Many people now have two or more computers at home and you maybe one of those. As many other people, you have only one printer, but you’re not the only one who wants to use it. What you may do in this situation? One solution is to visit a local computer store and buy another printer. But I suggest that you save those $100-200 for something better and share your existing printer with your computers. It’s no rocket science and you can easily do it yourself.

I will consider a regular printer that doesn’t have a built-in network card, most home printers are like that.

When computers are already connected

Let’s assume you already have computers connected into network, then sharing a printer is matter of several minutes. In this manual, I will explain how to share a printer in Windows XP network.

Pick a computer to connect the printer to and install the printer drives on it, unless you already haven’t (refer to printer installation manual). On this computer, go to Control panel, open Printers and Faxes, right-click your printer for drop-down menu and select Sharing…:

Open Sharing tab and share your printer. Also you’ll need to assign a network name to your printer, in my case it’s “Canon iP4500.”

Now you have to install printer software on other computers that need to connect to your printer. During the installation process, you’ll be asked if the printer is local or shared; Select “shared” and complete the installation.

Congratulations! You have networked your printer with the computers.

When computers are NOT connected

In this case you have 2 options: unite the computers into network and do like described above, or you can to connect a printer to computers through a switch. This instruction works well in Mac or Linux, not only Windows, so I leave out the OS-specific details.

First, you need to buy a switch (unless you already got one) depending on what kind of connector your printer uses – USB or parallel (LPT.)

Most modern printers have USB connector; few have both USB and LPT, while some older printers are connected via LPT cable. Here you can see examples of each cable:

So, the switch you need to get should generally look like one of these:

Please mind that with parallel switcher you may have to switch it manually to select what computer should use the printer. USB model are generally automatic switches.

In your next step, you need you install the printer drivers and other software (optionally) on every computer to use the printer. Then plug the cables from the computers into the switch and connect the switch to the printer.

Congratulations again! Now you know how to connect several computers to a printer in other way.

What kind of printer to select for you office depends of how big that office is and here is why. The size of the office demands same volumes of printing: two-person business hardly prints 500 pages a month, while a corporation that occupies a whole building may produce thousands pages a week.

So, the first question you must answer yourself is how much you are going to print. Another important factor of selecting a printer is what kind of output you will produce: text, graphics, photos or a mixture of them, in other words, do you need to paint a picture or to create the thousand words that describe it?

Keeping these 2 things in mind, you have two major options: inkjet printer or laser printer.

Inkjets Can Print Less, Lasers More

Do you print a lot, or does your office have a lot of people printing? Laser printers with their faster engines, higher-capacity paper trays, and higher monthly duty cycles can pump out longer documents and handle a steady pile of printouts. (Networking is a given for multiperson offices; you’ll find plenty of inkjets and lasers that offer Ethernet, Wi-Fi, or both.) Printers that have automatic duplexing can save paper. If you don’t print that much – a few dozen pages a day, nothing too complicated – an inkjet or low-capacity laser might work just fine.

A small office manager should keep to 2 rules of thumb:

• your input tray should exceed your daily print volume
• your ink or toner cartridge‘s page yield should exceed your monthly print volume

There is a middle ground. A one-person office might not need networking. A lower-volume office that prints less than 100 pages per day could be happy with an inkjet printer. Some office-oriented inkjets offer faster speed, bigger paper trays, and better plain-paper print quality, rivaling the capabilities of lower-end lasers.

Inkjets Are Good at Graphics, Lasers at Text

An inkjet printer excels at painting a picture. Though inkjets have greatly improved in speed and text quality in recent years, their strong side is graphics quality. Inkjets can achieve a wider range of colors and produce smoother-looking images than all but the most sophisticated (and astronomically priced) color laser printers. Some can print well even on everyday stock.

A thousand words will look better coming from a laser. Lasers set the gold standard for printing precise text and if that’s all you do, a simple monochrome laser could fit nicely. Color lasers or solid-ink color printers, such as those from Xerox can handle simple graphics such as pie charts and logos, and they can print decent photos, too.

Maybe a Multifunction?

Multifunction devices are also printers that have copy, scan, and sometimes fax function combined in one device. These printers are becoming more popular with offices that need to do a lot in a limited amount of space. It costs money to stuff all those features into one box, though; and as a result, a $700 MFP will have a less robust printer at its heart than a like-priced stand-alone printer. Some say that adding other capabilities may compromise on the primary machine, but don’t be afraid. The technology most MFP are good enought to provide high quality of printing.

While you might be tempted to buy a machine with fax functions “just in case,” think tiwce about how often you’ll use it (as opposed to scanning to e-mail, which is faster and easier). An MFP with no faxing capability will cost less. Onthe other hand, the multifunction overload is possible. If your office prints, faxes, or copies in high volume, an MFP may require you to wait to copy while someone else’s big print job finishes.

The Cost of Ownership

Because both inkjets and lasers can print a wide variety of documents, the final decision often boils down to cost. Inkjets tend to be cheaper to buy but more expensive to maintain over time. Laser and solid-ink printers cost more up-front, but they usually save you money on running costs. Here is another couple of things you should consider.

• Cost per page. Divide the price of an ink or toner cartridge by its page yield – usually available (with some digging) from the vendor’s Web site – to get a sample cost per page, not counting paper. For instance, a page of black text from a laser printer might cost one to three cents; the same page from an inkjet might cost three to five cents. Those pennies can add up quickly, especially when you use more ink for longer or more graphics-heavy documents.

  The smaller the cartridge’s page yield, the more pricy the ink or toner will be. Some ink tanks are empty after just a few hundred pages. The smallest toner cartridges (around 1000 pages) will cost more per page than a toner supply that can print 2500 or more pages.

• Other consumables. Lasers have their pricey side, too. Their toner cartridges cost a lot more up-front, especially if they contain a drum and other printer parts in addition to the toner. Other parts, such as the fuser, may cost hundreds of dollars to replace, though they may require replacing only once in the lifetime of the printer.

This is an event we just couldn’t leave unnoticed. Yesterday Hewlett-Packard celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the launch of its first DeskJet printer. First introduced in 1988, the HP DeskJet became a corner stoner of HP’s steady ascension as a major player in the emerging industry of personal printing.

It is HP that has developed the world’s first thermal inkjet printer in 1979. It is HP that developed the ThinkJet in 1984. It is HP that gave borth to first succesful colored PaintJet in 1987.

It is HP that launched the DeskJet the following year, 1988, and color DeskJet 500 in 1991 to cater to the demand by the mass market. It is HP that was able to offer the public a non-impact, desktop-sized printer that boasted laser-quality output for the first time.

Long live the Hewlett-Packard! More innovative technologies to general public, less expensive cartridges.

Epson has announced an extreme solution to the problem of users who print sensitive documents to network queues but then forget to pick them up — a printer that requires a smartcard before it will print.

Documents to be printed using the EpsonNet Authentication Print system are first stored on a server much as they would be with any network print queue. But where a conventional print queue simply spools the documents in the correct driver format, the Epson system holds them on the server until a user causes the job to be printed by presenting one of a number of types of access cards; contactless or proximity smartcards are supported.

According to Epson, the technology should interest companies in a range of sectors such as banking, healthcare, education, hotels and, inevitably, the military, basically anyone who has cause to worry about the undisciplined use of laser printers.

The kit comprises an interface card, which slots into the printer itself, a contactless card reader and 10 swipe cards, and requires server management software. Epson models supported include the EPL-N2550, EPL-N3000, Aculaser 2600, Aculaser C2600, Aculaser C3800, Aculaser C4200, and Aculaser C9100.

Assuming that companies can face the hassle of managing yet another piece of insecure hardware — the smartcards — this system could have some advantages. The issue it addresses is certainly on the rise for all sorts of reasons, including regulatory compliance.

The system is relatively expensive on a per-printer basis — each printer kit costs £567 ($1114) — but it is likely that an organization would only need a small number of printers to be secured per site. The EpsonNet Authentication Server software costs £707.