On Sun, 07 Dec 2014 15:59:14 -0500, micky
wrote:

My friend didn't think about wireless or laptops and bought a printer
without wireless. It connects ONLY by USB. It's too late to return
it.

Could this be a job for a Raspberry Pi?
Anyone tried this?
I have been looking for a reason to buy one.

a) I know you can disconnect a USB harddrive by just pulling the cord
out, or you risk losing data**, but what's the most damage you could do
just by unplugging a printer? Interrupt the job and have to print it
again? And not even that if your last print job has already printed?
Or if it had stopped with an error message? Maybe he can just
transfer the cable from the desktop to the laptop when he wants to
print.

b) Or he can leave the printer connected to his desktop computer and if
there were some sort of Y USB connector, maybe he could just plug the
laptop in to the other fork of the Y. The Y's are called hubs, but I
think of them as outgoing to more than one add-on device. Especially
powered hubs. Would it work to plug the common port of a hub into the
printer, one of the multiple ports into the desktop, and when needed
plug the laptop in one of the other mulitple ports. (I don't know what
words to use for common and mulitple. I mean input and output, but in
this case the data would be going the opposite direction.)

I'm interested in all this myself, so any answers for a PC are greatly
appreciated.

OTOH, he has a Mac. Does that make a difference?

Or maybe he can make it wireless.
c) I think the cheapest wireless print server I found online was 20
dollars if no one else bids. Used of course. Would anyone buy that, or
would you just buy a new wireless printer? If you're curious, here's
its ad.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/LevelOne-WPS...em20f186d1 15
auction ends at 10:30 tonight Sunday EST

d) Hmmm. I have a USB equivalent of an internal wifi card, to receive
signals from the router. If it can receive internet signals from the
router, can it plug into a USB printer and make a printer accept,
printer text signals from the same router, coming from the local network
computer instead of the the DSL modem?
(I suppose not, or I'd have heard about it, but I don't know why it
wouldn't.)



**What if you absolutely know you haven't written to a USB hard drive
for the last 10 minutes. Is there a chance of losing data or damaging
the structure by just pulling out the USB cord, or by turning off t he
power to the external drive??

Thanks.