Setting up the printer is not very difficult. The first step is to install the toner. As I alluded to earlier, the top of the printer lifts up and without a lever arm, you’ll need to hold the cover up while you install the toner.

Four starter toners are provided with the printer. Each start cartridge is good for 1000 pages. The retail black toner will yield 2200 pages and each of the retail color cartridges yields 1400 pages.

To begin the installation, it’s a good idea to rotate the toner cartridges around for 30 seconds. This, in theory, helps break up any clumps that may have formed since manufacturing. Once you’ve open up the cartridge and held the cover open, the cartridges slide into their respective slot. A little push and they will sit in. There’s no active mechanism that confirms the cartridges are in but you know they’re in place if you can’t move them anymore.

Now that the toner has been installed, it’s a good idea to turn the printer on and create a test print to make sure everything is working before you install the software. If you are planning on connecting the printer locally to your computer, via USB, make sure you install the software before you make the USB connection. As we’ll see in the pictures below, it’s very easy to setup the printer. A couple of clicks and you’re done. A couple things to consider, if you plan on using the printer wirelessly, it’s recommended that you at least configure it once with a wired LAN connection. This makes it easier to find the printer on the network and create the appropriate wireless connection. As you are configuring the wireless settings, if you make a mistake with your encryption key, you need to manually reset the network configuration on the printer itself. If you don’t do this then subsequent attempts to connect to the network even with the correct password will not work.

On with the software installation, the software disk works for both the HL-3070CN and the HL-3070CW. There is a separate disk if you are running Windows 7. Each installation has a few different language options and software/utility choices. To begin, you only need to pick English and Install Printer Driver. You can then make your choice if you will be using the printer locally, on the LAN by wire or wireless.

The first step will be to configure the printer for wireless connectivity. As I mentioned earlier, it is better to have the printer connected to your LAN via network cable to begin.

Once the wireless connection has been established, the local drivers will be installed onto your computer. If you’re using the printer on multiple computers, you can skip the wireless configuration on future installations.

Once the driver is installed you have the option of installing a local Status Monitor. One feature the status monitor can do is monitor for new firmware.

It can also alert you of any new error messages,

Locally there is not too much you can do with the printer. However, being a network printer it has the ability to be monitored and serviced from any computer on your network. This means you can check the remaining life of your toner without having to print out the maintenance page in addition to seeing how many pages have been printed in total.

Administrator Settings:

Printer Settings:

Enough about the soft controls, we’ll have a quick glance at the front control panel before doing some test prints.

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