Home Printer Server Solution Needed

D

Deadlierchair

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 12, 2003
Messages
1,400
Alright, I've been tearing my hair out over this for long enough and trying to get things to work but it's not going well. Our router's print server function has pretty much given up, so I need something new. The printer I am trying to share is a Brother HL-5040 B&W laser printer. What I want is a small hardware print server that will accept either USB or old style printer connectors. I would prefer if it had the old style but that's not that important.

What I really want is to be able to just install the printer software on all the local network PCs for the specific printer and then just go through the Windows XP printer wizard and say what IP address it is at. I do not want to make a print server using a Linux or Windows machine. Any advice people have would be very much appreciated.
 
What you need is a device known as a print server. Many companies make them: Dlink, Netgear, Linksys, etc.
 
JTY said:
What you need is a device known as a print server. Many companies make them: Dlink, Netgear, Linksys, etc.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the product I want, but finding reviews of any of the ones offered at NewEgg is impossible, so I asked if anyone had experience with any of them...
 
Anyone? I want to know any things people have used in the past and bad or good reactions...help?
 
Is this the only way to share a printer?

I thought if you had two computers (mine are both xp pro) you could have the printer installed on one computer and send info from other computer to the printer through the first comp.
 
Gk22CoE said:
Is this the only way to share a printer?

I thought if you had two computers (mine are both xp pro) you could have the printer installed on one computer and send info from other computer to the printer through the first comp.
Click to expand...


Yes, you can hook up your printer to a PC Directly and then just share it over your network. It can then be accessed from other machines as long as they have the proper drivers installed.

The downside to this is that the machine that has the printer attached MUST be online and available on the network for it to work. Also, depending on how much the printer is accessed it 'may' slow down the machine that it is hooked up to but im not 100% sure on that.
 
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