Google Launches Cloud Printer Service For Windows 135
An anonymous reader writes "Google today announced it is bringing its Cloud Print project to Windows. The company has launched both a driver and a service, both of which are available for download now from Google Tools. For those who don't know, Google Cloud Print connects Cloud Print-aware applications (across the Web, desktop, and mobile) to any printer. It integrates with the mobile versions of Gmail and Google Docs, and is also listed as a printer option in the Print Preview page of Chrome."
One of the things that annoys me about Android: having to print through the Cloud (tm) when I have an Internet Printing Protocol CUPS server on the same network as my phone connected to a printer ten feet from me. It wouldn't be so bad if the Google Cloud Print libraries weren't proprietary and did something like IPP proxying instead of using a similarly proprietary API.
Re:Congrats, Unknown Lamer... (Score:5, Informative)
Every Mac user on the planet who prints ... does it through CUPs.
I.E. there are more CUPS users than Linux users.
Want to try again?
PrinterShare (Score:4, Informative)
Sure it would be lovely to have easy printing built into Android, but honestly I've found that PrinterShare [google.com] works just fine.
Re:Congrats, Unknown Lamer... (Score:5, Informative)
Only because Apple made it work properly and added a GUI instead of text files that bomb with a misplaced comma or tab.
Wow - you really haven't used linux in the last decade or so, have you?
Find a computer with an install of any of the major linux distributions, fire up a web browser, and point it to http://localhost:631/ [localhost]
You'll find local and network printer search and configuration, default paper and printer settings, print queues, pretty much everything you need, all in a nice pretty gui.
Re:IPP/CUPS printing (Score:3, Informative)
Well, their are a number of options for printing to a CUPS printer from Android. This one works just fine:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blackspruce.lpd
Remote CUPS look OK
JfCupsPrint looks OK
I would say you have a few options to do this.
Would I rather see CUPS built in to make it "just work"? YES! I bet we would see a LOT of printers suddenly shipping with built-in CUPS servers if this were to happen. And I would love to see built in SANE support as well (insanescanner is out, but not the same as built in support).
Re:IPP/CUPS printing (Score:5, Informative)
If you have a business grade laser or print server (CUPS,LPR,SAMBA, etc) , the app will talk directly to them without any off-site conversion. No print data leaves your local network unless you choose the GCP (Google Cloud Print) option. (This app is not NSA approved ;-)
Re:Google is becoming synonymous with idiotic (Score:5, Informative)
For those who don't know, Google Cloud Print connects Cloud Print-aware applications (across the Web, desktop, and mobile) to any printer
So if I want to print my document to a printer in Bulgaria, no problem! That's just flat out daft. Cloud storage, processing and applications provide ubiquitous accessibility. Cloud printing provides ubiquitous inaccessibility.
Actually, I find cloud print to be very convenient. I print to my home printer while I'm at work and printers at work (my office and remote offices) from home, I have printed to my mom's printer and my father-in-law's printer from another state (easier than sending them a document and helping them print it). It's also zero setup when I get a new computer... as soon as I'm logged into Chrome I can print and it just works. No fiddling with drivers because that was already done once.
Surely there's still somebody with common sense working for Google?!?
Bah. Common sense is usually neither common nor very sensible. But what do I know? I work for Google :P
Re:Ads in the middle of your print jobs (Score:4, Informative)
Use Feedly? I switched with absolutely zero issues. In fact, my RSS app updated, said I should switch to Feedly, and all I had to do was click a button and log in with my Google account. It was the most painless migration I've ever experienced. I'm aware that's no longer available, but the service itself is good, though there have been a couple of short outages due to maintenance.
Re:Congrats, Unknown Lamer... (Score:4, Informative)
Only because Apple made it work properly and added a GUI instead of text files that bomb with a misplaced comma or tab.
Wow - you really haven't used linux in the last decade or so, have you?
Find a computer with an install of any of the major linux distributions, fire up a web browser, and point it to http://localhost:631/ [localhost]
You exaggerate the difficulties of setting up a printer using CUPS and a modern Linux distribution. ;-)
I just did a little experiment. I'm sitting in a holiday house borrowed from friends, using my trusty Lenovo laptop running Debian Squeeze. Next to me on the bench is a printer - I've never used it before and it's been covered with a cloth up until the start of the experiment.
I removed the cloth, powered up the printer, and then plugged the USB lead into my laptop. About 10 seconds later a dialogue box appeared on my desktop saying, "A new printer has come into existence. Do you want to use this driver?". I answered yes. It then said, "Do you want to print a test page?" Again I said yes, and shortly afterwards there appeared a perfectly formatted colour test page.
I'm not sure it can be made much easier than this.
John
Re:Remember when ... (Score:2, Informative)
You're agreeing with the GP. A proper quote would be this:
Remember when Google supported existing open APIs instead of pulling a Microsoft and inventing their own for everything and dropping support for open APIs?
The GP just split the sentence between the subject and body, like many posts on slashdot do.
Apparently the moderators missed this too.