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southern MN | For wireless to work, you need 2 things with antenneas (sp). Your laptop has it, and your router has it, so might as well use them together.
You can hook up your other computer to the router - with a cable - and then print through the desktop to printer. It takes a bit of setup, but: The laptop will go to the router, to the desktop, to the printer. All items must be on & powered up.
Another option: There are printer hubs sold, that plug into the router with a cable (or even wirelessly). You plug the printer into it, and then you can print from your laptop (or desktop too if you run a cable from the desktop to the router) to the printer. You only need the printer, hub, and router on - no need for a desktop computer to be sitting thier waiting. These are _nightmares_ to set up from what I have heard, it does not go smoothly unless you get hardware that really likes each other - not just any old printer you have around. I'm just mentioning it is an option.
Just a week or 2 ago Best Buy had another option I went for. They had a network lazer B/W printer for sale for $109. You plug it into the router (the printer also works wirelessly, but more trouble to set up, so I just used a cable) and install driver software on any computer you want to use the printer with, and it works. I have a desktop, this laptop, & my wife's Mac computer all working with that printer in about 1/2 hour. Works well. Really nice. There are color & inkjet network printers available too - this one was just cheap - lazer printers are better & faster than inkjet for business use.....
So, this setup would be: the printer connected to the router. Your laptop wirelessly communicating with the router. Your desktop computer plugged intot he router with a cable. Both computers can use the printer any time the router & printer are powered up.
It is possible to skip the router even with the printer I bought, but that gets a bit different to set up, and as long as you have the router.....
I haven't been exact enough to really help you plug & play, but hope you got some ideas? Different options?
Modem is a device that takes a data stream & presents it to a computer device. A dialup modem is slow & requires you to dial out any time you want to hook up. A DSL modem is sitting on the phone line all the time, ready to go right away, with much faster data flow. A cable modem is sitting on your TV cable, waiting to go right now any time you want to access the internet, even faster than DSL typically. All 3 of those are modems, but they are different interally. To make a dial-up modem work with a router, you need a way to make the router dial out the phone number - possible but not so easy and results are not very good.........
Most routers today allow modem input from the high-speed internet modems, and will share data between up to 4 cabled devices and many wireless devices and spit the modem info on to whatever computer asks for it. It's really just a fancy set of pipe faucets that allow flow between computers & things without crashing into each other. Most of the time.
--->Paul | |
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Can I do this? If so how?
