Advice and direction on setting up a printer Options

[duckbilled]

Hello,

I have purchased a new printer. It is a basic HP Officejet 6000. I just need it for occasional printing - we have a all in one on another computer for bigger projects.

Anyway, the printer offers a cat 5 connection to a router which is connected directly to my FSX only desktop through cat5 and a USB connection. We have two laptops and another desktop that use the wireless network. We have a NAS drive connected to the wireless network as well.

I really don't want to install the HP software on my FSX rig (or should I not worry about it?). Do I have to install the software on every computer that is going to use the printer or will they be plug and play over the network? I could install the software on my laptop through the usb as well. I use my laptop for email, office and Internet and it sits next to my FSX desktop.

The operating systems are:

FSX desktop: Windows 7 Pro 64
My Laptop: XP Media Center SP3 32bit
Other Laptop: Vista 64
Other desktop: XP SP3 32bit

All computers have wireless except my FSX desktop

OR

Does anyone have an optimum way to set up the printer so that everyone can use it and it won't interfere with the performance on my FSX rig?

[peterhayes]

Dear Greyhound Lover
You could achieve what you want in two ways:
(Note: Connect the printer via the Ethernet cable and install it on each machine as a "local" printer using the "Standard TCP/IP Port" connection - NOT as a "Network" Printer.
Important: Keep a note of the IP address of the printer, you can use that for a "manual" install if the HP software doesn't find the port that the printer is connected to.)
1) Install the software driver on all PCs on the network, that way you get full functionality of the printer not just its basic printing options.
2) Install the printer software only on the PC's you want full functionality of the printer and let windows use the "generic/default" driver on your FSX machine and any others where full funcionality is not needed.

I would use Option 1 as I don't believe that the software/driver will have any impact on FSX performance.
I use that method and have 2 sets of software and printer drivers installed on my FSX machine and I can't say that I have seen any impact on FSX. The only time I use the printer when running FSX is to print out the Flight Plans.

[Another method would be to buy a USB Network Hub and connect the printer to that, but then you would have to install the network hub software on all machines ]

Regards
PeterH

[bobbyjack]

I don't have a printer on my FSX machine. Only because the all-in 0ne I do have is for XP and Mac. The scanner doesn't work for my Vista / FSX computer, but the printer does. That printer is hooked up to my XP machine and when I need to print from Vista, I do so over my network. Not a problem at all.

Bob

[duckbilled]

Well I ended up installing it on my laptop through USB. As expected, the HP software installed a bunch of useless stuff. I still have to get it working through my router but with my NAS drive, I can easliy print by just saving things to the network drive so it is not a major issue.

I just don't know why they have to install so much stuff with a simple printer. There wasn't even an optio to choose what I wanted to install.

[bobbyjack]

What kind of usless software did HP install?

If you open the CD there should be a driver folder. I haven't installed a printer from a CD in a long time, but that should be the case. If not you can get drivers from HP. Copy that folder to your HD. Plug in the printer. When the wizard wants to install the printer, point it to the folder you copied. Should work without installing extra stuff.

Bob