one for the computer boffs.

[rambo1969]

My computer is quite old, and in order to get wireless broadband I had to buy a dongle thinghy and plug it into a usb port.

My current printer is connected via a cable and is knackered, I would like to buy a wireless printer, can I use the current dongle thingy to connect to a wireless printer?

cheers

[mike65]

Yes,well I can anyway.

Have a Lexmark Impact S305 3 in one job that works OK from my laptop with a USB wireless dongle.

You do need to hard wire to a computer/laptop to do the initial setup though. It needs to be configured to speak to your wireless router as this is how the computer communicate with it.

 

Once set up you can print wirelessly and scan wirelessly to your computer/laptop.

The wife can even print wirelessly from her Macbook.

 

Mike

[AlienFTM]

My computer is quite old, and in order to get wireless broadband I had to buy a dongle thinghy and plug it into a usb port.

My current printer is connected via a cable and is knackered, I would like to buy a wireless printer, can I use the current dongle thingy to connect to a wireless printer?

cheers

 

You may wish to check your broadband router to see whether it has a USB socket. That being the case, you can hard-wire the printer direct to the router and access the printer via your PC's wireless to the router and on via USB to the printer.

 

If you don't have a USB socket on the router, you could buy a printer with an Ethernet connector (my preferred solution but it costs more) and use Ethernet instead of USB.

 

Basically your dongle on your PC connects you to your home network and anything attached to it, however it is attached. Anything on the network to which you are connected will be visible.

 

I recently discovered a nice little function on my Windows 7 Network Connections icon in what used to be called (and I still do) the system tray on the end of the Windows taskbar. Open it (double-click or right-click - I cannot remember I am sat on my XP work machine) and it will display you a graphic of everything that's on your network.