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Have two older PC's (laptop and desktop, both Dells, both running XP Pro) and various peripherals, none of which I plan to replace in the near future.

The two machines currently share an older HP Officejet K60 printer/scanner/fax (requires swapping USB cables each time) - as the two machines are never in use at the same time, I'd like to be able to plug the peripherals (above mentioned printer, 21" flat panel monitor, external USB1 hard drive and digital camera card reader) into a hub / a/b switch and have access to the peripherals on whichever machine I'm using without having to swap cables every time I change machines.

From what I can tell from the a/b switch product descriptions I find on the web, it appears that most a/b switches are designed to run two peripherals from one USP port, rather than swapping one or more peripherals between two pc's.

While I'm not unwilling to spend a bit of $$ to acquire the necessary hardware if this is doable, I am on a limited budget, and do not want to buy equipment that may or may not work, and cannot be returned once used.

I should also mention here that my technical capabilities are limited, so any feedback that strays far from layman's terminology is likely to go over my head and be functionally useless.

Thanks in advance for any input anyone can provide........

Barry Allen
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Sharing peripherals like a USB all-in-one printer is best done if the units are networked together and one becomes the server and the other a remote user via the main server PC.

I have done this trick at home where I simply reinstall the driver on the non-server box and point the driver to either "find" the printer (once you have "shared it" of course).

The key here is to have the two boxes on a switch or hub (which is usually not an issue since they are connected with an Ethernet cable to the router for internet access). The boxes have to be able to "see" each other on the network in other words.

If you know the IP address of the server (go to RUN, then type in CMD, then when a DOS prompt comes up type IPCONFIG to see what IP address you have on the server box), then you can go into the device driver of the printer on the client box and change the address to that IP from local USB port usage. Reinstalling the software is often the easiest way though (without the printer attached of course).

Hope this helps...

Tom

NexasNet
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