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EFI adds AirPrint to corporate copiers and printers

by Steven Sande Feb 10th 2011 at 2:00PM

AirPrint is wonderful for those of us who can use it to print to home printers, but until now, the technology has been useless for most corporate copier / printers. That's all set to change now that EFI is providing support for AirPrint to its signature Fiery print servers.

The PrintMe Connect software enables direct wireless printing from any iOS 4.2 mobile device. The software is free to download, and it works for printing to any Fiery-driven printer. According to EFI, "It is a software application that runs as a proxy on a Windows system to enable AirPrint printing for Fiery-driven printers with System 8/8e or later software version." AppleInsider notes that PrintMe Connect expands AirPrint to work with large format, high end and multifunction printers in the enterprise, and that there are more than 250,000 printers in corporate offices that will benefit from this free update.

Up to this point, only HP has announced printers that are officially supported by AirPrint, so it's exciting to see that the iOS printing standard is now making it to the big leagues with EFI. Do you work in an office where your print jobs are routed through a Fiery print server? Let us know if your corporation allows you to use PrintMe Connect for printing from your iOS device.

[via AppleInsider]



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AirPrint is wonderful for those of us who can use it to print to home printers, but until now, the technology has been useless for most...
 

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SwissMac

And there's me thinking most Networked printers connected directly to the Network. Like ours does. Why use a Print Server?

Having said that, AirPrint is a huge disappointment. I really thought it would allow me to print to any printer, but no. I still can't print anything from my iPad... even though it connects to our Network wirelessly on the same subnet.

February 10 2011 at 11:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to SwissMac's comment
Ryan

Well, technically even your network printer that "doesn't" have a print server, really does, it's just a really small embedded one.
But the reasoning for these firey units is some types of print jobs (think design houses) are many GB in size when they are RIP'ing and are way more than a simple embedded print server could ever hope to handle. Throw in a whole department trying to print at same time and you have a recipe for a melted printer....And you do not know the wrath of professional artists who can't print as fast as they want to...

February 11 2011 at 8:44 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Russell Glober

How about a AirPrint for Airport Extreme base stations (that have a printer connected via USB) via a firmware update?!

I don't want to have my laptop (my only computer) on and open whenever I might want to print something from my iPhone in my house.

February 10 2011 at 7:55 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
shanderson

Really, you need a windows machine on the network to make this work? Rubbish, why not just install it onto the fiery server? AirPrint is the biggest disappointment from Apple in a long time.

February 10 2011 at 5:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Al Degutis

I just installed the the PrintMe proxy on my computer and can now print to a Konica Minolta bizHub printer. I would be better is the functionality were added directly to the Fiery engine instead of using a desktop proxy. Still it was very cool to be able to print a PDF from an email in my iPhone.

February 10 2011 at 2:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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