My dear brother was lamenting the other day how he and his wife rarely ever use their desktop computer anymore, but always use the laptop. The only issue is that they would like to be able to use the laptop to print, which they don’t do right now because their multifunction printer is connected directly to the desktop PC.
At first, I thought that a wireless print server would be the ultimate solution to this (and a good christmas present), because then he could print over the wireless connection, and scan using the desktop (I knew off the bat that the scanning functions could not be shared via the WPS).
Turns out, though, that’s not how it works. If you connect the printer to a wireless print server, you pretty much give up the other (non-standalone, such as copying) functions of the multifunction printer. Hell, with most of them, you even lose the ability for the printer to send info (such as low ink or paper out warnings) back over the wireless network.
{sigh}
Determined to come up with a solution to this, I thought, OK, well, he could simply unplug the printer from the WPS if he wanted to scan stuff…that would work, right? This has not been a recommended solution from the people I talked to.
(said people are the tech support dude at the local computer store and a couple other computer geek dudes here at work…they seem to think that this would be bad for the print server)
Now, I know my way around when it comes to computers, but not much about networking, so I am out of my element here. Is it a bad idea to unplug the printer from the WPS when scanning is wanted? Is this going to “burn it out” or something? Is the only solution for my brother to leave his desktop computer on all the time and simply share the printer functions over the wireless network?
thanks for the help from those with experience.