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

My wife's employer wants me to connect two computers to one printer via a USB hub with little or no out of pocket expense.

This is one of those jobs where the customer thinks it should be a 30 second job and I'm sure he's not planning on paying more than a minimum service call so before I go waste a lot of time as well as buying any adapters (on his dime) I would need just to try this I wanted to check here to see what kind of headaches I'm setting myself up for.

I told him I don't think it will work like that and that my guess is the printer is going to print garbage if it prints anything at all.

One of the computers is on the LAN while the other is not and he absolutely does not want it on the LAN. I'm not sure why.
Otherwise I would connect the computer with the local printer to the LAN and simply share it.

So, have any of you tried this? If so how did it turn out? What kind of problems, if any, did you encounter?

I've never tried that, but I think you're right - I'm pretty sure a hub is for sharing many devices on one computer.

How about this: web page

"Tripp Lites 4-Port USB 2.0 Printer/Peripheral Sharing Switch lets you conveniently share a printer, scanner, external hard drive, etc, among four PCs. Quickly switch between computers using keyboard hot-keys, mouse, or manually. Plug-and-play functionality makes installation a breeze. Icon task bar indicates switch status at a glance, and LEDs display which computer is active. Power drawn through the USB cables eliminates the need for seperate AC adapter."

Now that looks like it just may do the trick. Thanks! I think that's about as close to "little or no expense" as he's gonna get.

Your welcome! Looks like there are some 2 PC port ones as well, for even less - (down at the bottom of the page).

Happy printing!

- Matt

Bobby what you want is a USB Print Server. Just google it.

Gotta say, I'm really curious why it is not wanted on the LAN.

Is it supposedly security related?

Yeah, I have a customer like that. She has her accounting on one machine and she thinks it will get infected with viruses since the network also connects to the internet.

-Hal

Thanks Trace. I now have at least an idea of what I'll need.

He never explained why he doesn't want it on the LAN and I didn't push the issue. :shrug:

Glad to help Bobby.

I've had more than a few of the Internet-Phobs over the years. :bang:

Company I worked for here has a CPA customer that has 4 isolated computers. No modems, no network, and no moving info from one computer to another. And certainly no software through the door, grounds for termination! You get a virus or whatever on your computer, the CG had better be able to figure out how you got it innocently, or YOU ARE GONE! Apparently, he had a real serious problem once and doesn't want it to happen again. John C.