Help me figure out how to network my printer

[Fifty]

So I got a fancypants printer, and would like to be able to print wirelessly on it from my room (its in another room). It has network capabilities, but unfortunately the printer is away from where our modem is, and neither our modem nor our printer can be moved, so I can't have the printer connected via cable to the modem.

IS THERE ANY (<$100 cost) WAY TO NETWORK MY PRINTER?

 

[Cutlass]

Get a wireless router and a wireless receiver for the printer. But odds are that would be over $100.

 

[Fifty]

I already have wireless on my modem... so would I just need the wireless receiver?????

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Does the printer have wireless? If not, then you need to get yourself another router, and hook it up to bridge the signal. From there, you connect the printer to the router and it should work wirelessly.


Oooor, you can go on monoprice.com, buy yourself a 100FT Cat 5e ethernet cable for 8$ + SH, and hook up the printer via wired. Guess which way's cheaper (hint: the cable costs 8$, the router is 30$ and up)
And before you say there's walls to go through -- ethernet cable needs at most a 1cm diameter hole in the wall. Put it down low in a corner and once you move out, get some spackle and fill it in. No one will notice it.

Get a wireless router and a wireless receiver for the printer. But odds are that would be over $100.

That would work well and all if you could install drivers on your printer. Chances are, any reciever you get will have to be either self contained ( as in, it has all the logic for recieving the signal, processing it and then sending it along via a wired connection) or hooked up to a small pc that acts as a bridge for the printer. Either way, it aint cheap, and there are much better ways to do it (like the two I pointed out above)

 

[Turner]

Is the printer near a computer that's on the network? You could always attach the printer as a local device to that computer and share it on the network. You'd have to leave the computer on all the time to have this functionality tho.

 

[Gooblah]

Well, see if you can hook onto the network from the printer. At work, we have a wireless printer as well - I entered the Setup Menu (usually there's a button, assuming you have a 'fancy' one), and from there it should be self-explanatory as to hooking up to the network.

Make sure you have printer sharing turned ON for your network (use Control Panel -> Network and Sharing Center).

 

[Padma]

This weekend I set up a "fancy" wireless printer for my daughter. (The network printer at my house is wired, and about 75 feet from the router. ) It was a pain to do, because you had to *wire* it to install the software on the PC (stupid Windows setup program), but when it was wired, the wireless part automatically shut down. Unplug the wire, and the wireless automatically started. But the wireless MAC address was different from the wired one, so I had to jump through a few *tricky* hoops to make it work.

If the printer is not already "wireless-enabled", you will need to buy a wireless adapter ($$$), or just run a wire to it, as suggested above.

 

[Cutlass]

Yeah, while it probably can be done wirelessly, it's probably better to just bite the bullet and run a wire. You could run in along baseboards and under rugs to hide it and route it the best you can through doorways.