I've done a quick search but couldn't find out the information I needed so here goes:

I'm on a home network with 2 windows desktops, one windows laptop, and one mac laptop. The windows computers can all see the others folders and print to the various printers perfectly, as well as see the macs folders (the mac has no printer).

The problem comes when the mac tries to view the various windows "network places" and tries to print to a printer connected to one of the windoes desktops.

I've had a look in here and am going to continue searching around the internet, but if anyone has first-hand experience with printing to a network printer from a mac please let me know - it might be quicker than me searching around

thanks in advance!

8/15/2005 5:59:27 PM

I had a setup with 2 windowsXP machines and a printer connected to one of them. I had a Powerbook on the network also. Basically after months of tearing my hair out and googling, I realized that you cannot print from a mac to a windows box that shares a printer. The reason is because the printer is connected to a machine running windowsXP, and windowsXP sucks at things like that.

The expensive way around this is to buy a print server, ~70 bucks, like this http://www.netgear.com/products/details/PS121.php

Personally, since I rarely print from the other machines, I chose to use some USB extension cords and basically directly connect the printer via the cable to whichever machine needed to print. As much of a pain in the ass as that sounds, it is the easiest, most economical way to get all machines able to print somehow.

8/16/2005 12:35:15 AM