Need network Printer suggestions

Hey networking gurus, I need a little bit of advice here, was wondering if you guys could help me out with some opinions on what my best course of action would be...here goes my situation:

My family recently moved into a newly built house, and during the building process I had cat5 wired in almost every room for internet access (I don't trust wireless).

So, all the wires terminate upstairs here and are plugged into a Netgear 8 port wired router. No print server built in. Yet, the printer is on being shared on the computer downstairs in the study. And my father sometimes forgets and shuts off his computer down there, therefore shutting down that printer from the rest of the network. A royal pain heh.

We soon plan on getting a Fax machine hooked up in the same room that the router is in. They are going to drop the phone wire next to where we want it, and I'm going to go ahead and tell them to add an ethernet plug to that walljack too to see if I can turn this fax machine into a printer.

Many of these Brother fax machines can also act as USB printers. Would it be possible to get one of those cheap little 30 dollar USB to ethernet print servers to use that fax machine as a network printer?

Doesn't it require drivers? How would I get those drivers for this fax/printer combo into the print server. Into ANY print server for that matter?

Any info/suggestions would be great. I'd hate to spend a bunch of money and get a network ready printer itself, and we are running kinda low on space to have yet another printer.


Thanks!


Javyn

 

I have this, it's a brother MFC3820cn 6 in one fax,printer,scanner,etc.
It has built in eithernet (networkable via cat5 cable) also has usb for direct connection to one PC
Just plug in router (easy set up works great)
No need for printserver with this one
Bought New for $200.00 ( when I bought was only one I could find that was networkable)

Link:
http://brother.com/usa/fax/info/mfc3820cn/mfc3820cn_ove.html

I also have two other printers and another fax in my home network, but these are direct connection to PC's ( all shared but pc will slow up when another pc uses, Not the case with MFC3820cn plugs right in my router)

 

The USB Printer Servers are designed to work with out drivers.

Example: D- Link DP-301U.

There might be compatibly problems I>e. it might not work with certain printers, but you will not know unless you try.

 

thanks guys I will definately give one of these a try.