Remote Printing at Home

Hi all,

Given that your company has a database program installed on XP professional, how would you connect to this pc to allow remote printing on Hp or Lexmark printer at home (so that you get your doc. printed at home)?
1. Will you use XP professional Remote desktop for remote control, or use Pc Anywhere 12.1 instead?
2. Could we use 56k dial up for remote connection?
3. Does Remote Desktop or pcanywhere support USB printer (some USB printer drivers check for the physical presence of the printer)?

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

remote desktop and pcanywhere will work over 56K dialup, but a print job is going to be extremely slow, especially if you include graphics.

Remote desktop can have issues with USB printers. It was designed to forward the parallel printer port, and some of these new multifunction printers confuse it. Just try using remote desktop and see how it goes.

I wouldn't use 56k modem, you'll find the whole experience very slow and frustrating.

Thank you for your tips, xlsior and andy_mc.

What about a secure direct connection over vnc or ssh?
thats what i would do.

Or, If the printer has a network interface you can open an unused port on your router and direct it straight to the printers IP. Then on the other machine at work, set up a standard IP port using port whatever it was and use DynDNS.org or something to resolve your routers IP address. Anything you print to that dyndns url & port (eg. myhouse.dyndns.org) should be forwarded to your printer over the net. (not tried this specifically with a printer myself, but it should work)

Or if you have modems you could send/recieve/print it as a fax but it would be really slow.

Thank you for your tips, D4NM4N.
:)

1. Neither.
2. You could, but you wouldn't want to.
3. Dunno.

Setup a VPN, and simply mount the remote printer on your computer, and print directly to it.