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What is AirPrint?Apple AirPrint allows full colour, top-quality printing from iOS devices such as iPhones and iPads directly from within many Apps available from the Apple App Store.
To take advantage of AirPrint, your compatible printer must be connected to the same wireless network as your iOS device or Mac computer.
AirPrint enables users to print wirelessly from within applications on Apple devices to AirPrint Compatible Printers connected to a wireless network. You can use your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad to easily print via Airprint without the need to install drivers or configure the printer queue. Just tap 'print' and select your AirPrint compatible printer, and print!....It's that simple.
What You See is What You Print
If you can open it on your apple device, chances are you can print it with AirPrint and an AirPrint compatible printer. Airprint works with Safari, Mail, Photos, iWork, PDF's in iBooks and many third-party AirPrint compatible apps available from the app store.
Full list of AirPrint compatible printers
Third-Party Apps
There are also a wide variety of third-party apps available to enable wireless printing through Apple devices, even to machines that are not natively AirPrint compatible printers. By sharing a printer installed on an Apple Mac or Windows Pc over a wireless network any printer may be able to take advantage of the AirPrint features. (An additional third-party app may be required to be installed on the local machine)
*For full AirPrint support, a printer firmware upgrade may be required which is available directly from the relevant manufacturer website.
Please note. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that the above information is correct at the time of publication, Printerland will not be held responsible for the content of any third-party software suggested on this site and usage of any such software is at the users own risk. Printerland is unable to provide support for Airprint compatible printer software and any such advice should be readily available from the relevant manufacturer or developer.
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What is Google Cloud Print?
With Google Cloud Print, you can print any document from anywhere to your Google Cloud Print connected printer.
When you print using Google Cloud Print, your file is securely transferred over the internet to your printer. Whether you are in the same room or even in a different country on a different continent you can print whatever you want using any device such as a smartphone, tablet PC or desktop computer.
Share with friends or colleagues
Google Cloud Print enables you to share your printer with friends, family or work colleagues with ease. From the Google Cloud management page you can share your printer securely with trusted individuals.Scalable Printing Solution for Business
Google Cloud Print is used internally by Google employees on hundreds of printers and is designed to scale to your business demands, growing with your business or as a replacement for your existing printing infrastructure.
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The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4545 DTWF is a high-yield business inkjet MFP, designed to compete against laser printers when it comes to print speed and outdo them on cost. It has a large 8.8cm colour touchscreen, a fax, both a duplex print engine and a duplex ADF and it can take up to 1,080 pages of A4 in its three input trays. It's not as big as most comparably specified laser MFPs, either, so you can sit it on a desk for use as a personal printer if required, as well as using it to serve a small office workgroup. Like most other modern network MFPs, the WP-4545 supports printing from Android and iOS smartphones and tablets via its Epson iPrint app and can be given its own email address using the Epson Connect service, so it'll print anything that's sent to it.
The easiest way to configure the MFP's wireless networking settings is from a PC using the driver software. You don't need a physical Ethernet or USB connection to do this; you're simply prompted to enable the MFP's Wi-Fi AutoConnect mode. You can alternatively use a Wi-Fi Protected Setup push-button process to link the printer to a WPS-compatible router, or you can manually select your Wi-Fi network's SSID and enter its password with the numeric keypad. A numeric keypad also appears on the touchscreen display, but the MFP's touchscreen is generally sluggish and a little unresponsive, so we'd advise using the physical button alternatives wherever available.
The 1,200x2,400-pixel CIS scanner isn't the MFP's strong suit, although it's good enough if you need to copy or archive business documents. Even small font sizes were captured sharply, although areas of fine detail in our reference photos looked rather fuzzy upon close examination. Colour reproduction, again in our photo scan tests, was also rather dull, and low-contrast tones weren't easy to distinguish from one another. Scan speeds from the flatbed platen were also surprisingly slow, with a 300dpi document scan taking almost a minute.
More usefully, the scanner has a duplex ADF capable of taking up to 30 pages. Less encouragingly, using it to scan a duplex sheet of A4 at 300dpi in colour took over a minute. Both flatbed and ADF scanners can be used to make photocopies. Both mono and colour copies were of excellent quality, and copies emerge fairly quickly: 11s for a mono page and 24s for colour. The ADF took two minutes to copy 10 single-sided pages.
Print speeds are rather more impressive than the WP-4545's scanning performance. Our colour document printed at 4.3ppm, while our mono text document printed at 15.2ppm. We don't advise using the MFP's draft mode, as it only boosts mono speed to 15.8ppm and produces very pale grey text. At full quality, 12pt mono text is as dark and sharp as any laser printer could produce. The challenging 8pt text in our mixed-colour business document actually looks significantly better than the same document from laser MFPs we've seen, largely thanks to the WP-4545's high print resolution. Images also look great, with smooth, even colour and shading. Photo printing is not this MFP's forte; it doesn't even have a borderless mode, and prints look a little flat. However, photo colours are surprisingly accurate. They take long enough to come out, though, with two 10x8in photos printing in just under seven and a half minutes.
PRINT COSTS
Print costs are remarkably low, outclassing most other MFPs, both laser and inkjet, we've seen in the last year. This is, of course, a key selling point of Epson's WorkForce Pro range. A page of mono text costs just 1.1p, while a page of mixed black and colour printing is just 5.1p. Even the starter cartridges are generous: the MFP comes with a 1,200 pages worth of black ink and 800 pages of colour ink. This doesn't entirely negate the traditional inkjet problems of blocked nozzles and dried-out cartridges if you don't print regularly, but if you are a small or home office user who does a fair bit of printing, this is one of the most cost-effective ways to do it.
At £235, the MFP is a bit more costly than your average inkjet, but if you print in sufficient quantities it's well worth it; total costs of ownership of £769 for medium use over three years and £2,583 for heavy use are far cheaper than any comparable laser printer could achieve. If you're looking to scan at anything over 150dpi, though, you'll be disappointed by the speed of both platen and ADF scans.
CONCLUSION
Despite the absence of a borderless photo printing, sluggish touchscreen and, more importantly, slow scan speeds, if you've got lots of printing to do, this is one of the cheapest ways of doing it. This alone is enough to earn the Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4545 DTWF a Business Buy award.
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Top Lincolnshire based Performing Arts academy Walton Girls' High School and Sixth Form has a tradition of keeping its environment orderly and takes great pride in achieving the highest of academic standards.
Identifying the Problem
Despite the Academy's great standards and ambitions, the school had always invested in numerous printers from different manufacturers meaning that management of its print fleet was a time consuming and often expensive task. Many of these printers did not fully match the needs of the departments often missing the necessary functions to complete the tasks at hand which in turn meant that running costs were extremely high, escalated by large quantities of wastes print jobs.
The Academy wanted to find a convenient and simple printing solution for all its students. The printers needed to be fast, efficient, eco-friendly and easy to use. Like most public sector and education establishments, Walton Girls' High School had a strict budget to manage and therefore wished to invest in a solution that would help to reduce their overall cost of ownership.
A proposed solution was for the school to be provided with a dedicated print room where pupils could access their printed work from a convenient, central location. However, feedback given by the pupils themselves indicated that having printers located in a number of key positions throughout the school.
Epson's Solution
After a comprehensive review of the schools existing print solution, Epson recommended the installation of a range of WorkForce Pro inkjet printers; a series of single and multifunctional printers offering laser quality and performance and per page print costs up to 50% lower than competitive laser printers.
Remote management facilities were also requested from the school for dealing with technical problems such as paper jams, ink level monitoring and other potential errors. These facilities are easily covered by the Epson WorkForce Pro range.
This new technological advancement in colour inkjet printers offers a genuine alternative solution to higher cost laser printers by bringing costs down, increasing productivity and providing up to 80% lower energy consumption.
The availability of high-yield ink cartridges has further helped the school reduce costs and also reduces the number of cartridges the printers need to use over the lifetime of the machine. The school can now use a single supply of ink cartridges for the entire fleet rather than the unnecessary storage of multiple types of cartridge for a variety of different brands.
Through the massive reduction in running costs, the academy has even managed to exceed its existing goals and has now been able to place one printer in every classroom.
Key benefits
Epson has now installed over 40 WorkForce Pro printers throughout the school for a significantly lower cost than their previous solution. With the convenience of the new Epson WorkForce Pro printers the students can now print more print jobs than ever before. Rob Canavan, Network Manager of Walton High School comments: “We are delighted with the cost effective and energy saving solution that Epson has provided. It is clear that even with colour printing the school has much lower overall costs then previously. Many members of staff have remarked on the ease of use of the printers, and how useful the remote scanning and faxing capabilities are. They have also seen a notable reduction in the use of the school’s photocopiers. This will reduce costs even further and over time could remove the need for photocopiers completely.”
Conclusion
Rob Canavan, Network Manager concludes: “The most beneficial element of the WorkForce pro units is the reduction in total cost of ownership and the ability to print in colour. The centralised network management will save us hours of paperwork per month which I am delighted about.”