How to Connect a Printer to a Computer

Video Transcript

"My name is James, Computer Hardware Training Coordinator for Interconnection, and I'm going to show you how to install your printer. The first step, you've got to buy your printer. You should also have a computer for this. Now, what you're going to do is, at home I imagine a lot of you guys have a USB printer so you're going to have a little port like this, takes this connector. The printer should come with this cable, otherwise you can go to your local electronics store and pick them up for five dollars or so. So what you do is you take this end, install it right in here, take the other end which very well might look a little different, install this end of the USB right in here. Now USB cables, as you see, there's no way you can install them backwards. They only fit in one way so you don't have to worry about that. Once you have your printer installed, turn your computer on, your computer should recognize the printer. What I like to do, especially with all the Hewlett-Packard printers, and printers similar to this, is just see if your computer recognizes it right off the bat. That way you don't have to install any software and it's just a little cleaner on your computer. You don't have to install a bunch of stuff to gum it up. Now if that doesn't work, you just take the software that you have with your printer, install it and your printer should work great. If you don't have the disc to your printer, don't worry, you usually can just Google the model printer that you have, find the manufacturer's website, download the driver, and you should be off an running. My name's James and I just showed you how to install your printer."