two-way printer communications via Airport Express

kishan

Howdy...



I've had my AE for a while now. Its been awesome as a bridge between my WinXP Dell and my Bose lifestyle system and as a wireless hub for internet access. Only today, however, did I get a printer, a HP 5650. I have configured it as instructed in the AE manual and can print documents to it. However, there is no two-way communication between the printer and the computer over the wireless. Can anyone comment on whether or not this is possible? HP includes several nice utilities such as ink level monitoring and others that I would very much like to use. Unfortunately these all require two way communication with the printer. Any help would be appreciated.

vandewaals

As far as I know, the AirPort express does not support this. I have the same problem with my Canon i320 printer. Basically, if you want to use the utilities provided by the printer manufacturer, you have to be plugged into a USB port on the computer, not the base station.



Kinda sucks, I agree. Perhaps a firmware update down the road will allow this (I have no idea if that is even possible, but I can dream).

karl kuehn

The AirportExtremes simply provide an IPP printing passthrough, they are not playing games with USB or anything else like that... that is why they can work for both MacOS X and Windows clients. This will never provide any of the other features that printers or all-in-ones provide. To do so would require a that the base stations be very programmable, and would be a nightmare to support.



I personally am hoping that Apple provides an interface for scanners. Something suing the same system as you use to share scanners from one MacOS X computer to another (small list at this point... through image capture), but I would expect this only on second generation base stations, not as a firmware upgrade to older models.