a *fast* check for whether another machine is on the local network?

[Peter M. Brigham]

Somewhat off-topic, but…. Given your target population of laptops that move around among various wireless networks you might be interested in these printing routines as well. I have a set of handlers that will automatically set the default printer to whatever printer is available, either by USB or wireless. This allows one-click printing without any printer dialog. It uses shell calls and I have only used it on the Mac, as I don't have a Windows machine. Don't know if you could adapt it somehow for Windows. Email me off list if you want the scripts.

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig


On Jun 13, 2013, at 5:54 PM, Dr. Hawkins wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 2:13 PM,  <dunbarx at aol.com> wrote:
>> Would the "openSockets" function do what you need? Not as direct as what
>> OS9 could do, but those days are over. And I am sure there must be an
>> appleScript gadget that could query the network.
> 
> But that only handles connections already open, doesn't it?
> 
> What I'm really looking at is a laptop that spends some of its time in
> the office, but also goes to court, where an attorney may want to make
> time entries.
> 
> At that point, I'd like the laptop to simply figure out where it is
> without waiting for a timeout.
> 
> The problem with applescript is that I'll be selling more windows than
> mac for the foreseeable future, and I'm tryng to limit the number of
> areas in which windows gets short-featured for its deficiencies . . .