Bluetooth dongles

zogg

Bought one of these for my netbook. Works a treat.

If I bought 2 more.......1 for PC and 1 for printer.....would I have a wireless printer ?

Thank you

luckymoneysaver

pretty sure its a no

have to wait for a bluetooth expert to reply. probably need a bluetooth compatible printer or something??

fitshase

You can't just plug a bluetooth dongle into the printer and make it bluetooth. You would have to install the drivers on the printer which you can't do. Best to get a bluetooth printer or a wireless printer (or a normal printer attached to a wireless print server).

Plarkster

Yes as fitshase has said, the dongle won't work if plugged directly into the printer. However, I assume the printer is connected to your PC so if you connect a bluetooth dongle to your PC then share the printer you may be able to access it from your Netbook. I've never done it though so I'm not sure if it's possible, but I bought a bluetooth dongle from the poundshop a few days ago so certainly worth a go!

Have you got Wifi on your Netbook though as that would work much better - you'd be able to connect to your PC (if it's got WiFi) or to your printer via a router if you've got one.

luckymoneysaver

dont forget bluetooth only works for 10 meters or something, you might as well use a cable

Plarkster

Most are only 10m, but some are capable of up to 100m. Wifi would be a much better option if possible though.

zogg

Many thanks to all who replied.

malcom1982

wireless printers i find are rubbish anyway

Vuze

Some printers come with a USB port that is designed to be used for adding a bluetooth dongle (usually the manufacturer wants you to buy their branded dongle as an extra to the printer purchase), so if your printer has a usb port that could be used with the manufacturer dongle then it might be possible to get a generic and cheap bluetooth dongle and still hook it up - you might need to get software drivers for it, but you could try the manufacturer website for that, so the key here seems to be that if the manufacturer sells a bluetooth dongle accessory for your printer then you likely could get your own cheaper dongle and still use their software to connect it.

diable

malcom1982 wrote: »

wireless printers i find are rubbish anyway

Why?

My 3 in 1 works fine even scanning to my laptop wirelessly is pretty fast.