How It Works

We want you to be confident working with PrinterShare® understanding how it works and what you do. It's simple! There are two types of people working on our network: Printer Users and Printer Owners. The users have something to print from their computers and the owners have printers to print on. Often people can be both users and owners at the same time.

To work with PrinterShare® both need to install our software available at www.printershare.com. The software package is the same for users and owners. During installation it creates a special printer on your computer called PrinterShare®. User selects it as if printing documents normally, for instance by selecting menu "File – Print" in Microsoft Word.

The printer is a special one. Instead of turning your document into the paper, it instead sends it across the network to one of the printer owners (you may not have a printer at all). The owner could be anywhere. Well, anywhere where there is the Internet.

Since we can't read your mind and figure out where exactly you want the documents to be printed, we need to ask you to specify the remote printer (the one that the owner has). At this step you may select from the list previously used remote printers or find news ones.

Finding a printer is in fact finding an owner (a person), and then selecting from one of his shared printer. You will see whether the owner is online at this time and the printer is connected. We truly don't know whether there's paper in it or not – that's owner's responsibility.

The encrypted electronic copy of the printout (not the original document!) travels across the network to the owner of the physical printer and eventually gets printed, this time on real paper. As a user, you would see the confirmation of your print job done. The owner doesn't need to have the same application or version of it to print documents. It's the ready-to-go printout you are sending to him and apparently to his printer.

PrinterShare® is designed to work for people just like you. If you have any questions please feel free to ask us by sending email to support@printershare.com.