Printer sharing is hard

langfor6

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to share a printer on my home network. Here's my setup:

I have a PC with a printer connected via USB. The PC is running Windows 7 Professional.

I have a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard.

Both of the computers are connected to the same router.

I would like to be able to print from the MacBook, but for the life of me cannot figure out how to do it. Is it really difficult or am I just dense?

DeadlySherpa

sharing across a multiplatform network is really difficult, especially with two new OS's

I have enough trouble sorting out printer sharing across XP installs; I hope someone with more knowledge can help ya out

Xenogears of Bore

There are very few printers that work nice networked to both macs and pcs. I ended up using a dedicated print server the last time I had to set it up that way.

What's the printer, by the way? It makes a ton of difference.

blackranger3d

Xenogears of Bore wrote: »

There are very few printers that work nice networked to both macs and pcs. I ended up using a dedicated print server the last time I had to set it up that way.

What's the printer, by the way? It makes a ton of difference.

Xenogears speaks the truth, a print server is the key IMHO.

langfor6

The printer is a Canon Pixma MP480.

So far all I've been able to do is ping the Windows box from the Mac.

Zoolander

Try working with Apple's Bonjour. You'll need to install it on your PC, but it should already be installed on Mac. It was designed to make this kind of thing easier, so give it a try.

http://www.apple.com/support/bonjour/