Other PCW Business Center readers are recommending:

• Top 10 External Hard Drives

Thank you for voting on this story.
Your vote has been successfully recorded.

Making the transition from a one-person home business to a growing company with multiple emloyees and several PCs can be as frustrating as it is exciting. Along the way, you're bound to outgrow the capabilities of your old hardware. So if you can put off buying new, network-ready printers for another fiscal year, all the better. Fortunately, making your old printers accessible to your team over the network is as easy as plugging in a little plastic box.

Mini print servers such as Netgear's PS121 ($60) act as a bridge between otherwise-unnetworkable printers and your router. Simply connect the mini print server to your USB printer, plug it into a power outlet, and then connect it to your router. Most include a browser interface so you can customize settings over the network at any time. Once the print server is up and running, you can use it to print from any PC, anywhere on the network, whether wired or wireless.

If you've got really old parallel printers, it's still possible to connect them. Netgear's PS101 ($70) supports parallel printers in exactly the same way as its USB counterpart, letting you squeeze more life out of your aging hardware so you can focus on building your business instead of adding to your electronics recycling costs.

For their simple setup and reliability, the Netgear print servers above have won my trust, but they're not the only game in town. Other good options include the parallel D-Link DP-301P+ and the Linksys PSUS4. With each of these devices priced under $70, setting up a mini print server is a smart, simple way to save hundreds -- even thousands -- on a network-ready printer.