atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums Computers & Programming Computers, Software, Accessories One Printer, Two Computers.

I stopped doing business with CPAs a long time ago. They are easily the dumbest people when it comes to anything technical and cannot be made to understand anything. They will listen to any huckster that says they can get the same value out of a 50 dollar product as a 1000 dollar product. Case in point, a CPA firm refused to listen to me and install a tape backup system. I warned them of the risk. They went with a 50 dollar CDRW drive and tried to use it for their backup device. Of course nobody could be bothered to fuss with it. Some time later the disk drive failed, no backup, $6000.00 in recovery costs. They blamed me. Best to avoid CPAs - oh and dentists are about as bad.

Don't forget lawyers.

I always thought that the bad thing about lawyers is that they can "Get Legal" at little or no cost to themselves. Yeah, yeah, if you do the job right, so what. How many of you guys were the successful bidder on a job against 3-4 other brands, and the customer wants the features that the other systems had, that your's doesn't have, after the job is complete? They swear up and down that your proposal said it would do it. They can't show you in the docs that accompanied your your bid, so THEN they say, "Well, you SAID .....". THAT's why lawyers scare me! You will probably win, but at what cost! John C.

So is the problem we're dealing with Lawyers or is it the general problem of sharing new USB printers on a network?

Please stay on topic.

I finally got a HP network printer. On sale at office depot for $250. Works like a charm. I don't think there is a device out there that actually lets two computers input to one printer...at least effectively.

So what is the latest you found out?

Use a cross-over cable to make a peer-to-peer network between the two computers. Install the printer on one computer, physically connected to it via USB then make it network shared. Add the shared printer onto the other computer.

I had a QMS (PS-10?) laser printer back when it had 3 inputs, parallel, serial, and appletalk. I had it hooked to my PC with a parallel cable and hooked my secretary up via the serial cable - it worked fine.

Are there still printers out there with multiple (parallel/serial/usb) inputs?

Sam

Sam,
There are some printers that still come with multiple ports. However, many cheap printers are coming USB only, and more expensive printers are coming USB and Network ready.

Parallel is being phased out, Serial I've only seen used on Thermal or Micro-Impact printers.

I've got a Canon ImageRunner 3570 (or is that 3750?) which has network (which is the only way we use it) parallel and USB. It's only a couple years old.

I had a customer who had a perfectly good laser printer. She had to junk it because she got a new computer and it didn't come with a parallel port.

Newegg sent a newsletter a few weeks ago raving about a network-connected USB hub that would allow sharing "ANY" USB device over the network, printers, scanners and flash drives included.

Rob: if you customer still has her printer, Best Buy (at least the Canadian ones) have a USB to Parallel printer converter cable for a reasonable price.

The only problem might be that if the new computer is Vista there may not be any drivers for the older printer. I had that problem with a HP inkjet and HP did not have drivers past XP.