Printing anything from anywhere is no longer a scene from Back to the Future, it’s a reality. Having the capability of printing from a smartphone, tablet, or laptop is a growing part of everyday workflow.
Mobile printing technology makes all of this possible. Printers with wireless or internet access can communicate far beyond a specific user or workgroup. Print manufacturers are rolling out solutions that use e-mail or cloud-based print servers as the backbone for sending print jobs. Some bigger players in the market have found solutions to issues such as reaching older printers, or finding places to print when you’re out of the office.
Get ready and set to print
How and where you get started depends on how far you want to take your printing capabilities. You’ll also have to consider three basic issues:
- Find your printer, find your app: Your device and printer of choice need to find each other. It’s fairly easy to set up mobile printing around your home or office, where you own or already have access to the printer. What about when you’re off-site and need to send a job to an unfamiliar printer? Luckily, checking a printer’s online feature sheet will tell you whether it supports a solution to cover your mobile device.
- Prudent Printing: Security is a big concern with mobile printing, especially if you need to print sensitive information. Make sure that you are near the printer when you send your print job to make sure your documents are not being seen by prying eyes. If you’re sending to a printer that’s not close by, look for a provider that gives a passcode and holds your job until you get to the printer and enter the code.
- Accept that there are still limitations:Mobile devices do not have an installed drive, so problems still do occur. The most prevalent issue being dropped connection when sending print requests. Print jobs come out looking funny due to the lack of software communications between a handheld devices and printers. While most mobile solutions print Microsoft Office files, photos, and PDF files with decent results, formatting issues still exist, mainly with extra pages, cut-off pages, font substitutions, and odd scaling.
Mobile printing is being embraced in many ways by companies. It is only a matter of time before printing from a mobile device is the norm. We at Capital Business Systems can help you learn how your company can benefit from mobile print strategy. Contact us today.