Topic: Wireless network card for printer

[charlie]

The XP Pro machine was my work desktop and is now my work laptop. Unfortunately I can't hook the printer up to that.

It's not drivers that's the problem, it's that the machines aren't on the same network. They don't see each other. Until I was just able to map the network drive between PCs via the IP address last week, I couldn't even share files between PCs. I had to copy files from the home machine to the MAC (via the map network drive solution) then from the MAC to the work PC (again via a mapped network drive).

So even if I hooked up the printer to the XP Pro machine, I'm not sure the XP home machine would see it on the network.

Of course, you must understand that I have no knowledge about these kinds of things other than what I've tried by trial and error, so there's probably something I'm missing. At this point I'm going to wait until I get a new PC in a year or two and figure it all out then.

[Steve]

I have a wireless HP printer. It works good but i perfer it plugged into the RJ45 better

[jkim]

I just set up a USRobotics Wireless MAXg Router (USR5465) to replace my old Netgear.  It was a weird workaround to get the printer hooked up to it, but now I can print from both my desktop and my laptop...even when I'm not connected to my home network. Interestingly enough, both computers can now see each other to share files.  Whoo!

(also, no noticible drop in connections yet)

[charlie]

Would you mind sharing your weird workaround pretty please?

[jkim]

I just had to install a new printer as a network printer with fake drivers.  After everything installed, I just changed the drivers to work with the printer.

[charlie]

Έπρεπε ακριβώς να εγκαταστήσω έναν νέο εκτυπωτή ως εκτυπωτή δικτύων με τους πλαστούς οδηγούς. Μετά από όλα εγκατεστημένα, άλλαξα ακριβώς τους οδηγούς για να εργαστώ με τον εκτυπωτή.

Ok. Thanks!

[jkim]

....???

I see it in English, dude.

[charlie]

Yeah, but it's all greek to me.

[Mike]

So I picked up a refurbed Linksys Wireless Printer Server for $50 and got it up and running this morning.  Only bad part is that it only handles WEP 64/128 for security and I was using WPA-PSK so I had to redo my wireless setup which just didn't want to play.

One thing I like is that I can still share it from my desktop so i don't have to install the software and drivers on all of the computers.

I haven't printed anything large yet to see how fast it will be

So review time for it.  Aside from the initial problem of key handling the thing works decently well.  The biggest problem I've seen is that it won't automatically reconnect to the network if the wireless is dropped for any reason.  I was having problems with my DSL dropping out and at least once a day I had to restart my router in order for it to reconnect to the internet.  When this happened I had to power cycle (aka unplugging the power and plugging it back in) it to make it reconnect.  However, I have the DSL fixed now and don't have to restart the router so it is doing just fine.  It does run a little warmer then I'd like especially when it is idle.  The speed seems good though I haven't printed anything too graphically intensive.  Definately a nice find IMO.

[Perspective]

Έπρεπε ακριβώς να εγκαταστήσω έναν νέο εκτυπωτή ως εκτυπωτή δικτύων με τους πλαστούς οδηγούς. Μετά από όλα εγκατεστημένα, άλλαξα ακριβώς τους οδηγούς για να εργαστώ με τον εκτυπωτή.

Ok. Thanks!

ROFL!

If the printer is on the Mac (or any linuxy machine) you can run Samba to let windows access it over the network.