Peripherals Some Printer Questions

[Joe]

I am involved with a nonprofit organization, and in the office there is a printer that is not currently hooked up to a computer. The printer is an HP Officejet Pro 8500A Premium. It has three external slots for flash drive/memory stick insertion, SD card insertion, etc.

This may be a stupid question, but what are these slots for? If you have a printer that is not hooked up to a computer, can it nevertheless print files off a flash drive or SD card? Or, if it requires being hooked up to a computer, are these slots just "extras" in case you don't have enough USB ports? Or what?

Also, this computer has "wireless" capability. And it is in a building with wifi. So, does the printer have its own "channel" in the Open Network and Sharing Center in Windows? But doesn't it require I be on the internet also? If the only way I can be on the internet is to use the wifi "channel" in the office, can I be on two "channels" at once?

Sorry to be so clueless, but I am clueless here.

 

[Second Summer]

I'm fairly clueless about printers, so take this with a pinch of salt ...

It sounds like the printer is able to print directly off of files on memory sticks and on SD cards. I suppose you can try it, it you have one. Presumably, there is some kind of menu display with buttons etc. on the printer that you can use to navigate to the file you want, and then print.

As for wifi, the printer is presumably on the building's wireless network / ethernet, like other wifi-enabled devices, like (typically) the organisation's laptops. All devices on that ethernet are essentially on the same channel. (It's possible to listen in on other devices' communications, if you have the right tools.) So to use the printer, you don't have to be on the Internet, but you do have to be on that ethernet. Some organisations allow only pre-approved devices to connect to their networks. They do this by configuring their networks to allow only certain MAC addresses. (A MAC address is an "almost unique" identifier that is coded into the hardware of each device when it's built.)

I hope that helped a bit!

 

[Joe]

I'm fairly clueless about printers, so take this with a pinch of salt ...

It sounds like the printer is able to print directly off of files on memory sticks and on SD cards. I suppose you can try it, it you have one. Presumably, there is some kind of menu display with buttons etc. on the printer that you can use to navigate to the file you want, and then print.

That would be great. I'll try it. The only thing I'll do is get an unused flash drive and put a few files on it. (Most of my flash drives have a rat's nest of subdirectories and sub-subdirectories, etc.)

As for wifi, the printer is presumably on the building's wireless network / ethernet, like other wifi-enabled devices, like (typically) the organisation's laptops. All devices on that ethernet are essentially on the same channel. (It's possible to listen in on other devices' communications, if you have the right tools.) So to use the printer, you don't have to be on the Internet, but you do have to be on that ethernet. Some organisations allow only pre-approved devices to connect to their networks. They do this by configuring their networks to allow only certain MAC addresses. (A MAC address is an "almost unique" identifier that is coded into the hardware of each device when it's built.)

I hope that helped a bit!

Thanks, but I think I gave you an incorrect impression. My organization basically rents a room about the size of a large closet in a church building (actually a Quaker meeting house). The church, as far as I know, does not have any offices or computers. So I'm almost certain they do not have an ethernet or LAN or anything like that. They do have some sort of router hooked into a cable to pipe in internet, and the router broadcasts two wifi channels. (I'm not sure that the terminology I'm using is correct.) The church does host quite a number of meetings here, so I guess the wifi is for anyone who comes to the church with their own laptop or other portable device that can use a wifi signal.

I also have an HP Officejet printer at home, but it is a different model and has no "ports" for flash drives, SD cards or what have you.
I hook it up to my laptop with a traditional USB A-B printer cable. But my printer also has wireless capability. So one day I unplugged the printer cable and checked the Open Network and Sharing Center in Windows. In the list of "channels" was "HP Officejet 6600." So I "connected" to the printer. But then,when I tried to print something, I got an error message saying something about not being connected to the internet. (I don't have internet at home.)

Thanks for your input. I might try asking somebody at the store where I bought my printer how the wireless connection feature works.

 

[Joe]

I went into Office Depot this afternoon and quizzed some of the staff about printers.

1. I was told that printers with ports for USB sticks, memory cards, etc. can print files on the sticks without being hooked up to a computer, as long as the printer is plugged into an electric wall socket.

2. I was told that whether or not you can use a computer and a printer as a wireless system depends on a choice you make when installing the printer software on your hard drive. You can elect wireless printing or elect to use a printer cable. Not both. If you wanted to change from one system to the other, you'd have to uninstall the software and re-install it from scratch.

3. There might be other things necessary for a wireless setup, but I may not have understood everything the store manager was telling me.

4. He also made some comments to the effect that the wireless printing process might be simpler if one were using a tablet or possibly a smart phone than a laptop.

 

[ledboots]

I have a wireless setup on my printer, and it was very easy. As long as you have wifi you can do the wireless. I can print from smartphones, my windows 8 laptop and Linux laptop, and my husband's Linux desktop.

 

[Second Summer]

Joe, I'm guessing the reason why you couldn't make wireless printing work at your house might be because your operating system (Windows?) doesn't have all the drivers installed for it, so it tried to download them from the Internet, which didn't work since you don't have a connection to the Internet there. So if you have had the drivers installed, you might have had better luck.

Regarding item 2, there is no logical reason why a computer can't be configured to access a certain printer both through cable and wireless at the same time. There could of course still be some silly restriction in the operating system which makes it hard or impossible to do this.

That said, printers and driver configurations in my experience are incredible fiddly and fragile, so "if it's working, don't fix it", as the saying goes. No harm in trying to configure your laptop to use that printer in your organisation's office, though, since that would be a separate configuration from the printer at your house.