You have gotten your home wireless network up and running without too much trouble. You have learned that it is really convenient to be able to go from place to place and continue your work or play without being tethered by cords and wires.

But you do work and you need to print items from time to time. But the only printer you have is up in the home office and it is connected to your old desktop pc. It is a major hassle every time you have to print something. You have to save the file to a thumb drive or send it as an attachment to an email. Then you have to go all the way up to your office and power up your desktop. When it finally boots up, you have to open you mail or attach you thumb drive and save the file to the desktop. Now you fire up the printer and finally, you print it out.

There has to be a better way. There is! Attach you printer to your home wireless network and you can print anytime and from anywhere in your home. But how?

If you printer has a built in Ethernet adapter, just hook it up to you network. But I have a feeling if it had a NIC built-in, you would have already done that and have had little need to find and read this article in the first place!

Or you could go out and buy a printer with an Ethernet NIC built-in, bring it home, plug it in and off you go. But why spend money on a new printer when you have a perfectly good laser printer and color ink printer just sitting there?

Well, the cheapest and easiest way is to leave your desktop on all the time and enable printer sharing on that computer for that printer. Well, that was quick and easy but hardly the best solution available. If you don’t want you computer sitting idle 99% of the time in the off chance you will print something, there is a better solution.

Get a print server. There are dozens of choices on the market and these devices can breathe new life into the printers you already own. Some connect with a network cable but more and more models are coming onto the market that are wireless. This is worth every penny if you want your printers in an out-of-the-way location and you do not have Ethernet cabling in that location.

Just shop around and you should be able to find a print server solution to fit your needs. Expect to pay more for a wireless solution but prices have really come down over the last year.

By: Jeff Runyon