Sharing Multifunction Wireless Printer Without Host PC

Great question...and could be a bit difficult to resolve depending on how frequently the network you're on expires/renews the IP addresses of devices.

Here's the scoop...when you connect to the network (printer included) wireless devices are assigned an IP address. Both XP and Vista allow you to add a new printer using an IP port.

Hopefully, somewhere in the menu of that multi-function device you can print or see a report that show the current network settings, including the IP address. Once you have that information, you can use the "Add a printer" wizard to add the printer.

You'll want to tell Vista that you're connecting to a printer that's connected to the machine (even though it's not tethered to it with a cable) and use the IP port as the port to connect to.

It will walk you through the typical settings of naming the printer, etc., and print a test page. I recommend printing a test page just to make sure that everything has been done properly.

As I said earlier, if the IP address for the printer happened to change, you would need to adjust the printer settings to the new address. That could get annoying. :)

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to post them.

Take care,
Ric