[lbrandt]

Hello all,

Not sure where this broad question fits; please suggest a better forum if this is not it.

I'm outfitting an in-home office almost from scratch for a friend. Would like to do as much wirelessly as possible - ethernet/USB wired OK as fallback. Price is secondary to integratability and functionality.

- Have a white i-book - two years old with airport card.
- Have cable modem access through Comcast
- Plan to buy a new iMac g5 with airport card and bluetooth.
- Need to serve a visiting guest PC or Mac with printing and perhaps other local services.
- Need either an all-in-one PDA/phone, or seperate PDA and phone which can sync with each other. Also need to sync to both Macs (bluetooth, I hope).
- Must provide live email while in meetings in US. IMAP rather than POP would be good to allow web mail access. Also desirable to work overseas (Europe and South/Central America).
- Need laser printer and inkjet color printer, either ethernet or wireless but in any case available to all local computers.
- Fax and photocopy would be nice to integrate on the local net.
- Don't know enough about Rendezvous to judge its usefulness.

Is it possible to make this all work without a degree in networking?
What configuration would *you* recommend?
Does anyone have such a working system?

Thanks for any advice.

...Larry

[SSharon]

You give a lot of useful information, but I think it will be easier to gauge what the best setup would be if we know what it will be used for.

As for some of your requests.
You can buy an external bluetooth dongle for $20 for the ibook
You need a router with switch like the linksys wrt54g (look in the networking forum)
I'm not much help with the PDA or phone but there are threads about this around here if you search.
I would get a laser printer with ethernet built in. It seems that you will have enough to work with software wise to set up the network and have it synch everything the way you want it to, I think it will also be easier for the guests to print from it this way. There is a huge price/quality range of printers, where are you looking towards?
As for the color inkjet either get a color laser or do a lot of research because some brands have much better drivers than others. It will also be more difficult to share some inkjets with the guest somputers I think. Most people here like cannon.

Thats all I have for now. Post some more details.

[Casper Crane]

my system would serve you pretty well, with the addition of a Laser printer:

-Broadband modem connected to Airport Extreme base station
-connected to the extra Ethernet port on the base station is a HP 7110 All-in-one with Ethernet print server (I recommend getting the 7140 or 2510 instead). the good thing abou this is fax and photocopy capability. the bad thing is Mac drivers can be bad when a new version of OS X comes out. scanning doesn't work well to the Mac over the network, but I use the Windows machine to scan and then give the files to the Mac. what can you expect from HP? but even with the driver issues, i trust the hardware much more than an Epson or Lexmark.

if you get an ethernet switch or router, you can connect that to the Cable modem, then connect the 2 printers, the Airport base, and even another computer or 2.

connected to the wireless network are 2 powerbooks and 1 Win XP computer (accessed on the Mac via Remote Desktop Client)

Treo 600 Palm OS smartphone is a good solution for Mac users who want an all-in-one phone and pda. stay away from Pocket PC or Smartphone. my treo syncs via USB cable with both Entourage and Address book, using the Missing Sync software. Wait about a month and get a Treo 650 with bluetooth. can't wait? get a Sony Ericsson p910 or a Nokia Series 60 smartphone. but the Treo 650 is probably worth the wait.