How to share a printer between two computers on a network

Once you have a network with a couple of computers on it, you will probably want to take advantage of it and have your printers sharable by all computers on the network.  This will give you two advantages:

• All of your computers will have access to the capabilities of all the printers you own.
• You can buy one printer for your whole network, rather than a printer for each computer.

There are two ways to do this:

• Share the printer on the computer that it is connected to.
• Add a print server device.

Sharing a printer on a computer

This is the simplest way to share printers.  To do this, all you need to do is make the printer that is already working on one computer visible to the network (i.e. all the other computers).

To do this, first get on the computer that has the printer attached to it.  Now from the start menu, select “Printer and Faxes.”  Once the list of printers comes up, select the one you want to share, right click on the mouse and select “Sharing.”

From the Sharing Tab, select Share This Printer and enter a name in the text box (I would suggest a name that makes it clear what computer this printer is attached to, just to make things easier in case you have multiple printers).

Hit OK and you are all set.

Now, it is time for the other computers to attach to this printer.

Get on one of the other computers and select “Add a Printer”.  Now select the “Network Printer” option.

On the next tab, the easiest thing to do is select “Browse for a printer” (if you know the name of the computer and printer, you could just enter it directly, I’m lazy and let the browse function take care of it).

When you see the printer come up, select it and you are good to go!

Now there is one big limitation to this setup.

The computer that has the printer attached to it has to be on.

This can be a major pain (and a waste of energy if you are turning on the computer just to be able to use the printer).

Because of that, the second option gives you a lot more flexibility.

Buy a print server device and attach the printer to it

In this scenario, you will buy a piece of hardware that you will attach to one of the ports of your router (or use a wireless one) and assign it an IP address.  The print server device will look like any other computer on the network.  You then physically attach the printer to this print server device.

For the remote machines, you will add the printer the same way as you do in the previous method (i.e Add Printer, Browse for a printer, etc.), the only difference is that the printer is attached to the printer server device name instead of a computer name.

A print server device will cost somewhere between 40 and 70 dollars.

Once you add  this printer to your computer, you can print to it without any other computer being on.

The advantages/disadvantages to this method are:

• A lot more flexibility because you now just need to have the printer on, not the computer it is attached to.
• It is an extra piece of hardware so there is an additional cost compared to just sharing a printer attached to a computer.
• There is some configuration that needs to be done on the print server.

Overall, despite the added cost and configuration, a print server is a better way to go if you can set it up.

My computer’s getting old, should I upgrade it?

Should I upgrade my old computer or buy a new one?

This question I think has become must easier to answer as the years have gone by.  In the old days, back when computer parts were fairly expensive, there was a strong case to get the parts and upgrade computers yourself.  For the last couple of years however, computers no longer have the premium price attached to them and it can be no more expensive to buy a new computer than to upgrade your old one.

So, when would I aim to upgrade an old computer before buying a new one?  I’d say when only one of the following needs to be done.

1. You need more memory – memory is very cheap and easy to replace.
2. You need another disk drive – and your computer has a place to put it inside your computer.
3. You are adding an external device (i.e. webcam, usb device, etc.).
4. You want to add this computer to a network.

These things are easy to do, shouldn’t cause anything else to break in your computer, and can give you a noticeable return for the money you put into the parts.

If you need both memory and more disk space, I’d start looking at a new computer.  If your CPU is slow, I’d just go get another computer.

Basically, I look at it as a time vs. money issue.  Right now, the price break to do it yourself, vs. buying a machine just isn’t enough to justify the time I need to take.

Obviously, if you like to tinker, or get the best components out there, then go build.  As for me, that’s just not my thing.

By the way, I’m not saying necessarily a brand new computer, just a new one relative to yours.  I’m a big fan of the outlet stores, but more on that later . . .