Home PrintServer recommendation
 

I have a very small home network. My printer is attached to my desktop (which is also the network hub). I'd like to be able to print from my laptop. Can anyone recommend a decent and fairly inexpensive wireless printserver?

Thanks

Are they both Windows? If you don't mind having to turn your desktop on, you can just share it from the desktop, no need for a print server.

Ya, they are both windows. I was able to set up shared files but I am having a hard time running a remote desktop session.

You don't need remote desktop for that.

You can just share the printer from your desktop. start->printers, select printer, right-click for properties-> share.

Of course you will need to have windows firewall turned off on the desktop and laptop or configure it to allow the printer.

Then from the laptop: start->run and enter \\NameOfDesktop and you should see the printer.

OK, they are both on the same home network but now it says that the desktop is not available for connection (permissions) and now it says that the network path isn't found.

I really should know how to do this :(

Yeah, it should be easy but for some reason printer networking breaks easily with Windows.

I just bought a switch and have a spare ethernet cable hooked up to it and on the rare occasion I need to print from my laptop I plug it in for a couple minutes to send the job.

I can't even network into my Desktop from my laptop :(

What OS's are on them (XP Home?)

Oh, wait, I think I might know what you need to do.

Go to Network Connections on both computers. Select the active network (one of the "Local Area Connection"s on the desktop, "Wireless Network Connection" on the laptop). Right click, go to "Properties"

There's a list of stuff (under the heading "The Connection uses the following items:). If you don't see an entry that includes something along the lines of "IPX/SPX/NetBIOS" (IPX and NetBIOS being the important bits), click "Install...", select "protocol", then select the IPX/SPX/NetBIOS-type option. Once you do that on both, you should be able to access one computer from the other.

Laptop is XP Pro, Desktop is XP Home. I need to stick Pro on it one of these days.

Could that be the issue?

Hmm, that might be part of the issue, but I think print sharing SHOULD work. There are ways around the "no sharing" limitation of XP Home, but I've had too much tequilla tonight to look look it up. I'll get back to you tomorrow.

For now, check what I explained in the edited post above. If you can access your laptop from your desktop after you insure that IPX/NetBIOS is installed, but print sharing doesn't work, then you'll probably need to defeat the sharing limitation.