good for you... I'm not telling anyone to abandon anything that they own that actually works. I'm just stating that Wi-Fi tends to be hit-or-miss in many devices.

The original poster was complaining about a shitty Wi-Fi connection; I'm just saying, well, duh... what did anyone expect with the pathetic state that Wi-Fi drivers are in, especially in a device that can't easily have such internal problems fixed? I've had problems in the early 2000s with Windows wireless drivers, and I still have problems with and dread Wi-Fi in Linux.


Just beware when buying that printer, as has been pointed out a few times now Wi-Fi drivers often suck, and embedded systems are not exactly the easiest to safely update the drivers to. You know what you want or need though, so by all means... if you really want or need it, go for it.


Personally, I'd rather save the time and potential frustration and put my money to better use by buying a printer that does what it is meant to do well (print) and leave the wireless router to do what it does well--provide access to that printer over the network, with or without wires, as needed. Less money spent on useless, potentially badly implemented features that provide duplicate functionality and are better implemented in other ways to begin with; more money spent toward performance and quality.

Added bonus: You'll have one less 802.11x device to potentially slow down your wireless network performance when 802.11y comes out. 802.11n has only been out for a few years now, and 802.11ac is already well on its way. Those embedded wireless devices in printers aren't exactly user-upgradeable.

But that's just me; obviously everyone is different. A lot of people go out and buy some cheap multi-function print/scan/fax/kitchen sink machine; I cringe at the very existence of those products. In the end, everyone's free to buy whatever they want, just as the companies are free to make them.

Very few people actually want to wire their whole house for Ethernet.

Soulbender,

"Very few people actually want to wire their whole house for Ethernet."

I just saw my brother recently, we bought some wifi gear that needed to be configured via ethernet. I thought this wouldn't be a problem, but I quickly discovered that the macbook pro of his lacks any ethernet connectivity at all. Lucky I had my laptop around to set up the devices. Granted, one could carry a dongle everywhere, but in my eyes the macbook pro fell significantly short of it's "pro" designation because it would have left my brother in a pickle if I weren't there with a full featured laptop.


/tangent

My Kyocera Laser is available to ALL the computers in my hose over WiFi. I've just connected it to my WiFi hub with a bit of Cat-5.
That is the sort of config that was being proposed (I guess).
Then you don't have to rely on the crappy WiFi drivers in the printer.

Wiring just the bare essentials that you want to have up for use at all times is hardly "the whole house." You seem to be forgetting all the computers on the network that will, you know, be the systems to actually print to those printers in most, if not all, cases...

And considering you have to have one cable running from the printer to the wall (good luck getting it to work without power), what's a second one going to hurt? Seriously? I honestly doubt that people move their printers every two weeks for the fun of it... printers are the kinds of things you set up, leave alone, and just use to print things.

And by the way, nowhere did I advocate using Ethernet cables for every single system on the network... nowhere. Only where it makes sense. And I'm sorry, but for printers... it just makes sense to bypass using Wi-Fi directly.