Can I make a USB Printer Wireless?

[Mortymoose]

In my office there are three Pc's running W7.

One of the PC's has a Cannon Mf4550d plugged into it via USB.

This PC is part of the Homegroup, The printer being shared.

The other two Pc's (Laptops) connect wirelessly to this PC with the printer...

No Problems..... But quite often, for no reason whatsover (Pronounced like Mr.bean) , the printer keeps disappearing...

It's a feckin major schlep, trying to find it, reconfigure, recreate the group....all these things....

So I was wondering, can I add a Wifi Dongle straight on the printer to make it a wifi printer?

Will a Bluetooth dongle work?

Do I just put this printer onto the forklift outside and drop it from a dizzy height and go and buy a proper wireless printer....

Any suggestions shall be entertained..

Ta!

 

[Magandroid]

Yes, with one of these http://www.tp-link.com/il/products/details/cat-5688_TL-WPS510U.html

 

[PsyWulf]

Wireless Print Server,or a router that has a USB WPS Built-in

 

[Yuu]

Google Cloud Print

 

[ponder]

That printer has a ethernet port (according to the manual) you can plug into your local network. If your network also has wifi (i'm assuming it does) you can connect to the printers built in print server via it's ip address from any computer on the network (lan cable or wifi), no need to buy extra stuff.

 

[PsyWulf]

That printer has a ethernet port (according to the manual) you can plug into your local network. If your network also has wifi (i'm assuming it does) you can connect to the printers built in print server via it's ip address from any computer on the network (lan cable or wifi), no need to buy extra stuff.

Eh,OP's posted model does _not_ have _any_ ethernet or wifi capability (dn/dw)

 

[mister]

Yes, with one of these http://www.tp-link.com/il/products/details/cat-5688_TL-WPS510U.html

I'm using a wired TP Link print server... works great... another option is to plug the printer into a router that has a usb port

 

[sajunky]

+1 for the router with USB port. Before you go with hardware solution, try to assign static IP on the PC sharing the printer. It must be on the same subnet, but outside DHCP server range. Alternative is to setup IP reservation for the sharing PC, if router has such option.

Delete printer object on all computers (on the sharing PC in the last step), then re-create a new printer object on the sharing machine and all the rest as you did before.

In the Workgroup environment (without Windows server) Windows has notorios problems accessing printers on dynamic IP. Static IP will help in 95% cases.