Topic: Wireless network card for printer

[Mike]

So I'm moving things around and where I'd like to put the printer makes it troublesome to run a cable to it.  Anyone know if they make external wireless network cards that can plug into the printer and act as a print server?  The printer has both parallel and USB connections.

[KnuckleBuckett]

They make wireless printer servers.  I have not heard good reviews about them.

Anyone else?

[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

[jkim]

Whoa, I was totally about to post about thinking about getting a wireless print server too.  I'm guessing the one you got didn't act as a router as well.  Does anyone know if that makes a difference or not?  Our wireless router flakes out sometimes, so I was thinking about just replacing the entire thing.

[charlie]

We just bought a printer (all-in-one). We narrowed it down to two choices, one was an HP with wireless capabilities, the other an Epson with better resolution and stuff.

We ended up going with the Epson, which I'm a little sad about because the wireless printer would have been nice. Oh well. If wireless print servers were cheaper than $50 I might consider it.

[Mike]

Whoa, I was totally about to post about thinking about getting a wireless print server too.  I'm guessing the one you got didn't act as a router as well.  Does anyone know if that makes a difference or not?  Our wireless router flakes out sometimes, so I was thinking about just replacing the entire thing.

Well my printer doesn't have a network card so I needed something.  With my current room setup a wired network card for the printer would have worked but if I move the router (which I'm thinking about) then having the wireless card would be nice.

We just bought a printer (all-in-one). We narrowed it down to two choices, one was an HP with wireless capabilities, the other an Epson with better resolution and stuff.

We ended up going with the Epson, which I'm a little sad about because the wireless printer would have been nice. Oh well. If wireless print servers were cheaper than $50 I might consider it.

I think my next printer (probably years from now) will be wireless.  Right now I have to route my wires accross a door way (atm they are just going under a throw rug) so if I can reduce the number of wires I'm happy.  Plus it can be hard finding cables long enough to put things where you want them.

[charlie]

Very true. If I felt like spending just a little more money I totally would have gone for it. My wife's Mac and my laptop are both downstairs at the moment and I love that they are wireless. But when she wants to print we have to bring the printer from the office and plug it in and everything, which is a pain in the tuckus.

[ober]

I'm sure you guys have crappy old computers sitting around... just slap a wireless card in it and connect it to the printer... share the printer on the network from the crap computer and TADA... print server!

[charlie]

>> share the printer on the network from the crap computer

Umm... how do you do that?

I can barely get my machines to talk to each other. I currently have a printer hooked up to a machine that is connected to the network, but I have no idea how to make it available to the other machines on the network. I've got a printer hooked up to a PC with WinXP Home and one hooked up to a Mac with OS X (10.5). I've got a laptop with Win XP Pro on it that I wouldn't mind printing from, and I'd like to be able to print from the Mac to the printer attached to the PC with XP Home.

I just assumed it wouldn't work very well unless I bought something that specifically did it for me.

[jkim]

Same boat as charlie.  None of the laptops can see another machine on the network.  That seems like much more effort than what I want to put in to figure out how to do that.  

[charlie]

It's weird, the whole network setup thing never worked. I always assumed it was because of XP Home versus XP Pro. The only thing I could do is map a network drive to the mac via its IP address (which sucks because that changes every time it reconnects after sleeping).

But then recently I tried connecting to a new-to-me laptop that had XP Pro by mapping a network drive to its IP\C$ and logging in appropriately. It actually worked (which shocked me).

So now, all I have to do when I want to transfer files between machines is to login to my router, lookup the IP address of the attached device I want to connect to, then map a network drive to that with the appropriate user/password combo. It only takes a few minutes each time.

[Mike]

Why not put the MAC on a static IP address then?

[charlie]

Because I haven't seen a way to do that with the router I have.

Actually, I thought I saw a way and tried to do it but it didn't seem to work. That was a year or more ago.

[ober]

OMG charlie... you're doing this ass-backwards.  I have my XP Pro desktop connected to the printer.  I share that printer from the printers section of the control panel.  All I had to do on my XP Home laptop was add a printer and just browse the network for the printer.  It found it and downloaded the drivers, no problem. 

As for the MAC, I'm not sure how it works but I can't imagine it would be much different.  You probably need some kind of software to do shares and whatnot, but it's not unthinkable.  Also, setting the IP to static is done from the PC, not the router.

[KnuckleBuckett]

OMG charlie... 

As for the MAC, I'm not sure how it works but I can't imagine it would be much different.  You probably need some kind of software to do shares and whatnot, but it's not unthinkable.  Also, setting the IP to static is done from the PC, not the router.

As for the MAC start by opening a window and throwing it out the window.  Job well done.

Just kidding.