Wireless Printing and Storage

I am moving to a new apartment.

Current I have a multifunction printer (F380), an external hard drive (enclosure) using both eSata and USB, and an HP DV6000t. I will share the printer and the HDD with my roommate, who also has an HP laptop.

We will use the internet from Comcast, and we will be given a free modem.

Could anyone recommend a router solution that can hook up all these devices with ease?

Any responses are appricated.

 

Any router will serve the purpose, you may also think of a d-link wireless printer hub to connect the printer so any computer can access it wirelessly. You can also connect the hub to the router so the printer can be accessed through the local network.

 

What about the HDD?

Thanks for the fast response

 

I would buy an old pos computer and hook the devices up to it. Other wise you could spend just as much buying a wireless print server and a device to share your hard drive.

 

I'd go with nizzy115's arrangement, unless you don't have the room to store another computer, or cannot get that computer and the printer close enough to wire them together.

Also, you didn't mention whether or not the printer was network-ready, or even wireless-ready. If your printer is either, then it doesn't need to be run through a computer or a print server in order for computers on the network to access it (so long as the printer itself is connected to the network, too ).

In terms of having a shared hdd (i.e., NAS - network attached storage), the old computer arrangement is the best way to go in my opinion, particularly an old desktop - it doesn't need to have much of a cpu or much memory, and with a desktop you'll be able to get a lot of hard drive space - much more so than a notebook. Another side benefit of going with an old desktop is that, if you so desire, you can set it up as a webserver, fileserver, etc, as and when you choose. I'm using an old _Dell GX270 slimline I picked up off eBay for $75, which came with a working copy of XP Pro installed - that alone was worth the price in my mind; however, I would advise that you stay away from the GX270 because _Dell had a lot of problems with the capacitors on the motherboard, and also stay away from the slimline desktops (unless, like me, you have no other option), because it's much more difficult to get upgrade parts for those.

Also, Belkin has a little doo-hickey they call a network USB hub that, as they claim, can be used to share USB devices over the network to which the doo-hickey is attached. It works, provided the USB devices will always be attached and turned on - in particular, if the hub is not powered on, the client utility will constantly poll for the hub - causing delays on your computer, and, in some cases, appears to suffer from a memory leak that causes it to eventually eat up almost all of your CPU time polling for the missing hub. I dropped $99 on it, and it really wasn't worth it.

 

Just right click on the HDD and select the share option. Also, verify if you can connect your HDD directly to the router, some they do. The advantage to connect the HDD directly to the router is that the HDD will be always available to your roomate even when your computer is off.

And I'm not sure of this, you may also be able to connect the HDD to the d-link hub because the device ports are USB's, you need to ask d-link for this.