wireless printer adaptor, anyone know anything about them?

[DebiTheScot]

I'm thinking about getting my parents something like this for Christmas.
They both do work on laptops and then have to take it up to desktop to print stuff off.

Is this what I need to allow them to print straight from laptop to upstairs printer? And will any adapter work with any brand of printer?

or do I need something like this?

bump and sorry about the bad spelling in the title.

you should have put this in 'geeky stuff'

I'vet tried to use one in the padt for my parents for similar reasons - they don;t all work with all printers it seemed (this was 2yrs ago) so maybe do a bit of googling to see if there are know issues. It may be better to get some sort of USB switch and just plug into that... the geeks in Maplins (if there's one near you) are quite helpful with this sort of thing!