Email Printing and other BYOD Printing Solutions that suck

[chazzy2501]

The 6th form would like to use their own devices to print... Seems surprisingly difficult. The Sharp MX2640N offers USB direct printing (for sticks) and Airplay AdHoc. You'd think this would mean my troubles were over but not....

 

Airplay print is complicated by the fact that we have pin numbers enabled so you have to download the sharp APP, BEFORE you wifi to the printer (Printer on curric VLAN not Guest) Then use the app to search for the printer then go to the users settings in the app to enter a PIN then you have to use the app to select the document you wish to print. (ABSOLUTLY fing useless)

 

USB Direct seemed to be a good answer, unfortunately during my testing I could NEVER get it to work correctly (basically took 2 minutes to acknowledge that a stick was in, 2/3 times refused to do so at all.) (various sticks tried NTFS is allowed btw) Just worse than not having the feature...

 

OK after all that I need some kind of email printing solution, The printers are shared through a Server 2012R2 they need a pin number (which can be set in the default if needed as only the pupil account would need this feature.)

 

If there is a M$ solution that'd be nice otherwise low cost:0

[synaesthesia]

How about papercut? Webprint.

[FN-GM]

Do you use anything like Papercut to handle the PINs?

[rich_tech]

We use EveryonePrint here with pCounter if your not a papercut user, that works fine and the kids can log on as normal on there when printing to get their jobs across to the printer.

[mjk]

Papercut with Cloud print works well:

 

Tour - Google Cloud Print - PaperCut

[campusgeek]

Everyone Print is a good product. PrinterOn is best and looks like they just came with an express edition. PaperCut's Web and Email Printing is not at all a cloud-based solution and is sort of misleading. It requires you to install a second web print server someone on campus - which could be and issue if wireless users cannot access the network - which defeats the purpose of supporting laptop users. A cloud based solution is the way to go.

[synaesthesia]

Rubbish, it works very well if you set it up correctly. Also don't confuse "cloud" with anything else on the internet, it's just a marketing term for things that have existed since the birth of the Web. Papercut can be hosted "in the cloud", locally, anywhere you want it to be. Plenty of addons and scripts to help do this and much more.

[campusgeek]

My point being if you want a true cloud-based (mobile printing) solution you should go with an application that specializes in cloud printing. PrinterOn is the granddaddy of cloud printing and were in set up in hotels way before the term cloud or mobile printing even came about. Papercut's web print add-on doesn't even touch the true meaning of a cloud base-solution and I believe offering this feature is more of a marketing ploy so they can just lead prospects to believe their web printing solution is truly cloud-based. Prospects are told it's included in the total package, so no add on fee's and will save money. From what I see, you still need to build a new server to host it and then install the supported Office Products on the server (which are limited file formats compared to PrinterON) and if you want the solution in the cloud then you need to host your own Azure or Amazon Cloud environment plus set up the VPN to your internal network and finally support all of this. Going with someone like PrinterOn covers all these area's.

[Big_Ted]

Hi,

 

I am not sure PaperCuts webprint is marketed as a cloud based solution. From memory the only mention of cloud will be Google Cloud Print (Google call it that) and some KB articles about running PaperCut server software in the cloud.

 

PaperCut is designed to sit on top of an existing print infrastructure and track and control the printing. Comparing it to PrinterOn or EOP for me would not make sense, they both serve different functions but both happen to get involved with printing.

You can also install the simple mode of web print that does not require anything extra.

[campusgeek]

The web print simple mode only supports PDF documents.

Again, that whole "cloud" terminology is a bit confusing. But your can require the web print as cloud-based in a sense the docs are being upload to a remote server somewhere either on their network or in an Cloud provider, as mentioned (Azure or Amazon). There is also a mobile print app, so you could certainly regard that as a cloud-based app. I guest you instead of referring to it as "Cloud" printing you can refer to it as "Mobile" printing.