Easy sharing of printers between Macs and PCs
Recently I couldn’t get a printer connected to my Macbook to work on a Windows XP Home computer. The XP Home computer kept asking for a username and password every time the XP Home computer would reboot, without a way to save it for future use (thanks Microsoft).
I found a drop-dead solution that I wish I had known about earlier. Macs come with a piece of software called Bonjour that allows them to easily share printers/files, chat on IM programs, and so on. Well they also have a Windows version of that technology!
So on the Windows XP Home computer, I went to the download page for Bonjour 1.0.3 and downloaded the 14.2 MB file. A quick install and an icon appeared on the desktop for Bonjour. Double-clicking the icon allowed me to choose from a list of printers which ones I would like to install and in just a couple of steps the printer was all installed on the Windows computer.
I plan on installing Bonjour on my parents laptop and my brother Dan’s laptop so when I’m home, I can easily use their printers. Much easier then dealing directly with the awful printer sharing that Windows has.
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Had a very similar experience - couldn’t get printer to work the normal way so I installed Bonjour on the Windows laptop and it’s been fine.
Was about to blog about this myself, actually.