One More Windows PC Gone

Or how I came to love my Airport Express. I've got a variety of computers at home working through a Linksys wireless router. I'm happy with the router and don't want to change that, but I'm slowly trying to eliminate the Windows computers on the network.

As of yesterday morning, I'd got an old 256Mb Dell PC running Windows Xp just so that our HP LaserJet 3050 could connect to it via a USB port. Time to come up with something better. I'd been thinking about swapping this out and getting one of those USB -> LAN print server adapters such as: this one (thanks Joanie).

Then I realized I has an Airport Express Base Station that I've never used just sitting on a shelf.

Could I just add this to my network, attach the printer to it, and just use it as a networked printer hub? I didn't want to replace the Linksys router for my wireless routing; I just want to use this box if possible, for remotely printing from our Mac laptops, Ubuntu PC's and the one remaining Windows Xp PC that our son uses for games.

I asked the fine folks on our internal Mac users mailing list, and the answer was a resounding yes! It was also trivial. Mac OS X provides an Airport Setup Assistant application which allowed me to easily join my existing wireless network. I just had to give my WEP password, assign a new password to the Airport Express and give it a name.

Setting up the printer was trivial too. Plug it into the Airport Express, turn it on. Fire up the Printer Setup Utility application, Add a new printer (which was automatically found) and we're done. Same on the wife's iBook.

Next was getting the two Ubuntu machines setup. Luckily I found a comment in one of the Ubuntu forums that also made this trivial (thanks dtracy1).

I've still got the Windows machine to do, but that can wait until Duncan wants to print something.

Now I'd got the Airport Express hooked up, I thought I'd play around with the Airtunes. I don't have it anywhere near the family stereo system, but I did plug in my best set of PC speakers to the line-out on the Airport Express and I can happily play Radio Paradise via iTunes on my Powerbook "over the air" to it. Very nice.

Which got me thinking.

I've got an old record player and a stack of vinyl records. I've got a good audio receiver. I hooked the record player up to the receiver. I hooked the receiver up to the line-in on my Powerbook. Was there any way to now get it to play that incoming audio to the line-out on my Airport Express?

Again I asked the Mac wizards, and the answer was Airfoil (thanks Keith).

And it works just great. Kind of freaking cool too.

[Technorati Tag: Computers]

[Technorati Tag: Airport Express]

[Technorati Tag: Printers]

( Aug 15 2007, 09:15:12 AM PDT ) [Listen] Permalink