Printing wirelessly

I asked this before, but didn't actually have a laptop, new printer or router then. I've got an acer 4011, Lnksys WRT54G wireless router and new hp psx 1507 all in one. I have a secure network up and running. Can I/how can I set up the printer to print wirelessly from the laptop? Do I need another device of some sort?

 

You need a : A) A Print Server or B) A wireless Printer Adapter. Here is:

A: Print Server

B: Wireless USB Printer Adapter

 

Thanks...both of those cost more than the printer...maybe I'll just stick with a long printer cable (which wasn't cheap, either..) ;-)

 

Yeah, these things can add up $$ wise very fast. It really depends on you know, if you have the money, then the wireless would be the choice, if not, then i guess you just have too be wired.

 

When you say you have a secure network set up, do you also have a desktop running on this network? If so, you'd probably have this hooked up to your new printer. If so, then you'd just select add a printer from the laptop and then let it find your printer which would show up as a network printer I think and then just follow the prompts from there. Now this is all if you have a desktop included in this new network of yours.

Claire, just saw in one of your other posts that you do have a desktop. So now on your laptop go to your "my network places" folder then on the left side of the menu hit printers and faxes and then hit add printer. Then I think you select search for printer on the network. It should find the new printer that I'd think you have hooked up to your desktop. Then just hit finish. I think that is how it goes pretty much. I had to do the same and it was new to me also but it was a couple of weeks ago. Good luck.

 

Thanks, RU-- I do have a desktop, but it's 1999 Windows ME until I buy a new one probably after the holidays, so I haven't networked desktop to laptop yet. I'm primarily using the wired desktop for Quicken and online bill pay. It currently has an old HP hooked into it. I don't think it could handle the drivers for the new one.

 

You can still share the printer in Windows ME. There shouldn't be any driver issues.

 

That old computer (dell 1999) has done all sorts of strange things. It wouldn't take a software upgrade on Norton, for one thing, and has completely lost my bookmarks (on Firefox; IE stopped working ages ago). It also doesn't shut down using the start command, or any other way except my turning off the power supply. So 'til I can replace it with another desktop (that's why I bought the laptop now), I'm hesitant to do anything else with it at all, even networking anything to it. It won't go beyond 20 percent in scandisk...all sorts of quirks, and I've already replaced the HD once. I get the feeling it's a little like HAL in 2001 singing "Daisy, Daisy...."

 

Perhaps a fresh install of Windows is a good idea. Or better, because ME is so flakey, an upgrade to 2k or XP would do some good. I'm sure it will work well as an internet machine.

 

I had a desktop running Windows 98 networked with my other XP machines. It worked fine. In fact, Windows 98/ME's networking has some features that are not available in XP Home. So, it should work fine. The one thing you have to watch out for, however, is that names of shared resources (e.g., your printer) must be short enough (12 characters max, I think) or the Windows ME machine will not be able to see it. In some cases XP doesn't warn you about this.

You could upgrade to XP, but it may not be worth it if you have to pay a lot for the software, buy more memory, etc. It might be easier to reload ME.

 

If you don't need so many printer ports, you can find a print server much cheaper. Like this with one USB port. Still, unless you absolutely need the laptop to be able to print independently, you may find it more worthwhile to settle for printer sharing via the desktop PC.