WIFI printing - where am i going wrong?

[ooo000ooo]

I had a canon multifunction printer that ate cartridges and 9/10 times I connected to it via USB as wifi printing never worked. Binned it and bought a Samsung Laser printer. Set it up on google print, sent invitations out to everyone in the family and it seemed to work ok.
It now looks like it will only print if my laptop is turned on and i'm logged in to my account on it the laptop.
Last night the wife created a doc on google docs on her chromebook, she sent it to the printer and nothing. Logged into the main laptop as her and in her google print queue it showed her doc, paused and suggesting the printer was offline.
Switched into my account, checked google print and without doing anything it started printing before I'd even got to the page.
Is the laptop acting like a print server?
is there anyway round this? The kids will be getting new laptops at xmas and it would be great if they could just print without having to log into my laptop!

[JimbobVFR]

What model is it?

It does sound suspiciously like your PC is involved somehow but I'm not sure how.

Can you print from any other devices, maybe a phone. Most network printers have an android driver app available and I presume similar for iOS.

[Somebody]

Not sure why you would want to go via Google print. With my wireless printer, I just set it up with wifi credentials and install printer driver on all the laptops. Then print pointing to the printer from all devices, although they are all on Windows.

[ooo000ooo]

Printer is a Samsung ML2026w.

[ooo000ooo]

Somebody said:

Not sure why you would want to go via Google print. With my wireless printer, I just set it up with wifi credentials and install printer driver on all the laptops. Then print pointing to the printer from all devices, although they are all on Windows.

I assumed this was the simplest way of doing it, I thought then if you wanted to print from any device - phones etc, google would figure it out.