by Red Bull

Created on: March 25, 2009

This is something some what easy. Printers can be connected two multiple computer for a long time ago. This thing started in companies because it was not useful for a company to aford a printer for every employee. As you know the printers at that time were super expensive, they were many times more expensive, up to 20 times more expensive than what they are right now, so the solution was to share printers between them. Most people have no idea about how this thing is done, but I assure you that once you learn it, you will see how crazy you were for thinking this thing was hard to do.

The first way to share a printer is directly. Both computers have more than one port for the printer. This was specially true about one or two decades ago when printers had more than one printer port on themselves and so the computer could be connected to the print with another computer. Of course both computers must have the diskette of instalation and they also need to have all the software inside the windows drives to make it work. At that time the computer did not recognize the printer instantly like they do now. YOu had to detect it manually then you had to install it manually and then finally you would have to configure each other manually and properly. The chances of having it not running were extremelly high because of driver and card or software incompatibility. YOu would have to plug and pray for it to work!

Now the second way is even more easier. You can connect this way an almost unlimited number of printers. It's called the network printer sharing. You connect a computer to a printer over the network. You install and configure it like you would in a normal printer, but this way the only difference is that you do this over the internet or the local net instead of the cable. It's not nearly as fast most of the times and it's a lot harder to configure, but when this thing works, it's amazing! You can have an entire company or an entire city connected to the same printer. Needless to say that this becomes obsolote as soon as the demand for the printer is higgher than the capacity for it to print paper!

Finally today you can share a printer over a wireless network. This way is almost 100% automatic because Vista and wireless make it so. All you need to do is to open the network option or panel and then to click on the printer and then the computer will do it all by itself. You just need to watch it.

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