Looking for a wireless solution to allow printing/scanning with my HP 5610 from my iMac
turn my home office into a nursery, moving my computers into our
modest living room. I previously had my HP 5160 printer/scanner
attached to my iMac over USB, but it is now inconvenient to place the
printer close to the computer.
I'm looking for a wireless solution that will still allow me to use
the print and scan functionality for the HP located in a different
part of the house (but well within wireless range).
We have a Mac-only household, so Windows support isn't a must. I also don't mind if the printing and scanning can only be done from a single computer (vs. available to all computers on the network), as long as I can still scan.
I'm using the traditional Linksys WRT54GL router, with the Tomato firmware upgrade.
Here are the conditions:
Necessary:
- Allows printing and scanning functionality
- Wireless connection (i.e. I can put the printer/scanner in the closet).
- Works with Mac OS X
- Works with HP 5610 All-in-one printer/scanner
- Less than $200 US
Highly Desirable:
- Less than $100 US
- Printing/Scanning available to all computers on the network.
Would be nice:
- Windows support
Tip goes to whomever can hit the most of these conditions.
Mahalo.
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M$3 Answers
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?c=L_Product_C2&childpagename=US%2FLayout&cid=1175243279148&pagename=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper&lid=7914833028B61
It looks like Amazon has them for about $100, however you may be able to find them cheaper at a local computer / electronics store.
Basically, you plug this new device into your network. Then, you plug the printer into this and install the software on each computer that needs to print, scan, copy, or fax.
This solution does not work perfectly and in my experience sometimes requires "fiddling". You may need to power cycle the device and the software that you need to use isn't as transparent as it should be.
If you need to implement a print, scan, copy, fax sharing solution in an office environment or if you don't mind spending a few extra dollars so that you don't have to fiddle with the hardware sometimes then I might suggest looking into multifunction printers with network capabilities built in. These devices always work better.
I sincerely hope that this helps.
I'm an I.T. professional and have been solving problems just like this for over 10 years for personal, small, medium and large businesses.
You can leave an optional "tip" with Mahalo's virtual currency, Mahalo Dollars. If you are asking a difficult question that might require some research, or if you'd like a wide variety of feedback, a higher tip often leads to more answers to your question.
M$
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M$If I were you I would go buy an Apple Time Capsule (making sure I could return it if it didn't work).
As you may know Time Capsule is a wireless hard drive designed to work with Time Machine. You can also connect your printer to the Time Capsule and share your printer over the wireless network created by the Time Capsule. Likewise you can connect other non-wireless external hard drives to the Time Capsule and share those over the network.
In all this is pretty awsome and it isn't more expensive than buying an non-wireless external harddrive. Here in Australia the cost break down looks a little like:
0.62c per GB for the 1TB (1000 GB) version. 0.85c per GB for the 500 GB version
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M$
robbrown: The Linksys print server you linked to sounds like just what I need, though I'm concerned about the complicated set up stories I saw on the Amazon product page.
I also hope this will work well on the Mac OS X platform.
Might be worth a try. Does anyone out there have experience with this on the Apple platform?
Yes, this will work on a mac, but the setup is slightly more difficult. You can find more info on exactly how to st it up here:
http://forums.linksys.com/linksys/board/message?board.id=Wireless_Print_Servers&message.id=1111
For basic setup (connecting to your network / router), check this out:
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&blobheadername1=Content-Type&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3DLinksys%2BWPSM54G%2BPrint%2BServer.pdf&blobkey=id&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobwhere=1193795634906&ssbinary=true&lid=0017779148B03
Again, the setup and even day-to-day use is significantly easier with a multi-function printer that supports network sharing out of the box. This is a more expensive option, but it takes a lot of the configuration time out of the equation.