Sharing a Printer

I have been trying to share a printer on my iMac with a Sony VAIO UX1XN running Windows Vista Business Edition (in the main to write a guide for my website).

I was quite impressed by using the Network and Sharing Center (when trying out file sharing which incidently works fine) that Vista recognised the printers attached t0 my iMac.

Windows Vista screenshot

However printing to the printer results in the print job just disappearing…

I have already configured the printer (it’s a wireless Canon MP600R) so the Vista PC can print direct to the printer, so printing is not an issue. This is much more a theoretical exercise to see if the UX1XN running Windows Vista can print to a shared printer on a Mac.

Initially I thought it might be because I hadn’t actually shared the printer on the Mac, but even doing that didn’t work.

I am not 100% sure of the reasons behind the lack of printing, but I suspect that because it is a wireless printer may be part of the problem.

Next thing to try is a printer connected to the Mac via USB and share that, I am expecting that to work.

Frozen Upgraded Parallels

I started Parallels on my iMac and there was a new update, which (as I thought I have the time) decided to download and install.

Well it took ages to download the disk image and when it finally did get downloaded, I am guessing it did not mount correctly as first Parallels froze and then the whole Mac.

Generally when an application fails to behave properly on a Mac, you can shut it down even force it to quit, but everything else continues to work. Today with Parallels that wasn’t what happened.

With the whole Mac not working, I gave it five minutes and then holding down the power button forced the iMac to shut down.

I restarted the Mac and everything seemed to be okay.

I mounted the Parallels disk image and ran the upgrade installer, which worked fine, and then updated my virtual XP machine which also went fine.

Not sure what went wrong, but XP on Parallels is now working fine.

Sharing Files

On my main tech website I have a what others have called “useful” guide to sharing files between Mac OS X and Windows XP.

Sharing files between an XP PC and a Mac running OS 10.4

Of course one of the key issues for me now is that Microsoft have released Vista and Apple have just released Leopard (10.5) which means that my guide is out of date by two operating systems.

I do now have a Vista PC, but it is running Vista Business Edition which is “tweaked” for networking by Microsoft, whereas the Vista Ultimate Home Edition is not, therefore I think I am going to have to write two guides, one for Business and one for Home.

However I don’t yet have Leopard, partly as there isn’t a huge amount there for me to upgrade, but also I am not sure if all my peripherals and applications will work under Leopard. I remember having issues and problems when I upgraded my old G5 PowerMac from Panther (10.3) to Tiger (10.4) and some applications stopped working properly.

So eventually I will be upgrading my guides once I have bought the new operating systems.

Well that was a nice surprise

Back in August I purchased Parallels Desktop for Mac from the Apple store in Birmingham in the UK.

You can imagine my disappointment when I installed an ran it that it offered me a £29.99 upgrade to version 3.0!

There was no easy (or cheap) way to return the software to the Apple store, so I left it thinking I had been ripped off!

So I just cancelled the “offer” and continued to use Parallels.

Today I ran Parallels for the first time in ages and up popped the offer. This time I clicked the link and guess what?

I found that if you have purchased Parallels after 1st May 2007 you are entitled to a free upgrade to version 3.0.

This I am very pleased with.