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How to share two printers in an office?

Y

yalag

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Original poster
Nov 18, 2007
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We have two printers that are tugged away in the office corner that is quite hidden. We want to share these two printers with all the macs in the office. What is the cheapest way to do this? I know with 1 printer, we can purchase an airport express. But with two we can't. Also, buy a mac mini just to share printer is way too expensive.

Any ideas? (These printers are not airprint capable).
 
yalag said:
how does that even work? The macs can somehow detect the usb over tcpip?
Click to expand...

I don't know the technological background behind it but it works, i have printers shared using a usb hub from my time capsule
 
I'm pretty sure that you can share two like on the Airport extreme with Y splitter.
 
yalag said:
how does that even work? The macs can somehow detect the usb over tcpip?
Click to expand...
No, that is not how it works. The host Mac is the print server for the two printers. Other computers detect the Mac acting as the print server. The simplest communications protocol is Bonjour which is based on TCP/IP. The print server handles USB or whichever protocol is used to connect the printer to the print server Mac.
 
I have two plus a hdd for time machine pluged into my airport extreme. Works just fine.
 
yalag said:
Really? Can anyone confirm? What about an express?
Click to expand...

I can absolutely confirm that you can connect multiple USB devices onto an Airport Extreme. I currently have two printers and a dual-bay hard drive connected to a 7-port hub. One of the printers has a bunch of flash card slots, and they show up in the Airport Utility as well.

I can't confirm whether the Express can do multiple printers. I do know that the Express doesn't support hard drives/flash drives on the USB, though.
 
Do your company have two printers are also worried about distribution is not reasonable, my company and another small company share a printer will be a very painful thing. You only need to put it in everyone convenient place. Don't tangle!
 
yalag said:
We have two printers that are tugged away in the office corner that is quite hidden. We want to share these two printers with all the macs in the office. What is the cheapest way to do this? I know with 1 printer, we can purchase an airport express. But with two we can't. Also, buy a mac mini just to share printer is way too expensive.

Any ideas? (These printers are not airprint capable).
Click to expand...

Take a look at the USB servers made by Silex :http://www.silexamerica.com/products...ity/index.html.

I have one of these on a LAN (can also be WiFi) that connects all my USB devices to my MBA. It connects : Printer, Scanner, DVD drive, iPad, iPhone, Camera. All this stuff sits on another desk away from my desk, with powered USB hub connecting to the Silex. It also shares all this stuff with a Win7 PC.
 
yalag said:
What is the cheapest way to do this?
Click to expand...

The CHEAPEST way is to pull the printers out of the corner. Hook them to computers on the network via USB cable. Activate printer sharing through the Sharing pref pane in system preferences on each of the host computers.

If AirPrint is desired, load handyPrint on each host computer so iOS devices can also use the printers.

http://www.netputing.com/handyprint/
 
MisterMe said:
No, that is not how it works. The host Mac is the print server for the two printers. Other computers detect the Mac acting as the print server. The simplest communications protocol is Bonjour which is based on TCP/IP. The print server handles USB or whichever protocol is used to connect the printer to the print server Mac.
Click to expand...

The AirPort Express supports "several printers connected to the base station via a powered USB hub", so yes, that would work. As far as the hub goes, the Macally Mini hub comes with an AC adaptor and has a rather small footprint.
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