A close-up of our birthday gifts: Networking

I send my deepest apologies to the non-techies out there as I write this. I didn't have time to take photos of my other fabulous gifts, so today's spotlight is on a nerdy (but much needed) gift.  For years we have been using our Airport Express for Wireless Printing.

The scenario worked out great for several years. As our home computing needs have grown, I have been looking to reconfigure our setup. We have two printers we want to print to regularly (a standard printer and a compact photo printer). We really wanted the convenience of choosing either of the printers to use wirelessly. You all know I am too lazy to unplug my computer, walk into the front hall with it, and hook up to the photo printer... I also wanted stream music to our stereo (from iTunes) wirelessly using AirTunes. This is another capability of the Airport Express. We were not able to do that with our setup because we didn't want to move the printers to the entertainment center.

Whew, what a long story so far. I hope you haven't fallen asleep!!! After years of searching (we are very picky and wanted very specific features) we found a print server that supports 2 USB printers. Woo hoo! The Netgear WGPS606 is a nice little device that has a four port switch, support for two USB printers, and a wireless connection. If you are wondering (Dad, I know you are) why we didn't just get a network printer, well, our printer works fine and we have extra ink for it. We just didn't want to spend the money.

Mike got me the print server for my birthday. I hooked it up last night and we got 2/3 of our computers set up to print. I also setup the Airport Express for AirTunes.

**extra nerdy part coming up
As an aside, the hardware setup for the print server and then for the PCs that access it was a bit of a pain. I spent about 25 minutes trying to figure out how to dedicate an IP address on the router for the print server (which it requires). Software has to be run on each PC to properly configure each printer connection. The Macs, on the other hand, were easy peasy. I just set up an IP printer for each printer by identifying the print server (by name or IP, I used name) and the queue. It took, literally, 2 minutes. Setting up AirTunes was equally easy. After I plugged it in, I spent about 3 minutes in the AirPort Utility and was all done.
**end of nerdy part

I promise that I will have a more interesting selection of gifts up for tomorrow!

Smiles