Totally wireless printing?

[Fisher624]

So as I understand it, the way that air print works is via one of two ways.

The first is to have a printer hooked up to your Mac or pc, which is connected to your network. So basically you are printing through your home computer.

The second way is to have one of the new HP e-printers. This option, as I understand it, is the only truly wireless printing option. This is because the e-printer is online, and on your network at all times.

I believe the e-printers also work by emailing your document/pic to the printer? Or can you, while on the network, just hit print and not have to email it?

Can anyone with a better understanding of how airprint works, and what our options are, add to or correct what I have said?

 

[DeusInvictus7]

This is how I have mine set up: My printer (Canon MP490) is connected to my Airport Extreme, which is shared throughout my network. My MacBook Pro has printer sharing set up to share that printer (which is required for AirPrint).

And then boom. Good to go.

EDIT: Actually, I was just messing around with it, and you don't even need to have Printer Sharing enabled in Preferences. As long as the printer is somehow connected to the network, then it will be available for AirPrint. So any router that allows sharing a printer should be all you need.

 

[George Knighton]

Pardon the noobie question....please.

If you buy a wireless print server for a non-wireless printer, does it have to be physically connected to the router, or does the wireless print server broadcast its own signal that doesn't need a router?

 

[cas85]

i have an hp printer thats about 2 years old that's wireless.

i just use that hp iprint app or whatever it's called and it works perfectly. really simple.

 

[Jackyl]

Wireless printing

This is how I have mine set up: My printer (Canon MP490) is connected to my Airport Extreme, which is shared throughout my network. My MacBook Pro has printer sharing set up to share that printer (which is required for AirPrint).

And then boom. Good to go.

EDIT: Actually, I was just messing around with it, and you don't even need to have Printer Sharing enabled in Preferences. As long as the printer is somehow connected to the network, then it will be available for AirPrint. So any router that allows sharing a printer should be all you need.

This is my set up too and works great.

 

[Pinger]

So as I understand it, the way that air print works is via one of two ways.

The first is to have a printer hooked up to your Mac or pc, which is connected to your network. So basically you are printing through your home computer.

Can anyone with a better understanding of how airprint works, and what our options are, add to or correct what I have said?

That's how it worked for me BUT seems iTunes 10 beta needs to be installed on the computer which your printing through... I'm at work now and the printer here which is setup just like my home network except iTunes is not installed on it which apparently means iPad will not see the printer.

 

[SA22C]

That's how it worked for me BUT seems iTunes 10 beta needs to be installed on the computer which your printing through... I'm at work now and the printer here which is setup just like my home network except iTunes is not installed on it which apparently means iPad will not see the printer.

Yep. There's an innocuous little checkbox in the preferences of iTunes that says 'Enable Airprint' or something like that. It's easy to miss. Once it's turned on though, any shared printer on that machine is available for iOS devices. I run a Windows Home Server to host backups of both my Windows and Mac devices and installing iTunes on that machine with the checkbox enabled allowed me to share out any printer I wanted to my iPad and iPhone.

It's friggin' sweet!