The best and easiest way to set up a printer on your home network is to buy a Network Printer. A network printer is a printer that has an RJ45 jack (looks like a phone jack but just a little bigger) built into the printer.

You’ll connect your printer directly to your router using a network cable connected to both the router and printers RJ45 jacks. This will allow you to print to your printer whether you are hard wired to the network or from a wireless (WiFi) connection.

Use the software that comes with your printer to set it up and follow their direction. You can also use your OS software (2000,XP,Vista etc..) to set up the printer to work with your computers but the software that comes with the printer usually makes it a painless setup.

Another way to do it is to connect a regular printer up to one of your computers (this computer will need to be on in order for the printer to work). Go into your control panel or click on Printer & Faxes from the Start menu. Right click on the printer you want to connect to and set up sharing. If your not sure of something hit the F1 key to bring up help. The information in the help area can walk you through the whole setup procedure.

There is a third way of doing this and that’s to buy a print server device, however I have yet to find one that lives up it’s task.

Watch the video below for a step by step demonstration on setting up a printer on your home XP network.