Home Networking Questions?

Question

I'm moving into a new apartment and have the following

2 Desktop PC's with Windows XP

1 Mac Laptop with Mac OS X 10.4.10

Now 2 of these will be hooked to my router and the Laptop will be wireless. I am now buying a HP Photosmart D7360 printer. What is the best way to share my printer?

I don't know anything about "what a home network is or how to home network". I know I can somehow hook my printer to my router. What kind of cord do I need to do that? Is it a printer to ethernet cord?

And how do I set up a home network from all of this or find out how to do set one up? Is this safe? My router is a newer Netgear(?). Can't think of model off the top of my head. Less than a year old. It does have WEP protection I setup. Anything else you need to know?

~Thanks!

Ok I looked a lot up and with your replies, I realized I either have to buy a different printer, a print server, or have a computer on at all times.

Well what if printer is hooked to my laptop? Would the other computers still be able to hook to printer and print if my laptop stayed on? Even though my laptop is wirelessly hooked to the router.

Or what if I hitched printer to one PC and used a blue tooth adapter for said printer? Would my laptop being blue tooth ready be able to print on said printer without turning said PC on? Forget about the other PC for this setup!

Answer 1

unforunately the only connection your printer supports is a usb connector. You can forget about trying to connect it to your router, cause your router won't support that type of connector.

you could try to attach the printer to one of your desktops, and share the printer out across the networking. The only problem, is that pc always has to be on for the other two computer to print to it. I'm not a huge mac expert, can't tell you if that printer will work with your mac or not.
that's a different question.

try to find a inkject with an ethernet connector.
something like the HP Photosmart Pro B9180 photo printer or HP Photosmart 8750 professional photo printer
yea they are more expensive, but that's what you need to do true network printing

hope this helps

Answer 2

The two desktops are easy, they are going Ethernet, the laptop is a bit more involving due to wireless simply need more setup work.

Plug the desktops in the router, make sure Windows XP is correctly recognizing the network card in each. Almost all home setup uses DHCP in these days to do all the setup and that is all.

The Netgear's manual would talk about going to its setup page using a Web browser to the URL http://192.168.0.1 and any necessary login/pass information. Do so, from there usually some kind of Wizard takes you through the setup for the Internet line.

Usually not part of that Wizard's programming is the configuration of wireless, another page in that mini site, wireless need SSID/WEP key that is analogous to login/pass and put acceptable values there, remember those two as you put those in your laptop too.

Answer 3

well i have my printer connected to my computer and i have a router that i have 3 more computer connected to them so i just set share printer so when someone prints don't mater what computer i prints to the printer. i think is the same for wireless i don't know what to say about wireless but i try to help well later

Answer 4

im pretty sure that youwill have the printer connected to the computer connected to the router. if you do have this done, the laptop will be able to print off of the printer wirelessly.
hope this helps!