There are several advantages of sharing a network printer. One advantage is a printer does not take up space at each person's workstation. Another benefit is not having the expense of buying multiple printers.
The advantage of using a print server is that your printer is not connected to any
computer on your network.
It allows everyone on the same network to send print jobs to the same printer via the print server.
If you want to print from any computer on a network without needing to turn on one that a printer is attached to.
That is a printer that is accessible to computers in a network
A High Quality and Costly Printer can be Shared...!! Space for keeping No. of Printers can be saved
PG 213, 1) Network Discovery, 2) File and Printer Sharing
Connect to one of computers connected to the network after that using sharing options share the printer.
The easiest way to share a Lexmark P4350 is to reinstall the driver and select YES when asked "Do you want to share this printer". If you are using Vista goto the network and sharing centre and enable printer sharing. You should now be able to view connected PC's on your network and therefore the printer that's attached to one of them.
1.more time reqired when we connect printer to large network.
central print server
If you mean what is the purpose of sharing a printer via Samba on Linux, the answer is the same as why you would share a printer between Windows machines. To make the printer accessible to other users on the network.
First I would try to reinstall the printer software and setup the sharing properties. Or just install the printer to the server and distribute the sharing from there...
You do not have to keep your computer in ON position all the time.
if you have more than one computer in a house you can all print to that printer through the network.
After sharing the printer, add the users or groups that you want to have access to the printer, along with 'print' ability, such as 'create document' authority.