Hawking Technologies -- Impressive, but not quite there yet

I recently had the opportunity to install a Hawking Technologies print server and was very impressed by their documentation, install routine, and overall packaging. Sure, there were a few typos in the manual and a few glitches, but by and large the install was flawless--the installer even installed the network ports to print to on each target computer.

This was a great experience, especially for a relatively unknown, third tier network product manufacturer. Most of the big players can't get these basic things right.

Then I tried actually using the equipment. That's where the problems started.

Every few minutes the device would crash or lose one of the printers attached to it. The admin utility refused to see the device--it's unknown whether it was the utility or the fact that the device had crashed.

I can't help but think that I just got a defective unit. However, it still got replaced by a Netgear print server (which didn't install quite as cleanly). All this said, I'd recommend keeping an eye on Hawking equipment for your network needs. It can save you $10-20, and you might end up with a great piece of equipment.