Bi-directional Printing Utlities

Question

Bi-directional Printing Utlities

Is there anyway to have bidirectional printer utlities available to my mac wirelessly??

I know connecting a printer via USB to an Airport Express will mean these utilities (like ink levels, etc.) will be unavailable, but is there anyway to make them available?

Would, for e.g., buying a new printer and connecting it via ethernet to a new AEBS make the utilities available, or, is the only way to connect directly to the mac via USB or otherwise??

Thanks

Luke

17" iMac Intel Core2Duo, 2.16Ghz, 2G RAM, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Mar 8, 2007 4:17 AM

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Answer 1

greg sahli

Level 7

25,508 points

Mar 8, 2007 7:15 AM in response to lukethegooner

This mostly depends on what the printer driver and utilities were written to support.
If you have a printer with built-in ethernet or wifi, the driver and utilities will work over the network. If the utilities are written for direct USB only (because the printer is a USB printer), then the utilities won't work via network.

Printing to a USB-only printer via Airport Express works because Apple has implemented port redirection in the airport software. Print system output to a USB port is captured and redirected to the USB port on the Express.

Hope this helps.

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