Printer (USB) Sharing - Use on Win7 and Mac?

Hello everybody.

I just installed and configured this awesome program on my mac, and am running Win7 through it. I discovered that I can connect and use my hp printer on both the Windows and Mac operating systems flawlessly, but I did discover that I cannot have my printer connected to both OS-es at the same time.

So my question is this - Is there a way to have the printer connected to both Win7 AND the Mac at the same time? I know I can have it connected to the Mac, and then when printing off of Windows I can select the 'Use Mac Printer' option, but this does not give me access to all of the specific printer functions that I may need to tweak before I print a job. (Eg - Printer speed, color/greyscale, etc...).

- I started to fiddle-around with the idea on trying to connect to the printer via the AirPort card on the Mac, and via USB on Win7..but this might cause problems since I'm connected to the Internet via a cable connector...if not though, then I am having trouble finding the specific addy to the printer itself.

Other than that, all I have thought of so far is...maybe I can use a USB splitter, and have the printer connected into 2 USB ports, one at a time, to try and 'trick' the system into thinking two are connected...but that probably won't work.

So, enough said. Any ideas or experience would be Very useful. Thanks!!

 

Turn on Printer Sharing on the Mac side. Then have the virtual machine use that printer over the network. You can try the Bonjour or Network options:
http://download.parallels.com/desktop/v6/docs/en/Parallels_Desktop_Users_Guide/23532.htm

If the printer has a network connector, then use that instead of USB. In that case, the printer will have it's own address. It may also have Bonjour. So again, you can try the Bonjour or Network options. You should have a router connected to your cable modem. Then all your computers and printers can connect to the router and the router will hide everything from the outside network.