Magic Print Gateway

We’ve finally come up with a working print solution for use on-campus, with support for off-campus users not far behind! Yes, coming soon (as soon as we’ve gone through a meeting, approved it and built some nice tidy servers without all our development detritus on them) you’ll be able to use your own Windows, OS X or Linux laptop from anywhere within the Campus WiFi to print using the University printers!

“But how?” I hear you cry. “We thought it was impossible because Windows Server 2003 has such a ridiculous implementation of the IPP standard!”.

Continue reading “Magic Print Gateway”

Printing From Afar

Whilst I’m waiting for various bits of Get Satisfaction (and similar services) to get back to me, I am getting on with my second quest of bringing good, reliable and easy remote printing to the University. By this I mean that anybody – be they in the Atrium on their own laptop, in the student village, up the hill or on the other side of the planet – can send documents to their University print account, wander up to one of our SafeCom printers, punch in their numbers and pick up their printing.

This of course runs into some interesting challenges and raises some questions, which I’m going to ask you all to answer in the comments box. Alternatively if you don’t understand logging in to these blogs, are a fresher without an account or just can’t be bothered doing it any other way you can fire me an email.

So, questions.

  1. Do you know how to print from inside the University, and to collect your printing using SafeCom?
  2. Have you ever wanted to print from outside the University? If so, what kind of things (Word documents, images, PDFs etc)?
  3. Do you know how to add a new printer to your computer?
  4. Would you be happy installing a bit of software on your computer to look after remote printing?
  5. How important to you is being able to adjust the default settings, for example single/double sided print or stapling?
  6. If you can’t change your system settings or add a new printer, would you be happy to send your original document (by web or email) and let us try to print it?