I am a divorced single mom, and I am currently taking college classes in the evenings. My parents usually watch the kids for me, so most evenings I end up doing homework at their house. I work off of a six-month old HP laptop connected to their wireless network. For the most part this setup works very well, until I need to print. Anything I print needs to either be e-mailed or copied to a USB flash drive so I can print it from my parents system. Now I know this doesnt sound like a big deal, but somehow it always turns out to be a problem. Either the e-mail doesnt show up immediately or the system doesnt recognize the USB flash drive, the file is in the wrong format, or any number of possible issues. I thought about trying to connect the printer directly to my laptop, but my Dads desk is so cluttered that it just isnt worth the effort. Especially at 11 oclock at night when Im rushing to get home. Other then getting a second printer, is there anything I could do to make this process less of a chore? Fortunately there is a very simple solution to all of your woes. In fact its so simple that youll never have to worry about file compatibility or an unrecognized USB flash drive again. Since your folks already have a working printer connected to their PC and there is a wireless network in the house that both PCs are connected to, then the easiest and most efficient thing you can do is just print directly to your parents printer from your laptop via Windows Vistas file and print sharing service. File and print sharing is a service that has been part of the Windows operating system for decades now. This service allows Windows PCs to share resources with other PCs on the network. Computer resources can include a variety of things, but most commonly refers to files, folders, drives and of course, printers. Configuring file and print services is a very simple and straightforward process and consists of two components; a host PC and a client. The host is the PC with the resources, i.e., the printer. The client is the computer that needs access to those resources. In this case, your parents PC is the host and your laptop is the client. Before we begin configuring file and print services there are a few items we first need to verify. For starters, your laptop and your parents PC (from here on in known as the Host) need to be part of the same network. As such they should both have similar IP addresses (ex. 192.168.0.x) and should be members of the same workgroup. In Vista the default workgroup is Workgroup. In XP it was MSHOME. It really doesnt matter what the actual name of the workgroup is as long as they are the same on both systems. In regards to the IP addresses, personally, I would assign a static IP to the PC with the printer attached to it. Its not absolutely necessary, but in my experience Ive found that it makes the connection more reliable. Something else to keep in mind is that by default Vista uses Password protected sharing. This means that in order to access any resources on the Host PC youll need to have a valid user account on the host system. The simplest thing to do is to just setup an account on the Host system with the same credentials (username and password) as those on your laptop. And of course make sure the printer is properly configured and working on the host PC. Once thats complete, were ready to begin. The first part involves configuring the printer on the host system as a shared resource. To do that, just follow these steps: Were now ready to complete the second part of this task which is installing the printer to your laptop (a.k.a. the client PC). Before you start the installation, make sure you have the computer name of the host PC and the share name you assigned to the printer. While this solution should provide you with the relief that youre looking for, its not without its problems. Reliability has a tendency to be an issue, but typically its nothing that a reboot couldnt resolve. Secondly, in order for you to maintain access to that printer, the host PC will need to remain on all the time. So make sure the host isnt configured to go to sleep or into hibernation. If it does, you will lose access to the printer until the host PC is turned back on. I hope you found this information helpful, and I wish you all the best with your studies.
Ronald Pacchiano is a contributing writer for SmallBusinessComputing.com.Do you have a comment or question about this article or other small business topics in general? Speak out in the SmallBusinessComputing.com Forums. Join the discussion today!