[olug] Network print servers

[Obi-Wan]

Hey all,

We're finally upgrading my wife's 9-yr-old WinXP desktop to a new Win7
laptop.  The old XP box has been our home's print server, since Canon
printers don't play nice with Linux (not for photo printing, anyway).
Since the new laptop won't be plugged into the lan 24x7, I need to find
another way to allow my Ubuntu desktop and Fedora laptop to print to
our Canon iP6600D.  It's been several years since I've had to mess with
printing under Linux.

When printing photos from the new Win7 laptop, we need to be able to
use the Windows print drivers, since they're the only ones that really
work reliably.  Is it possible to hook the printer to my Ubuntu desktop
in some sort of passthrough mode so that Win7 can still use its own
drivers, while still allowing the direct-connected Ubuntu & WLAN-connected
Fedora boxes to print as well (not necessarily photo quality)?

How well do network print controllers work for this sort of environment?
I know a 802.11g network (over which my wife would be sending her photo-
quality print files) is a whole lot slower than USB2, but other than
that, would it work better to just put the printer directly onto the
wired network with such a device?  Any recommendations on brand/model?

Would I be better off just telling my wife to unplug the printer's USB
cable from my Ubuntu desktop and plug it into her Win7 laptop whenever
she wants to print anything?  She'll obviously be sitting next to the
printer when that happens anyway.  Then the linux & Windoze boxen wouldn't
have to know anything about each other.

-- 
Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins