Printer Solutions

The easiest way to install a printer is to plug it in to your primary computer. With the latest computers the drivers are automatically installed.

That does not work so well when you have more than one computer plus cell phones and tablets and so on.  Many users have both a  black and white laser and a color inkjet printer, to have color available while keeping non-color costs down.

The old way was to set up the printer as a shared printer on your network. That required that the computer be turned on to which the printer was attached. That is awkward.

The best way to proceed nowadays is to obtain a cloud ready printer.

Under $100 will get you a splendid printer with all the bells and whistles.

The cloud ready printer then works as follows: accepts your job from the Internet cloud when you send the job from your computer to the cloud, in other words from anywhere to anywhere.

First you need to set it up Cloudprint.

Two ways. It will be set up either at the computer or at the printer itself, following the instructions which came with the printer. This makes your router aware of the printer.

A so-called IP address will then be assigned to identify. The router now knows where to send the print jobs.

The Cloud also needs to know where to send the print job, so that the printer IP addresses need to be registered there, too

This is accomplished by going to the Cloud Print website which will then automatically register your computers and printers. There is no charge for the service.

It may be necessary to register a printer through a different process whereby the IP address is entered where the website address is normally entered. This is done in the format http://192.168.x.x, where is the x's are the numbers for your specific printer or printers.

To find these addresses I use an Android app called FING.

On your phone or tablet you will need an app for the printer.  You will then be able to share documents to the printer.