Ask Slashdot: Best Way To Print From an Android Tablet?

KowboyKrash writes "Does any Slashdotter know how to print from an Android tablet? I have read about Google Cloud Print, but will it work from all (or at least most) apps? Is there a better solution? A little background: With my laptop being four years old, and the battery failing, I want to replace it with a device with 10 hours of battery. I am purchasing an Asus Transformer Prime after Christmas as a gift to myself; my plan is to replace my laptop completely for portable computing. I've already selected several apps that should meet my needs, including Polaris Office, and TeamViewer to remotely access my desktop. So are there any printing solutions for Android? Printing to my network printer at home is good enough."

Comments

easiest is best right?

[wervr]

xerox machine

Re:easiest is best right?

[GNUman]

I have had to do this before, taking a camera photo of a screen; but in my defense, the computer had frozen, and there was no other way to get the snapshot.

Re:easiest is best right?

[symbolset]

Before slideshow software this was how we made slideshows. No joke - special camera and all that.

Re:easiest is best right?

[neonleonb]

Yeah, my dad did a graphics Ph.D. in the late 80s, and to get good renders for publication, he aimed a good camera at a good monitor.

Re:easiest is best right?

[CityZen]

If you looked in computer magazines from those days, you'd see some companies selling these black open-ended pyramids. The peak had a camera mount (and a hole for the lens, of course), and you put the big open end over the monitor face; the purpose was to eliminate all the reflected light.

Cloud Print

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloud print works for me very well from my phone and tablet. If printing to a home printer is good enough then it should work just fine for you. Does for me.

Replacement

[cyachallenge]

A different question may be: do you really want to replace a fully functional platform for an app ridden one? The ability to print effectively shouldn't cost you $9.99. As awesome as tablets are I wouldn't recommend using one for everything.

Re:Replacement

[stephanruby]

You must have an iPad or something.

On my Samsung Tab 10.1, I just did a search for "printer" in the Market and found at least a dozen fully functional free apps with excellent user reviews. There is at least one that was made by each major printer manufacturer, I assume that's because they're selling printers and ink, that's why they're supplying their own apps fully functional for free (with not even a paid equivalent), but Cloud Print seems to be the best one since it relies on Google Cloud Printing Service and just seems to be universal (and that one is totally free as well).

This is not to say I disagree with your main point. A tablet is cool, but it's a not a good productivity tool unless you're a salesman or something. Mine has become exclusively an entertainment device these days, I use it for playing games, reading manga, watching videos, listening to/remote controlling podcasts/music, casually browsing photos/the web, casually playing with the gestures of the UI interface, basically almost anything but actual real work.

And yes, I do realize the Asus Transformer comes with a keyboard, but the problem is that, even with a keyboard, it's still a very seductive device that seems to have been optimized for playing games and consuming media first and foremost.

If you want an actual real useful light device with instantaneous startup time/connection to the web, and extremely long battery life, and assuming your needs are as simple as browsing the web, working on documents online, etc, I'd suggest you take a look at the latest Samsung Chromebook. When my relatives visit, they love my tablet and they also play with it, but they actually use my Chromebook to get actual work done (instead of their own laptops that start up just so damn slowly). Plus, the Chromebook comes with 2 years of free data (the 100 MB quota per month is laughable, but it comes in handy during the times I'm out of wifi range, and I just need a quick bit of information without wanting to activate my mobile hotspot, and the way it's done, the indicator/notifier for data consumption is very well done and very transparent despite the well known evilness of Verizon, there is actually no chance of unknown overages that will come bite me in the ass later on).

This is not to say that the original poster will actually follow my advice. I don't think that he will. The very fact that the tablet is so seductive a device, and the fact that the Chromebook is not seductive at all -- it's just useful, is probably the main reason he'll insist on getting a tablet anyway.

Re:Replacement

[dimeglio]

Not that long ago, no one thought notebooks could replace a desktop computer. I believe it will be possible for tablets to replace most of systems - Apple and Google certainly want to redefine computing.

"gift to myself"

[ThatsMyNick]

Do you also gift wrap it and keep it a surprise till Christmas?

Re:"gift to myself"

[Anonymous Coward]

We're here at Slashdot. We've replaced ThatsMyNick's funny comment with one that makes it seem like he's being a total dick.

Let's see if anyone can tell the difference!

Google's cloud printing was intended for Android

[whereissue]

If you can access Google's cloud printing (you can) you're all set.
Free... so long as you don't mind sharing your data with Google (which you'd already be doing if you're using their cloud service).

I'm curious to see what better (faster!) ideas appear on this thread... There have to be better ways.
Or, at least, more interesting.

No printing sucks

[frisket]

It's crazy. My old N800 PDA could run CUPS, so i could print the PDFs I created with LaTeX on it. WTF are they thinking, not having printing on it? And why has no-one ported CUPS?

Re:No printing sucks

[Luckyo]

Because nokia's "tablets" were worker's machines. Modern tablets are toys. These have very different needs and were one of the major reasons why n-series of tablets was a very small niche product while modern tablets sell millions.

About Polaris

[Wasusa]

I know it's not your question, but just a warning on it. If you plan to send the documents to anyone, and they don't have office 2010 there are going to be issues. They'll be able to read the file in a shocking font if they open it something like openoffice or libreoffice, but there will be random characters at the start and end and the text won't be manipulable.

Re:WiFi enabled printer?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can do it via dropbox. See http://www.labnol.org/internet/print-from-mobile-phones/17827/

Check with the printer manufacturers

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently found out Brother has an app for printing from Android and IOS. Maybe the other printer manufacturers do too?

PrintBot works nicely for me

[gweilo8888]

I don't print a *lot* from my Android tablet, but I do occasionally. I've found PrintBot to work nicely:

https://market.android.com/details?id=net.jsecurity.printbot&hl=en

Note: I have no connection to the author, and haven't yet needed to try the paid version myself, so I refer to the (extremely restricted) free version.

Best Way To Print From an Android Tablet?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Use it to order a real computer from the Amazon site. :-)

I have an idea

[jon3k]

Instead of trying to figure out how to print, how about, in 2011, we figure out how to NOT PRINT?????

I know, I'm boring

[udippel]

and yet, I say it up and down, everywhere: I'll buy the first tablet that runs Debian natively (make that Ubuntu, or anything like that). I buy a tablet, price doesn't matter too much, the day I can install some Linux-Distro on it (please, spare all of the us the 'Android-is-Linux' nonsense comments). I don't need coolness, I am cool. I need OpenOffice on my tablet, no Google-Docs, and I need printing. Not a single Cent for some app, no new printer. CUPS is on any reasonable Linux-Distro, and that's what I am waiting for.
Thanks to the original submitter. I was almost tempted to buy a tablet today, despite of all my good intentions as above. I didn't even consider I would not be able to print. Now I know that I am not going to buy a tablet for the time being.

Old laptop with dead battery = fine print server

[billstewart]

Maybe he doesn't have a dedicated workstation at home, but he's about to have a spare laptop that's more than fast enough to be a print server, and the dead battery won't matter if it's plugged in all the time.

Follow these steps (no app download required)

[w0mprat]

(These notes taken from a notepad I have titled "My computer illiterate boss once did:")
1. Take a photo of the iPad screen.
2. Connect camera to a Laptop and download photo.
3. Connect laptop to the LAN, email the photo to your desktop PC
4. Go to your PC from your PC open the photo in the viewer.
5. Copy the photo. Paste it into a word document.
6. Print the word document. Your done.
7. Optional step: Fax it to the intended recipient, or if the printer/scanner has a scan-to-email function use that.

I hope this helps you. This kind of thing certainly helped people my former workplace at least feel productive.