I am just about to setup in a house hold a network , and I want to be able to print wirelessly from a laptop to our study below.
The house will have 1 imac with airport wireless , canon mp760 printer , 2 laptops with wireless.
Question is can I network these to be able to print from anywhere in the house to the printer in the study. Is this possible with a airport express? Do you know of an online step by step guide to acomplishing this task.
cheers

This is simple to accomplish using an airport express provided you are using 10.3.2 (I think) or later, but best to update to 10.3.9 or later

Load the Canon printer software on to each of the computers.
Plug-in the airport express.
(If you are connecting the airport express to the internet via a modem, connect this using ethernet.)
Turn on the power to the airport express.
Make sure your firmware is updated for all your computers and you have the latest airport express firmware.
Set-up your wireless network for each computer using airport network assistant (in application utilities) using the security you prefer - (at least WPA).
Plug-in the Canon mp 760 to the airport express via USB. Turn on the power to the mp760.
You should be able to see the MP760 in the print dialogues of each computer under Rendevous 10.3.x or Bonjour 10.4.x Printers.

Dead simple.

Sorry, I was going to write something much more extensive but interrupted by demands of a 3 year old.

Cheers.

Check out 'PrintFab', it costs, but they may have a driver for your printer.

Thanks so much , I didnt realise it was that easy. My first time setting up a network so really appreciate the advice.

The Canon drivers work perfectly fine, there is no reason at all to use third party drivers.

By the way, I'm sure the airport express docs have a step by step guide which is pretty simple to follow.

cheers.

Havnt bought the airport express yet just was sussing out how hard it was beofre I made the purchase.
Btw are you sure the mp760 is supported by the airport express?

grorr,

Yep, the info about the airport express manual was just an FYI, as I recall it is reasonably well set-out. It gets a bit more complicated if you want access from all laptops to a printer you have directly connected to your desktop mac via USB, but in the standard set-up you want, it's easy. You shouldn't have too many problems, if you do, post back.

I have an MP760 and a Brother laser printer networked via 2 airport express units, with accessibility by 2 laptops and 3 desktop macs, and another HP inkjet hooked up directly to one of the desktops. You should have no problem printing via the MP760 networked via the AE. If I can set it up I'm sure you'll have no probs.

Scanning is a different matter, I plug in manually via USB if I need to scan.


cheers.

2 more questions, how is the coverage the house where ill set it up is a 3 level unit kinda long and ilongated down 3 levels. Sharing your broadband wirelessly from the study down the end of the house to sorta mid are in the house to an upper bedroom. Any idea on performance. Oh one more can more than one computer be using the wireless net connection at once?

Well, it will depend on so many things.

A powermac g5 and powermac g4 are located 31 metres and 4 walls (3 wood and plasterboard, 1 foam sandwich) away in a separate metal foam sandwich panel construction workshop and have good reception (3 or 4 bars). An iBook g4, when in the same workshop, has a bare 2 bars reception with occaasional dropouts. Ouside and closer to the main building the ibook g4 has at least 3 bars reception. On the other hand a C2D macbook pro won't have any reception at all outside the main building, a maximum range of 15 metres.

It depends to some extent on your ISP, but generally, the answer is yes, all of the computers can share your internet connection.

So I take it a macbook pro , and macbook no more than 30 metres from base should be ok, mainly plasterwall .

What you can do to test the reception is put the iMac (or a laptop whichever one uses airport extreme) in the same place you wish to put your airport express. Then, on the iMac, click on the wireless symbol in the menu bar and click 'create network.'

Then, use your laptop walk around the house and see if your laptop can connect to the iMac in the various locations.

You can also download either iStumbler ( http://www.istumbler.net/ ) or Macstumbler ( http://www.macstumbler.com/ ) to test the strength of the signal.

While the iMac may not have the same signal performance as the airport express it will still give you a rough idea of where the signal will reach.

If worse comes to worse you can always buy a 2nd airport express and use it to extend your network (you could put it in the family room with a set of speakers)

...........Or, as all the computers have wireless, just plug the printer into the iMac, go to system prefs, turn on printer sharing in Print & Fax, and select the printer you want to share and voila! you have networked printer.........

This method is about $149 cheaper than using an airport express.

Unless his router happens to be in a different location to his iMac, thus meaning no wireless internet. Oh and also the fact that the iMac has to be awake for the printer to work. Horses for courses I guess.

Think ill go the airport route as other way to me looks to limiting.

grorr,

Regarding the macbook pro, as I mentioned the reception is crap compared to the other desktops or an ibook. Maximum range for my macbook pro c2d is 15 metres and 2 plasterboard walls. If I move it 1 metre further away, I have no reception at all on the mbp. Mind you even this is a significant performance improvement compared to reception and behaviour prior to the recent mbp wireless updates and the enbaler.

cheers