Mac question - is this even possible?

Right now I have a PC desktop to which a printer is USB-attached. I also have a PC laptop from which I am able to print wirelessly.

Mrs. Mustard will soon pick up a laptop Mac. Is it possible to configure the Mac to play nice with the printer that is connected to the desktop PC?

Thanks,

mmm

How are you actually printing wirelessly from your laptop? Is it direct to the printer or via the desktop?

I can’t speak to your exact setup but it’s certainly possible. That’s the same setup we have – desktop PC with attached USB printer, wireless printing from both PC laptop and Mac laptop – and printing works fine. I vaguely remember having to find an online help file to tweak some setting on the Mac to get it to talk to our old-school printer, but it took less than 20 minutes to get everything working.

It is not a wireless printer. The printer is connected via USB to the desktop. The current PC laptop is in the same workgroup as the PC desktop.
mmm

It’s pretty easy, unless you have some unusual circumstances. Here’s a guide.

Thank you, BigT - I’ll refer to that when the time comes.
mmm

The inconvenience in our household came from having to boot the PC whenever we wanted to print something. When we were shopping for a router, though, we found that print sharing is an increasingly common feature, so our printer lives in the living room now.

Wow… things have come a long way since I wrote this guide!

Wow. I remember that guide. Glad to know a Doper wrote it.

And while it’s a little out of date, due the lack of the HP software, it is pretty accurate if there’s not a similar printer driver on the Mac. It’s just that that is so rare that I lumped it in with “unusual circumstances.”