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I've got a USB external HDD and a USB printer but, since getting a wireless laptop, I wondered if I could make my pheripherals wireless utilising the wireless router? Is it possible and what would I need?
Cheers
You'd have to get a bridge to the network containing the intelligence to 'work' the devices and share them out.
I use a Mac so I use an Airtunes thingy to share out my printer on the wireless network, and play music from iTunes to my stereo. It can also have a usb disk attached.
Usually for PCs they are an iddy-biddy computer running linux that you plug into your network and configure via a web-frontend.
Something like [url= http://www.pcworld.co.uk:80/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0748535933.1236716320@@@@&BV_EngineID=cceeadegjgmhlfgcflgceggdhhmdgml.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=592057&category_oid= ]this[/url]
Hmmm, not looking as straight forward as I'd hoped...the line in DavidB's link "probably more expensive than buying another printer, in fact" is summing it up.
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Right, you can get a wireless USB link thing that just replaces the USB cable - but that looks fairly dodgy to me. A lot of printers have the ability add a bluetooth dongle for wireless printing - it's not as good as having a wifi printer server, but it is cheaper and it works. Also means you can print from your phone too, and anything else that's bluetooth.
As for hard drives - you'd be effectively having network storage. That is, your hard drive would be a stand-alone thing that sits on the network alongside your other computers. That's not particularly cheap (google wireless NAS (network aware storage)) but you can also get some wireless routers that you can plug your hard drive into and it does the same thing. Your current router might have that ability already.
If your peripherals have ethernet sockets it might be easy(ish)
I bought a pair of those "mains network" adaptors & use one of them to run an external backup disk in a separate room (so it won't get nicked/burned when the pc does). I just plugged it in & it worked (frrecom drive)
Not so sure about the printer though, but you could just "share" it on your local machine, couldn't you ?