How to share Prinnters between X macs

[maclamb]

yes, this is my first time hooking up 2 or > macs - I finally converted my house of three computers from PC to macs.
I have an HP 4000 Laserjet usb'd to one of the macs that is acting as a file server.
I can see the printer from the mac it's physically connected to, but none of the other macs can see the printer - although they can see the shared drives on the mac w/ the printer

Do I need to drop $200+ for OSX Server just for printer sharinng? nah....

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by maclamb
yes, this is my first time hooking up 2 or > macs - I finally converted my house of three computers from PC to macs.
I have an HP 4000 Laserjet usb'd to one of the macs that is acting as a file server.
I can see the printer from the mac it's physically connected to, but none of the other macs can see the printer - although they can see the shared drives on the mac w/ the printer

Do I need to drop $200+ for OSX Server just for printer sharinng? nah....

You have a few options:

1) Upgrade to OS X Server...not very economical for your use.
2) Drop in a jetdirect card, like this one (http://www.shopping.hp.com/cgi-bin/hpdirect/shopping/scripts/product_detail/product_detail_view.jsp?product_code=J6057A%23ABA&script_name=product.cgi), and add it to your local network.
3) Just use file sharing and manually/physically print from the machine directly connected...duh.:p

[bidge]

I also want to do the same thing.

I'm just going to wait for jaguar

"Printer manufacturers Epson, HP, and Lexmark are integrating Rendezvous into their new printers to enable them to be added and removed from networks without configuration. When you add your Mac to a network, Mac OS X automatically discovers and connects to the available Rendezvous-enabled printers and you're ready to print."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/rendezvous.html

[theranch]

I used to be able to do this in OS9 using a USB printer but now in OSX I can no longer. When in OS9 I had to have the printer software installed on all machines on my network (3 macs) in order to print from any of them...worked great. Now in OSX I just send the files to the computer that the printer is connected to.

[theranch]

I just did some searching on Apple's site and found this which might help.
http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/sharing/shareprinter.html

[maclamb]

I bought a network card for the printer on ebay for 1/2 price and now all machines - PC and macs can see ther printer.

thanks for al the ideas...