How to set up plotter for network sharing?

[Doyle]

I bought a new laptop that I will be doing a lot of my design work from, and I am going to setup my desktop as more of a server for printer sharing etc on my network. I am not very savvy with setting these type of connections up, but I am wondering if it is possible to share a plotter to make it possible to send jobs from the laptop to the desktop.

And pointers that anyone can give me would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[drive]

Yes, it its possible. Knowing what hardware / software you have will probably prompt more responses.

 

[round man]

Print sharing is great if you have a printer or cutter that has preloaded media and can cut the same media all the time without reloading the machine. A plotter doesn't fit this bill.It sounds like its going to be more hassle than it is worth in my opinion. first you'll have to set up sharing privileges on your desktop and your laptop. Then setup either a hardwire local area network and or a wireless local area network with wireless access point. then you are going to have to set up your plotter as a shared printer. By the time you buy the wire and setup all the routing and nic cards you'll have way over $100 invested in a network that still can't load the vinyl and setup the plotter.I really wouldn't want to depend on a wireless network to share my plot files to a print server.It would have to be wpa or wep encrypted and secured with mac address filtering so that anyone riding down the street couldn't log on your wireless access point. It would seem to be much easier and practical to walk across the room and or shop with a thumb drive with the file saved on it and then plot it from your desktop. You might even get a little exercise and improve your health in the process.Far too many possible problems and learning curves exist if you are not very adept at networking and print sharing.When it is all said and done you are still going to have to walk over to the plotter and setup the vinyl to be cut any way you try to cut it. Why waste the money on a network setup when you still have to walk over to the machine to set up the vinyl in the plotter? I assure you a thumb drive doesn't weigh all that much and a huge vector file is rarely going to be much more than the 4 gb drives you can buy for $10. It would seem a nice thumb drive would be the most practical solution here.