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Wireless printing cable thing

SirCrispin

SirCrispin

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 2, 2005
13
0
Hi, I've got a Netgear DG834G wireless router, which has 4 ethernet holes on the back which you can apparently use for "any combination of computers and peripherals". My printer is a HP PSC1110, which is only USB. I do not want to buy a new printer or a wireless print server - I was wondering if I could use a USB to ethernet converter on the printer?

Any thoughts? I mean, I'd love to get an Airport Express but I can't spend that much just to make the printer wireless.

Thanks
 
SirCrispin said:
I was wondering if I could use a USB to ethernet converter on the printer?
Click to expand...
It would still have to be a print server, but you can skip the wireless part.
 
I meant I didn't want to have to buy a print server at all (and I if I did it would be wireless). $70 is still around £40, a big rip-off seeing as you can connect ethernet printers to the netgear. :mad:

So just a USB to ethernet cable won't work? Has anyone actually tried it?

(Apologies if I'm being an idiot but I had to try and do something on windows earlier and it's put me in a bad mood. :( )
 
SirCrispin said:
So just a USB to ethernet cable won't work? Has anyone actually tried it?
Click to expand...

I dont think there is such a thing. Aren't they two different communication standards?
 
helloooo, any sagely advice hear? (no, not some oh-so-witty anecdoting of the little book of calm or what-not, does anyone actually know if this would work?)

thanks
 
SirCrispin said:
helloooo, any sagely advice hear? (no, not some oh-so-witty anecdoting of the little book of calm or what-not, does anyone actually know if this would work?)

thanks
Click to expand...
Not gonna work. Your printer doesn't have a print server, which is needed. That belkin thing adds an ethernet port to a computer. You'll need a print server...either an Airport express or that Netgear thing someone linked to
 
grr arg :mad:

okay, thanks for the confirmation :)
it's just such a pain having to ferret around the back of the family pc to find the printer cable and then plug it back in. oh well, an excuse to get airport :)
 
SirCrispin said:
it's just such a pain having to ferret around the back of the family pc to find the printer cable and then plug it back in. oh well, an excuse to get airport :)
Click to expand...
Another possibility would be a simple USB A-B switch. I've seen those in the US$10 range. It's not as spiffy as an automagically networked arrangement, but it would beat fumbling behind the printer for cables and the price is right.
 
Or.. you could connect the printer to a stationary computer and share it with other machines on the network.

I do this: in my basement my printers are connected to my G3 iMac, and it shares them with any machine on the wired & wireless network.
 
Coolnat2004 said:
Or.. you could connect the printer to a stationary computer and share it with other machines on the network.

I do this: in my basement my printers are connected to my G3 iMac, and it shares them with any machine on the wired & wireless network.
Click to expand...

Ding ding ding! This is by far the easiest solution, and it gets bonus points for not having to buy extra hardware which will almost certainly be useless when/if your network is ever upgraded. Connect the printer to a desktop and share it out over the network.

The only downside is that the host computer has to be running in order for anything to print. But who turns off computers anymore?
 
matticus008 said:
The only downside is that the host computer has to be running in order for anything to print. But who turns off computers anymore?
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That's a big, big downside in either a home or office environment. If that machine's owner wants to leave the other computer sleeping or powered down, that's the end of that. And, of course, another computer just for serving a printer is a non-starter if the price of a dedicated print server is an issue.
 
iMeowbot said:
That's a big, big downside in either a home or office environment. If that machine's owner wants to leave the other computer sleeping or powered down, that's the end of that. And, of course, another computer just for serving a printer is a non-starter if the price of a dedicated print server is an issue.
Click to expand...

Well, it would be pretty foolish to buy an entire computer just to host a USB printer. But if you've got the desktop already, just sitting around, there's no need to buy anything else.

In an office environment, there's almost zero chance that the computers would be shut down at night because of backup and maintenance tasks and the simple fact that remote access or accessing network shares are REALLY hard when the computer is turned off. The reality is that computers, especially in an office environment, should be left running all the time. But we're not talking about an office, here.
 
SirCrispin said:
grr arg :mad:

okay, thanks for the confirmation :)
it's just such a pain having to ferret around the back of the family pc to find the printer cable and then plug it back in. oh well, an excuse to get airport :)
Click to expand...

I don't understand why you don't just keep the printer connected to one computer (that's your printer server right there) then set the printer to be shared and set up your other computers to use that printer??

Of course, you gotta install the same printer drivers on each computer..
 
matticus008 said:
In an office environment, there's almost zero chance that the computers would be shut down at night because of backup and maintenance tasks and the simple fact that remote access or accessing network shares are REALLY hard when the computer is turned off.
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Ask IT people in real offices about how well this works. It doesn't work, at all. People outright ignore pleas to leave machines on overnight for upgrades etc. They end up having to do remote installations at boot/login time, and then end users call up to complain about their computers being slow or stuck.

In places like that, user files are stored on file servers, not the desktops. That deals with the backup issues. Printers in well organized offices, of course, run shared printers from real print server boxes or servers in the closet, not the desktop machines.

Small/home offices are part of another story. Those don't have big automated backup solutions in the first place. Of course that stuff ends up being turned off all the time.
 
iMeowbot said:
Ask IT people in real offices about how well this works. It doesn't work, at all. People outright ignore pleas to leave machines on overnight for upgrades etc. They end up having to do remote installations at boot/login time, and then end users call up to complain about their computers being slow or stuck.
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That would be me, and the easy solution to that is to lock users out of shutting down their systems. It's also pretty easy to teach them the right habits if you place "Log off" prominently in the Start Menu and take "Shut down" away.

In places like that, user files are stored on file servers, not the desktops. That deals with the backup issues. Printers in well organized offices, of course, run shared printers from real print server boxes or servers in the closet, not the desktop machines.
Click to expand...
No, file servers are for common resources most places. In order to reduce network traffic in congested offices, individual workstations often have their own documents and attached storage. There's also a much lower per-unit cost this way because desktops have in the range of 60-80+ GB free after applications are installed these days, and it's foolish for a medium-sized office not to use that space for non-critical data. Ethernet printers or print server enabled printers are of course the norm, but that's neither here nor there since we're talking about a home network here.

With the extremely low power consumption of modern PCs and the various multimedia needs and desire for quick turnaround from inactive to active, there's little need to shut down systems. Boot times are still not fast enough for most users, and those that shut down computers do so when they're finished for the night...which would also seem to imply that the printer wouldn't be needed anymore. The notion that people shut down their computers more than once per day doesn't reflect a large segment of users.
 
matticus008 said:
That would be me, and the easy solution to that is to lock users out of shutting down their systems.
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That's very interesting. You are able to prevent them from turning off power strips and pulling plugs? That's quite amazing, because it never worked out at DEC or BU or Stream or J&J. And then of course there are the notebook users, whose machines aren't even in the office overnight. At one of those companies, turning off the desktop machines was even a mandate, as part of the corporate environmental policy.
No, file servers are for common resources most places.
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That was common in the previous century, but the need for ever-more-controlled record retention policies put an end to that at major businesses. And yes, it results in terrible performance for the end user -- especially when the user's "local" file server is across an ocean or another state during travel -- but such is life when everything meeds to be documented and verified and validated and signed.
 
iMeowbot said:
That's very interesting. You are able to prevent them from turning off power strips and pulling plugs?
Click to expand...
After being told via email and in training sessions to click on Start\Log Off when finished (or press the power button on the case, which does the same thing), anyone who is determined to crawl on the floor and shut off power is someone no one can stop. Fortunately, no one was that driven to keep Windows patches, virus updates, and backup operations from running.


That was common in the previous century, but the need for ever-more-controlled record retention policies put an end to that at major businesses. And yes, it results in terrible performance for the end user -- especially when the user's "local" file server is across an ocean or another state during travel -- but such is life when everything meeds to be documented and verified and validated and signed.
Click to expand...
That's true in a lot of situations and corporate environments, but not nearly all of them. There is still a great deal of day-to-day work that doesn't require that level of auditing. In fact, I would be highly surprised if the majority of major corporations had an auditing/tracking policy that was more aggressive than a daily level (except for certain systems and procedures, like finances and so on). But beyond that, the decision to centrally manage all documents and software is mostly related to mobility and liability, since local files can be tracked in real time as well. It's just that from a security standpoint, locking someone out of a server is a lot more effective than trying to lock them out of a local disk. But again that's a level of security not typical as a universal corporate policy, but rather just certain levels and/or departments.
 
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