[X4U] Printing from remote location to IP printer on my LAN?

[Jim Robertson]

In my medical practice we have an unmanaged LAN (2 Macs, 4 PCs) with really
no shared resources other than the DSL router (IP addresses are done by
DHCP). We have one Laser printer with a static local IP address.

Currently, we have a local transcriptionist take audio tapes away from the
office and return one or two days later with hard copy documents on our
letterhead paper. Eventually, we'll move to electronic medical records, but
we're not there yet. We'd like to explore a remote transcription service
where we dictate over the phone and have the medical reports printed in our
office. The first service we contacted offered to fax the reports, but the
print quality isn't great, and sometimes the documents are sent to several
locations, so we need multiple copies.

Would it be difficult to have the remote transcriptionist print to an IP
printer on our LAN? Would I need to learn how to configure a Windows network
Domain in order for this to be possible, or could I do it just by
configuring the printer itself to accept those jobs over the internet?
Ideally, we'd like the transcriptionist to print as many copies as we need
from his remote computer, so that when we come in in the morning all we'd
have to do is print laddress abels from a Dymo labelwriter for reports that
we send elsewhere.

The IP printer we have now is a LaserWriter 16/600, and undoubtedly we'd
upgrade to a more contemporary printer with multiple paper trays. I've been
impressed with the Xerox Phaser I use at home, and I know that they're
pretty decent workhorses. Does anyone have particular printer
recommendations?

Thanks so much,



Jim Robertson
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