Wireless Printer Solution

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I have a wireless adapter card on my laptop, 802.11 compliant.

I need to situate my printer across the room, so I've been thinking about a wireless solution.

My printer currently has a USB cable.What do I need to make it wireless.Is it just a USB wireless point.

Any advice with a solution and product recommendations welcome.

Thanks!

 

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I would guess that all you need is a wireless print server like an HP Jetdirect. The bad news is that something like that is not going to be cheap, you will probably pay about £170 for an HP and around £100 for a cheaper brand, like Linksys.

I have no direct experiance of using a wireless solution but Jetdirects are easy to set up as are most print servers, you simply connect via a web browser interface for configuration.

HTH

 

Interesting idea but I think Luton is right. We're developing a wireless solution here for our SOHO but we're placing one computer on a wireless connection and hooking our "all-in-one" (printer, copier, scanner, fax) machine to the PC via USB.

This way, my wife will have more room to work on her projects while I've still got my lab machine, my laptop, and the old micron in the "study room". We'll print to the device on my wife's PC in the other room but, except for the fact that the data will be doing out a wireless link, the printer will be shared out through her PC just like a million other printers around the world.

We looked at a network solution, but couldn't find a device that could be directly networked, be wireless, and have all the features I wanted for a price I could afford (especially since my wish list is long).

 

How far will the printer be away from the PC, I think the max length of USB is 5m and if you use a USB hub you can double it to 10M. Could be worth looking into.

SimonV

 

The printer will be right next to the PC. I have a six foot usb cable to directly connect the two. The PC would then share out the printer like on a wired network and the computers on the wired portion of the LAN would print to it over the wireless link. Should be no problem.

I realized yesterday, that the fax device that is part of the printer doesn't need to go through a PC to fax. It has it's own modem. Question is, does it have an option to fax through a PC? If not, I'll have to locate it in the main computer room where an available phone line exists.

My wife is working on a project and asks me not to move any of the hardware until she'd done. I guess she's nervous about it getting lost or something. Oh well, I have to transfer e-mails from one computer to another to centrally locate them...another skill set to master.

Flex, while I was out shopping, I noticed a wireless network print device one could attach to a printer to do what you were talking about. Pretty expensive. I could buy two wireless access points for the cost of one.

Didn't get called into work yesterday so I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon running around doing errands. The rest of the evening was spent at the low tech task of putting together her "wee" computer desk. Cheap particle board...so naturally a piece broke. Had to stop the "construction" and go get a new one. "Easy to assemble...takes only minutes" Yeah, right <note the sarcasm>.

 

This was a plan because my printer resides ont he floor and as you can tell from the printer cleaning thread, it needs cleaning of dust a lot.I was thinking of putting the printer on top of my wardrobe so it would be less prone to dust.I could use an extended cable, but wireless would be so much easier.Just a shame it's so expensive at present.

Thanks.

 

Just a thought, but there could be nearly as much cr*p floating around at that height as on the floor (I'm not making any comments on your room, Flex )

Don't suppose there's a spare shelf inside the wardrobe you could use ? That way, you would almost wipe out the printer cleaning prob, and if you decide to go the wired route, it would give you a neat solution, i.e just pop a hole thru' the back of the furniture to the printer -VIOLA - neat, tidy and clean :P

Lets face it, we'd all love wireless, broadband, Centrino, TFT, colour laser printing, etc, etc, ..... I'm still working with old gear thats running off "Mice-in-wheels" technology :roll:

 

I'll loook into it.My thinking is that dust usually falls to the floor.I have laminate flooring and dustballs gather o the floor, until I clean them up of course.

I don't mind wires, but I'm forever changing things around, so wireless is perfic.

Anyway, thanks very much for the suggestions.