Print from Ipad?

evergreen

What is the best way to print from the ipad. Do you need to buy a special printer and are they expensive? Sorry if this has been on here before, but I did a search and didn't come up with anything. Thanks

Lagoon

I have a standard wireless printer, and there's an app for printing. I'm not sure how many printers offer this, or if yours is wireless.

jbainbridge

You'll need a printer with AirPrint.

Spankey

jbainbridge wrote: »

You'll need a printer with AirPrint.

"Airprint"

Sounds like a fancy name for wireless??

securityguy

Spankey wrote: »

"Airprint"

Sounds like a fancy name for wireless??

No, it's a protocol that the iPad supports which it expects the printer to talk. My current printer has its wireless turned off, as it's patched straight into a switch, but it still provides AirPrint to devices on the wireless network.

Apple were at the ragged edge of my tolerance for their shenanigans with this. They did briefly ship (in a Lion beta or something) an application to run on a Mac would would talk Airprint on the input side and then drive any supported printer; however, they now only officially support doing it via a printer with the protocol built in. I doubt this makes them any money, because the main beneficiaries are printer manufacturers, so it's a rather inexplicable piece of customer-screwing by Cupertino.

The protocol has been reverse-engineered, and there are applications which claim to make any printer work with AirPrint (http://www.netputing.com/handyprint/ for OSX, http://www.airprintactivation.com for Windows, there are others). But none of them are straightforward, and all obviously involve leaving the machine running to drive the printer. Unless you're really, really annoyed at Apple over this (and I sympathise), I'd buy a printer than supports AirPrint. Consider it this year's payment of the Apple Tax.

paddyrg

Can you use http://www.google.co.uk/cloudprint/learn/ ??

If you're running Chrome browser you might find you can, and easily. I know I use it for remote printing in the office from anywhere in the world, including standing right next to the printer :-)