Is it magic, or just dumb?

Breaking news from the North Kansas City Public Library: You can now send print jobs from your laptop to one of their printers via Wi-Fi.

Or can you?

Unless this is being achieved by supernatural means, or unless there's something important they've left out of their announcement blurb, I'd have to say that you can't-at least not yet. You see, there's no mention of your having to install the printer's driver on your machine-always the first step in setting up a printer. No matter how wishfully they may think it, there's no way printing will work "automatically" before the printer has been added to the client computer and the client's operating system told where and what kind of printer it is. And I'd hazard a guess that not many of NKC's patrons have ever had to wrestle with setting up a network printer themselves. Take it from someone who often has-it ain't exactly plug-and-play simple, folks.

And does NKC think every laptop in the world uses the same version of the same operating system? How about the kid with the hand-me-down Windows 98 rig? Or the Linux geek? Or our colleague Macenstein, for that matter? Macs do not like using peripherals such as printers over a network. They can do it, but they just don't like it-and they show their disdain by not making it easy to do. And, of course, they need Mac drivers in any case. Connecting a heterogeneous mix of computers to the same network via established protocols is one thing. Providing that motley crew of clients with the plethora of drivers they will need to use a single peripheral-assuming there even is driver support for them all-is quite something else.

Methinks the library hath bought itself more headaches than anything else with this.

Besides, even if you believe this is something worth paying for-you didn't think they were giving away that ink and paper, did you?-and feel you can manage to get it working, I'd recommend you not do it-at least not for anything you wouldn't want someone else to see. Remember how that print job is getting from your laptop to the printer? Right-it's going over an open, unsecured wireless link in the clear. So, even though you can safely do your online banking at the library provided your bank's website is fully SSL protected (and if it isn't, please put your money in another bank whose site is!), you can't safely print out receipts and statements there without risking interception.

That said, I am curious about this setup. If any of you get a chance to play around with it, come by and let us know what you find.