Sharing a Printer

Sharing a printer is much more traumatic than sharing a hard drive. When you share a hard drive, other network users access your files from time to time. When they do, you hear your drive click a few times, and your computer may hesitate for a half-second or so. The interruptions caused by other users accessing your drive are sometimes noticeable, but rarely annoying.

When you share a printer, you get to see Murphy's Law in action: Your coworker down the hall is liable to send a 140-page report to your printer just moments before you try to print a 1-page memo that has to be on the boss's desk in two minutes. The printer may run out of paper or, worse, jam during someone else's print job-and you're expected to attend to the problem.

Although these interruptions can be annoying, sharing your printer makes a lot of sense in some situations. If you have the only decent printer in your office or workgroup, everyone will bug you to let them use it anyway. You may as well share the printer on the network. At least this way, they won't line up at your door to ask you to print their documents for them.

Sharing a printer in Windows XP

The following procedure shows you how to share a printer in Windows XP:

1. From the Start menu, choose Printers and Faxes.

   The Printers and Faxes folder appears, as shown in Figure 3-8. In this example, the Printers folder lists a single printer, named HP PSC 750.

   
   Figure 3-8: The Printers and Faxes folder.

2. Select the printer that you want to share.

   Click the icon for the printer to select the printer.

3. Choose File Sharing.

   You're right: This command doesn't make sense. You're sharing a printer, not a file, but the Sharing command is on the File menu. Go figure.

   When you choose the File Sharing command, the Properties dialog box for the printer appears.

4. Select the Share This Printer option.

5. Change the share name if you don't like the name suggested by Windows.

   Other computers use the share name to identify the shared printer, so choose a meaningful or descriptive name.

6. Click OK.

You return to the Printers folder, where a hand is added to the printer icon to show that the printer is now a shared network printer.

To take your shared printer off the network so that other network users can't access it, follow Steps 1 through 3 in the preceding set of steps to open the Printer Properties dialog box. Select the Do Not Share This Printer option and then click OK. The hand disappears from the printer icon, to indicate that the printer is no longer shared.

Sharing a printer in Windows Vista

To share a printer in Windows Vista, follow these steps:

1. From the Start menu, choose Control Panel, and then double-click the Printers icon.

   The Printers folder appears.

2. Right-click the printer that you want to share and choose Sharing.

   The Properties dialog box for the printer appears with the Sharing tab selected, as shown in Figure 3-9. Notice that the options for sharing the printer are disabled.

   
   Figure 3-9: Sharing a printer in Windows Vista.

3. Click the Change Sharing Options button.

   Because Windows Vista's is annoyingly suspicious of what you're doing, a dialog box appears, asking for your permission to change the printer sharing settings.

4. Click Continue.

   You return to the Properties dialog box, this time with the printer sharing options enabled.

5. Select the Share This Printer option.

6. Change the share name if you don't like the name suggested by Windows.

   Because other computers will use the share name to identify the shared printer, pick a descriptive name.

7. Click OK.

   You return to the Printers folder. The icon for the printer is modified to indicate that it has been shared.

To take your shared printer off the network so that other network users can't access it, follow Steps 1 through 6 in the preceding set of steps. Uncheck the Share This Printer check box and then click OK.