Apple's Bonjour Available for Windows

inblosam writes "Apple's Bonjour ('also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks') is now available for Windows! A Bonjour icon shows up in Internet Explorer to enable Bonjour browsing, along with the Bonjour Printer Wizard. Developers can download the Bonjour SDK. The benefits would appear to be for Apple customers (more Bonjouring with more networks) and to gain Apple switchers by enticing Windows customers."

Comments

The printer wizard is very interesting for HPusers

[Anonymous Coward]

..since all networked HP printers built in the last few years have Bonjour support built in to the JetDirect software.

Great...

[clamx]

Just tried Bonjour on Windows, and it automatically detected our two network printers : one's an HP LaserJet 3030 (with a network box) and the other is a Lexmark C510N. I'm really glad I can at last uninstall all the crap that comes with the drivers to make them work... And I won't have to define network ports that crash or fail to detect network names again! Nobody will come ever again to tell me "the printer doesn't work"... I'll switch all our computers to Bonjour as soon as I can. Thanks Apple.

Re:UPnP

[prefect42]

I throw 20 people and their laptops into a room. With zeroconf they all automatically notice each other, sort out what IPs they're each going to use, offer their printers to each other (as defined by policy), and magically become a network of machines.

In dumb speak, it just works. DHCP is much better for an organised network, this is much better for an ad-hoc one.

I thought the "Windows" trademark was revoked?

[circusboy]

not so much that French is hip, but "something-you're-not" is

my brother tells me the story of when bicycling through belgium, he came across a guy customizing a hod-rod car. on the side were painted the words "sweet girl." when asked, the belgian responded that he wanted something that looked/sounded exotic. A U.S. equivalent might be "cherchez le femme" (or "churchy lafemme" for you Pogo fans...)

I think that it just has to be in a different language. it promotes the need for some one to ask you what it is. makes you feel smart (though possibly only relative to the person asking... (think bad lawyers and latin.)) I suppose it helps that in the U.S. certain languages/accents have come to be hung with certain stereotypes. BBC style British accent=intelligent, French accent=sexy (or stuck-up (or both, for that matter)), Italian=short tempered gangster/lothario. But in all of these cases the primary thing that the accent or the foreign word implies is simply the sense of the exotic.

In the rest of the world, French was/is frequently considered the international language. though with the advent of airtravel, and by necessity international air-traffic control, that has been moving to english for some time. (most computer languages also have their basis in english (keywords and syntax rules for instance.) I find it fairly interesting that ruby, (developed, as far as I know) primarily in Japan, still uses english for the major keywords.)

Finding a name that is not "sue-able" or offensive is a tricky thing. Exxon spent a lot of time and money looking for a new name when Esso was broken up and managed to find that the XX was uncommon or non-existent in all known languages. The fact that Exxon itself eventually became something of an epithet is unrelated, (but pleasantly ironic.)

Rendezvous, at least, had come into relatively common english parlance.