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Hooking up printer wirelessly

A

Aspen

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 11, 2009
105
4
I have an iMac, MBP , and Airport Extreme. The HP printer that I have is hardwired via USB to the iMac.

If I understand correctly, I should be able to set up the MBP to wirelessly print to the HP printer via the Airport Extreme. Is that true? Would the iMac have to been on and if so, can it be asleep?

I have a couple of Windows computers as well. Can I set up a Windows XP, Vista, or 7 computer to print wirelessly via the Airport Extreme?

If the above can be done, does anyone know how to set it up?

Thanks for the help.
 
I don't have an Airport Extreme, but I print wirelessly from my Mac and Windows laptop to my Canon wireless printer, which is on USB to my Windows PC. I had to hook up the Mac to my printer via USB to set it up as a SMB. Everything works perfectly.
 
If you have the printer hooked up to a Mac by USB and want to print to that printer from a 2nd Mac, then on the first Mac you have to turn on Printer Sharing. Its in Preferences, under - strangely enough, Sharing. ;)

The 1st Mac needs to be turned on and awake in order to use the printer attached to it. I would assume that Windows could make use of the printer too, since I believe Apple is using a TCP/IP standard to make this work. But I don't have Windows and can't help you.

You can also attach a USB printer directly to the Airport Extreme (AEBS) and then use the printer that way. In this case the only system that needs to be on is the system that needs the printer.

And finally, if you printer supports it, you can attach a printer by ethernet cable to either a computer or the AEBS. By attaching by ethernet to the AEBS you get the best of both worlds. The ethernet cable can be quite long, so your printer can be physically located just about anywhere, and by attaching it to the AEBS you can print from any system without worrying if the host computer is awake or not. This is a bit more difficult to set up, but it works well once it is.

Cheers and good luck.
 
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