Sharing a network printer with different operating systems
Most of us use several different computers in the same house. You may work from home on a company issued PC laptop for work but then prefer to use your MacBook Pro on your free time for streaming movies or downloading music. Even if you use both a Mac and a PC, you do not need to have a separate printer for each operating system. With a little work, you can save costs and space by sharing a network printer between these two computers.
An easy way to connect two different computers on two different operating systems to a single printer is to create a new printer server. To do that you need to set up a new wireless router. The idea is that you are setting up a new printer network. Once you set up this new router you can connect your printer to the router’s USB port. With a centralized printer, the different computers just need to be able to connect and send information to this router.
To do this, you will need to set up a network connection between each computer and the router. An easy way to do this is by installing the router software and drivers onto each computer. Once you have established a connection to the centralized router, the computer will detect the printer attached to the router’s USB port and ask you if you want to connect to this new networked printer. You should select this printer to be the default printer.
To add the second computer to the network, you install the router software and drivers onto the second computer. Don’t forget to set the attached printer as the default printer.
Now you are all set. To print to this networked computer, you merely select print and the print job should transmit to the printer attached to the router.
For more information on sharing a network printer between computers, please read additional articles on ehow.com.