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Oh man, where do I begin? Maybe by telling you that the last few hours have been the worst user experience I’ve had in a very very long time! And that comes from someone who has been dealing with computers for the last 25+ years, going back to DOS and Win 2.1, early Macs, Amigas and what not. Anyway, here’s what’s happening:
Last night I bought a Deskjet 3070A to replace the Photosmart printer that kept rejecting the black ink cartridge after a while, again and again. And even though I’ve been using (and even recommending) HP printers for a long time now that last one actually made me think I should buy some other brand this time. But since we have all kinds of iOS devices here and the HP printers basically still are the only ones supporting AirPrint I caved and bought another one — the HP 3070A this time. I’ve unpacked that hellish piece of hardware almost five hours ago and have struggled with it for the last four or so! 
After having installed the cartridges I downloaded the latest software from the HP website, installed it and configured the printer for wireless usage. Everything seemed to be going well. I then ran Apple’s own Software Update and it showed me that there was an update for the HP printer drivers available and I installed that as well. Everything still worked fine. I tried printing over the network and it worked fine. Thus far it had been a painless procedure. Then I tried out to print to it from the iPad — and the pain and torture began!
First the iPad just showed that it couldn’t find any available AirPrint devices. I thought it might be some small glitch and went back to the Mac OS X Print Center to check the printer again only to realize that even though it showed up there as connected it really wasn’t. When I tried to check ink status it said there was no information available. When I tried to print it told me the printer wasn’t connected. The HP Utility app did communicate with the printer only to tell me that it was an unknown device. The only thing that solved this problem was removing the printer from Print Center, then restarting it and then adding it back again. Then I tried scanning through Print Center and as soon as I tried to edit scan setting the app totally froze and had to be force-quit. Which again led to the printer showing up but not being reachable, then having to be deleted, restarted and re-added once again. Basically every time anything went wrong - which it did a lot - I had to do these steps all over again. Like whenever I changed something and gave AirPrint another try the printer started playing dead all over. Again and again. I have no idea why trying to print to it from an iOS device totally kills the stupid thing. And I have no idea why it won’t show up on any of my iOS devices either.
Oh, and having read some of the recommendations about updating the wireless router, setting it to channel 11 and what not I did that as well. Although I must say that I don’t think people should even have to do that — if everything else on the network runs just fine except for the HP printer it’s not the router’s fault, it’s the printers. Also the majority of users wouldn’t even know what to do, the’d just want things to work. Which they don’t. But anyway, I did all the router setup and so on but it made no difference: AirPrint still does’t work and trying to use it still kills the printer completely forcing me to delete it, restart it, add it again. And again. Man, I am so frustrated, this really shouldn’t be such a mess nowadays!?
Bottomline: Not only am I not able to use AirPrint (the only reason why I bought the printer in the first place) but every attempt to do so makes it completely unusable and leads to a laborious revival process!
Unfortunately due to Easter I’ll have to wait until next Tuesday before I can contact HP support or return this piece of **** to the store and get something else instead. As nice as it would have been using AirPrint directly there’s always apps like Printopia to work around that. Right now I have the feeling that I’ve done everything that could be done and after four hours of fiddling around I’m just exhausted. Sorry for this long rant but it just blows my mind that something that should be a simple task in the year 2012 turned out to be such a horrible chore. It may not sound like it but I’d still appreciate any assistance you guys can offer to maybe fix this thing but I really doubt that that’s even possible.
Thanks anyway!
- MILE
P.S. For those of you who still want to try to help: Mac OS X 10.7.3 on a Mac mini, a D-Link DIR-615 router, all iOS devices running iOS 5.1
Hey PrintDoc, thanks for your reply!
While I really appreciate your help (and I honestly do) your suggestions really stunned me at first. A manual IP address for the printer? Really?! People shouldn't have to do things like that nowadays. And while I am tech-savvy enough to do it I wonder what the many many tegular users out there are supposed to do…
Anyway, let's go through your list:
> Make sure the router firmware is updated.
I already did that, as mentioned in my opening post.
> Next, let's make sure the printer has updated firmware (from its front panel Web Services menu).
Did that as well.
> Finally, if that does not fix it, let's set a static IP address and its own DNS for the printer:
> ...
Oh boy, you really mean it, don't you?! 
Anyway, despite my reluctance and frustration I wanted to give this a try so I did it, followed your instructions to the letter and actually assigned a manual IP address to the printer. Resbooted everything and then tried again. Would you like to know what has changed? Nothing!
Every single iOS device still shows that there is no AirPrint device available, I still can't print over AirPrint, every single attempt to do so still makes the printer totally unresponsive, forcing me to restart it and usually delete and add it again.
Does anyone an HP seriously think that this is an acceptable user experience?! I hope not.
So while I'm really grateful for your attempt to help me solve this issue I am just so extremely frustrated that I give up. This shouldn't be so hard. It just shouldn't. I will return this clunker and either just get my money back or buy some other printer, I don't know. What I do know is that this was my last HP printer ever. I've been a loyal customer for 15+ years but they've finally lost me.
Thanks again and have a great Easter weekend!
- MILE
EDIT: I actually changed the IP address again and rebotted everything and while AirPrint still isn't available on any iOS device now at least trying to use it doesn't make the printer unusable from the Mac, it "sticks" now -- but that's all. No AirPrint is still a dealbreaker and all this hassle and frustration has worn me down, ths thing goes back to the store first thing in the morning.
