Connecting laptop to printer

[soapbox]

I'm slightly confused by this. My wife bought a laptop last week from PCWorld (Toshiba A100). She wanted to print some documents last night only to find there was no printer port. There was a plastic cover where the printer port should be, but when I took it off there was nothing behind it.

It has a USB port but I don't think our printer has a USB port as it's quite old.

Is a printer port something you usually have to buy as after market? Or am I now going to have to buy a wireless printer or a printer with a USB connection?

[japhilip]

I'm not sure laptops have had parallel ports for some time now, none of ours do, and the oldest is over 2 years.

YOu can get USB to Parallel adaptors (I've had limited success with these though), you may also need to download or install the appropriate driver(s) for your printer.

Alternatively, a new printer is required. They're pretty cheap nowadays, with quite good ones available for £50 or less.

[soapbox]

Cheers

[jimmyjimjim]

Alternatively, you can get parallel to ethernet print servers; so you can network the printer to any other pcs you might have.