Set Default Printers Based On Network In Windows 7

Best feature of W7 yet!

Pete Ellis

@Meghan Foster: I think a ban is in order.

@puntai: LOL. This comment pretty much describes my entire experience with Ubuntu, sadly.

@Meghan Foster: On my Ubuntu desktop that is directly connected to my printer via USB, it took me no less than 3 hours and some terminal sudo sweetness to get a driver that works. The same task took 0 minutes and 0 clicks in Windows 7.

puntai

You know, the IT guys may hate me for switching my computer to Win 7 when it goes RTM, but that's what happens when the company's webmaster works in sales gets MSDN Universal. This is going to help me greatly as I monthly switch from home office to office-office.

And yes, I do refer to myself as "webmaster".

TheOtherHalf

windows7 will be extremely useful on my netbook with little things like this. now if my hands were half their size i could find my netbook extremely useful

@planetarian: also let us know when anyone cares about ubuntu.

Woohoo! My first Lifehacker tip! :)

blinkfink182

@Meghan Foster: Be sure to inform us when the rest of the world actually cares.

planetarian

@chintan: That would be a smart option for any pc company. Off their own upgrade to 7 offers, maybe before MS offers theirs, they can get a jump on back to school shoppers

shadoblak

They still might. OEM's, including Dell have done that in the past. If the mid-October timeframe holds, I'd expect to see an upgrade voucher program starting in August, maybe July, just before Back-to-School.

Chimaera

But my Ubuntu laptop already does that...

Meghan Foster

dell offers downgrade options to xp right now with most of their business laptops. wouldn't it be great for them to offer "upgrade to 7 (skip vista)" options to people buying laptops during the summer season?

unlike vista, allot of 7s new features are actually useful!

urbanturban666

This is really great and useful! I don't mean to be the guy that says "Oh you can do such and such already blah blah blah" but I did just find out that Leopard does this as well. I just found out on a trip when I went to my company's office. I went to print something and I was surprised to see it had changed to the printer at the office. This is a great feature for any OS and makes life easier for us consumers.

LouisaValemount

@Meghan Foster: You guys are some Windows nazis. Lifehacker is starting to turn into the same. Sadly I find myself more and more deterred from lifehacker since the release of Windows 7 since all they do is point out tons of useless features that Windows 7 has finally gotten around to implementing. @putai Min installed with 0 clicks and 0 minutes on ubuntu. I guess thats what I get when I don't pay $200 dollars for a GUI which is almost as complete as KDE ;) Lets see how many clicks and minutes it takes for you to solve the BSOD.

cs_student

This is a really useful capability. It's one of the main reasons I've continued to use IBM's AccessConnections with various ThinkPads for the last several years.

LucyMorris

@cs_student: 0 clicks and 0 minutes to solve "the BSOD" since I've never had a single one in over 10 years of using my 2 desktops and 1 laptop.

Unless you have hardware related conflicts most user will never ever see them =P

This is awesome.....so many feature....so little time!! =D

pvtryan2

@TheLostVikings R.O.A.C.H.: I hope you didn't just jinx yourself! :)

As for Ubuntu, yeah it has possibilities but it's still far away from being really user friendly. Even updates can be a pain if they fail. Then, like most things it's back to Terminal for sudo commands.

Right now, I'll stick to dual booting OSX/XP on my MacBook. Yes, I'm one of this rare fence-sitters who sees advantages and disadvantages in both Microsoft and Apple.

EdgesRazor

Where does Win7 get the list of networks? I'd like to clean that out.

VeraAthos

been running Vista for a year and Win7 x64 for a couple of months and haven't had a single BSOD since... you know, sometimes you get some faulty component that annoys the hell out of you like those ubuntu/mac zealots :)

question for all the linux and mac fanboys out there, how the hell do you know if windows works or not if you use a completely different OS on a regular basis?

I think a lot of lifehackers here know what i'm talking about. I used a lot of different OSs and they all have problems, serious f*ckin problems, that need to be solved ASAP, we are glad that microsoft is finally catching up and not screwing around like last time with Vista (stupid decision to release such a faulty crappy OS... thank good most of the big issues were solved with SP1).

Mac and their silly overpriced PCs with apple logos, Linux and their funny neckbeards raging about anything not open source, Microsoft and it's crazy ass CEO and f*ck-ups like winME or VistaPreSP1...

This is possible in Windows XP/Vista! Use 'NetSetMan'. A small app, and a fantastic one! When you change locations, you simply right click the app (from the task bar) and select the new location. It changes everything for a specified NIC. For example at home I use a static IP and in work a dynamic IP. I simply click it in work, it changes my IP to dynamic, sets the laser printer as default and saves time. When I'm leaving to go home, I opt for another setting. A superb application!

DonnaCh00x

Nice tip. I just set it on my Windows 7 laptop.

JarrodJohnson

Only BSODS I've had in my lifetime (granted I'm only 26 but using Windows for most my life) were due to hardware failure. My power supply has usually been the biggest culprit, but the time my processor died on me didn't help either.

ilves