Add Wireless Capability to Your Printer
Connecting a printer to your computer wirelessly is the best way to hook it up these days. Rather than cluttering your desk up with a printer you rarely use, you can put it anywhere: under the desk, in a closet, in the basement, wherever. But while most new printers have wireless capabilities built right in, if you have an older printer you’re plum out of luck. Or are you?
You aren’t! Well, you aren’t if you have an older HP printer. All you need to do is pick up one of these HP Q6236A Wireless Printing Upgrade Kits. It’ll add wireless capability to your printer, allowing you to communicate with it from your PC no matter where it is. Now you can hide it away like the shameful red-headed stepchild of your computer setup that it really is. After all, who wants to have to stare at their printer all day? It deserves to be shoved in a closet, only used when it’s deemed absolutely necessary. No offense, printers, but that’s the way it is.
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August 17th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
While it says that it’ll work with a network it isn’t clear that it will work with an existing wireless network, nor how it would then be configured into a 128 bit hex secured system. Also, will it support several printers on its output through a USB hub? For some of us these would be useful things to know beforehand.
September 7th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Hey Steve,
In response to your questions here’s what I’ve figured out:
(1) This “upgrade kit” is required for *each* PC you wish to connect. The USB receiver essentially acts as a dongle to the computer.
(2) You cannot share scanning and printing functionality through your existing router. The computer in which the dongle is inserted must have HP’s special software on it, and as such, cannot be used with routers.
(3) Oh, and by the way, by PCs I mean Windows only. No support for Linux, Mac, or otherwise.
(4) 128 WEP security? I don’t think HP let’s us tweak that much; all I know is it’s 802.11g compatible.
I suppose you could use Windows printer sharing to share the printer *through* the computer that has the dongle connected, but that assumes that computer will be up and running all the time–besides, I don’t know how “scan sharing” would work (or even if it exists)
Hope that wasn’t too much information for ya! In short, I wouldn’t suggest purchasing this product.
All the best.