Today at Best Buy

I wanted to set it up so the wife's laptop can use the USB printer and external hard drive connected to my computer over our wireless network when my comouter is turned off. I was thinking about taking some old parts I have and getting a new case to build a small server. I would use the server as the connection point for the whole network. I would hook up the printer and external hard drive to the server and put a wireless card in my computer.

So I go to one of my favorite stores Best Buy, today to see if they had any cases in stock so I would not have to order one from Newegg, another great store, and wait for it to ship. I know what you are thinking, there had to be an easier way to do this than build another computer. I started looking around at some cabling hoping to find a USB to Ethernet adabter (did not find one). I then had the bright idea, first mistake, to ask a blue shirt if he knew of anything that would do what I wanted done. Being a good employee, he told me he was not sure but would ask a member of the Geek Squad to see what they thought. My second mistake was not to go with him to talk to the other guy myself. The blue shirt came back and told me that there was no way to connect a USB cable to an Ethernet cable. We started looking at other options with the routers they had in stock. We looked at a wireless print server which had a USB connection for the printer but would not solve the External hard drive problem. The blue shirt was very polite and tried to be helpful just did not have expetise that I needed. So I was back to building a small server.

I got on my Crakberry to check price on the case I was looking at and shipping. While on Newegg, I thought why not Google the issue and see what I could come up with. Belkin USB hub was the answer. It comes with 5 USB ports and 1 ethernet connection. The router is connected to the hub with the ethernet. The printer and the external hard drives connect to the USB ports. I grabbged the HP service rep who was in the store to ask him if it would work. He said its should but wanted to sell me a new HP printer with built in wireless. Give him credit for trying.

The hub is not perfect but it got the job done. The wife's laptop can use both devices while my computer is turned off. The only draw back is that the USB devices can only be used by one of the computers at a time. This I can live with for $100.00 spent.