New way: $28 and 2 hours. Old way: $3 and 5 minutes.

I recently bought a used laser printer and had the bright idea to try to set it up on our wireless network using a Linksys WGA11B device - it's supposed to be used to network things like XBOXes, but some people on Amazon in their reviews wrote that it could be used for pretty much anything. Anything, apparently, except my damn printer. It wouldn't set up, wouldn't connect, etc etc. Finally I gave up and ordered a 10 foot parallel printer cable from Amazon (still on my Prime trial so shipping was free) for $3.50. I'll just have to plug one end into the printer and the other end into my computer and it will actually work.

For the curious, we finally got it to print so my boyfriend could print the thing he needed by setting up my seven-year-old laptop to act basically as a very expensive version of the thingy I bought. It connected and networked just fine. I don't think I'll be using it for that purpose very often though...