Sharing printer between Win7 and Mac Ios

Hi everyone, this is our first post, This is Walter and writing from the UK.

We install Parallel 8on a few iMac in our office environment. So far, so good. What we are trying to understand about print sharing.

Every machine has its own printer. The question is about sharing the printer between Imac and Win7 environment. If we start the virtual machine with Win7, and use the printer in Win7, would it be possible to use the same printer in Imac environment without shutting down the virtual machine?

We notice that when the printer is plugged in, Mac Ios gives the option to choose if to use the printer in Mac or Win environment, but after assigning the printer to Win7, we don't seem to find the way (if there is one...) to reuse the same printer in Mac unless we:

- shut down virtual machine
- or unplug the printer from USB and plug back, so it will give choice again.

I'm open to suggestions, regards, and thanks for reading.

Walter