guest OS printing, ?requirement for Ubuntu 8.10 host OS being able to access wireless network printer

Having a 3 computer peer to peer network, with a challenging connection problem -
Belkin wireless/wired router
MacMini (intel-based) wired connection, printing well to wireless network Canon Pixma MP620
Sony NB converted completely to Ubuntu 8.10 not yet setup to print from same MFP
Desktop, being re-built, having had an incomprehensible MoBo - RAM mismatch failure, after >1year of successful WinXP function with wired ethernet connection. Fry's replaced MoBo with Asus P5KPL-CM. 4GB RAM & same old CPU Intel Pent D 3.4mhz. XP loaded uneventfully, connected to internet well, when wired directly to router with 6ft cat5, BUT when connected across condo via wall cat5, gave me "disconnected cable" error, except once during Windows update ran. Required restart consistently produced same error msg. Yet Ubuntu NB connected well off same cable. My solution = install Ubuntu 8.10 as host OS, then with Virtualbox, create a guest XP virtual machine, to run the few remaining Windows programs I have.
The question is can a virtual machine access a wireless printer without the host system being able to? The Canon Pixma MP620 wireless MFP setup is feasible but a little challenging, so if the host OS has to be able to access MFP before any guest OS can, I really do need to work on Ubuntu 8.10 printer access first.
Thanks in advance
Claude