Where is a good place to look/purchase online a Bluetooth Printer?

[SandersHokie]

May sound dumb, but are there bluetooth printers out there? I thought I saw someone online once, but they were pretty expensive. I'm just trying to go as wireless as I can. I have the bluetooth mighty mouse, love it.

thanks for the help.

 

[panoz7]

May sound dumb, but are there bluetooth printers out there? I thought I saw someone online once, but they were pretty expensive. I'm just trying to go as wireless as I can. I have the bluetooth mighty mouse, love it.

thanks for the help.

I know a couple of hp printers support bluetooth through an after-market add on stick. I think it costs like $50... but I'm not really sure.

I think that bluetooth in printers is being phased out and replaced with 802.11 wireless. Wireless has a much higher bandwidth and doesn't face the same range restrictions as bluetooth.

This is slightly self serving, but I've got a printer for sale in this thread. It has built in 802.11G wireless networking, ethernet, and a little bluetooth logo on the front which I assume means that it supports the aftermarket bluetooth stick. Take a look.

 

[SandersHokie]

does that printer scan too?

 

[panoz7]

does that printer scan too?

Nope. For wireless scanning you're going to have to spend considerably more money... and I'm not convinced it's worth it.

I have a hp 4-in-1 that supports scanning over ethernet. I have it connected to a wireless access point and could theoretically scan from it to my powerbook without any wires. Some of the newer 4-in-1's have built in WiFi... I think they start at about $400 or so.

I'm not nearly as big a fan of wireless scanning as I am of wireless printing. I use a dedicated canon scanner directly connected to my powerbook with USB instead of the 4-in-1 for my scanning needs.

High resolution scans can be over 100 MBs and even USB 2.0's large bandwidth can be saturated transferring a large scan... wireless is significantly slower then USB and I wasn't happy with the scan speed of the 4-in-1 over WiFi at all. In addition a stand alone scanner will generally provide better quality.

Finally, unlike a printer, you generally need to have the scanner located right near the computer in order to use it. I only scan on occasion and most of the time I don't have the scanner connected to my powerbook... when I need to use it I plug it in, otherwise I just leave the USB cord hidden behind the scanner.

 

[crees!]

How about just picking up an Airport Express and plugging the printer into that? With my setup that's what I do and it works like a charm.

 

[BiikeMike]

How about just picking up an Airport Express and plugging the printer into that? With my setup that's what I do and it works like a charm.

Thats basically what we've got set up in our place, but instead of an Airport, its a G3 Powermac

Much easier, and we use it for file sharing as well