Ask Slashdot: Best Options For a Standalone Offline Printing Station?

An anonymous reader writes My father is considering a Chromebook, but there is a problem: He occasionally wants to print. Chrome OS only talks to physical printers by Google Cloud Print, so the printer has to be online one way or another. But my father wants to surf over 3G, so he has no network infrastructure. Now what are the best options for a standalone printing station that works offline? I have a Raspberry Pi and a small touch display that I could spare, how about I prepared some scripts and called that the dedicated printing computer? Then what printers have ARM drivers available? Does anybody know a consumer-grade or small-office-grade printer that can print ordinary PDF docs directly from flash drives or memory cards? I have looked, but could not find one yet. The devices I found that print PDF docs directly only do so if the docs were made by the (proprietary) printer-related software or the printer itself. There are ways to turn PDF docs into series of JPG files. A lot of ordinary printers can print JPG files directly from flash media, should my father stick with this option? Also, what are secondary options in case the offline printing station does not work out? Should he consider buying a 3G-capable WiFi router (there are enough available) and set up a home network, then use Google Cloud Print? Should I just send my father to a copy shop? Or should he simply forget about the Chromebook and get an ordinary laptop with a common OS that can talk to printers by USB?

Comments

GNU/Linux

[Meneth]

You could keep the Chromebook and install some form of GNU/Linux on it. I hear Xubuntu works pretty well.

Overheard at the googleplex

[Hognoxious]

Why, in 2015, would anyone want to print on paper at home?

[finishes moccochoccolatte with aloe vera, hops on fixie and rides off before ridiculous low-crotch trousers get wrapped around chain, causing fatal accident]

Re:Overheard at the googleplex

[AmiMoJo]

It's actually really easy to print from a Chromebook or Android device, it just needs you to have the printer connected to Google Cloud Print somehow. The OP's specific issue is that his father wants to use 3G, and thus only the Chromebook is connected to the internet and not the printer.

I would suggest getting a 3G modem/router. Then the Chromebook and the printer can both connect to it, as well as any other devices his father decided to get in the future like a tablet or set-top box. Then it is a simple matter of using Google Cloud Print with a compatible printer.

List of compatible printers: http://www.google.com/cloudpri...

Re:Overheard at the googleplex

[gwgwgw]

I partially get the "funny score 3", if you include the [...].
My wife & I have had it with ink-jet printers when we print so little, so are experimenting with doing what your "Why...?" suggests.

I successfully sent our xmas card list to Office Max which is open until 9pm and is about 1 mile away. Cost us under 2$ (since I walked over there !Exercise!).

Last night my wife wanted to make gluten free oatmeal cookies from an internet recipe. We took the laptop to the kitchen, propped it on the counter. *I* was sure worried about getting it plastered with liquid and powders. My wife had to lean way over to get close enough to read the font. If we made that bigger, then she was scrolling up and down all the time... You get the picture. BUT... we did succeed (this time).

There is the problem of printing our password list. Its hard to trust the data path to printing. We haven't printed it. I can get a dot-matix printer for $200 after all fees. Just to print "sensitive" stuff? (We keep a dup on 2 computers so it won't likely get lost)

Well, also, maybe for emergency printouts? I dunno. So far we no emergencies, so no $200 gone ;^)

We'll see if we can get through 2015 with this "no paper" through our (some adjective) action...(Trying to distance myself from the unwanted junk mail that DOES come to "Current resident". Ugh.

Brother HL-4040 Printers

[jfdavis668]

Print PDF from USB drives. Not sure what the latest model is, that model is a few years old.

Re:Brother HL-4040 Printers

[Anonymous Coward]

Print PDF from USB drives.

We called this "sneaker net" in the old days. Only we used floppies - uphill in the snow - both ways - and we LIKED IT!

Hi

[Anonymous Coward]

1-I wouldn't have bought a Chromebook to begin with, instead, a Notebook running either Winbugs or Linux will be sufficent.
2-If you have a Raspberry PI and a wifi dongle and a powered USB hub to spare, you may can a 3G-WiFi AP

Re:Hi

[BarbaraHudson]

I would go with option #1. Windows laptops are cheap, and work with most printers; he'll be able to print pretty much anything without fussing with flash drives or usb keys or converting file formats.

My phone isn't this crippled

[PenguSven]

How about just getting him a fucking computer that doesn't rely on internet access and the services of a company with a penchant for maliciously storing data about people, to send a document to a printer next to him?

Even an iOS device can print without an internet connection, if your printer supports AirPrint, so why would you accept such a crippled device?

Re:My phone isn't this crippled

[shakezula]

I agree here, the cost of the Chromebook's savings will be negated by the "custom solutions" required to get it to do routine mundane tasks. Get him either a cheap Windows 8 device (HP has a couple in the CB's price range) or if the walled-garden/appstore is more his thing, an iDevice(TM).

Re:My phone isn't this crippled

[swillden]

I agree here, the cost of the Chromebook's savings will be negated by the "custom solutions" required to get it to do routine mundane tasks. Get him either a cheap Windows 8 device (HP has a couple in the CB's price range) or if the walled-garden/appstore is more his thing, an iDevice(TM).

The point of a Chromebook isn't cost savings, it's that it's maintenance-free. There's no malware to worry about and nothing to mess up. The same is pretty true of an iPad or an Android tablet, but presumably he wants a laptop form factor.

My mom wanted to get something and I encouraged her to get either a Chromebook or a tablet, but my dad insisted that those were crap and she should get a real computer, and he found a deeply-discounted laptop with Windows 8.1 on it, which was cheaper than most Chromebooks.

And two days later I was over at her house, cleaning off malware, installing AV, trying to fix configuration changes she'd accidentally made while trying to fix the problems she'd caused. I should have made my dad fix it, frankly. Windows is too much hassle. OS X isn't too bad, but Apple's premium prices are. Linux can be anywhere from impossible to ideal for a less-clueful user, but it may require some knowledge to set it up, and the notion is intimidating to many. ChromeOS is... safe, reliable and easy.

Except it can't print except via the cloud. That, incidentally, was the argument my dad used to insist on Windows for her. Google needs to add CUPS to ChromeOS, IMO. It's pretty much plug and play with most printers.

Cloud Print printer + wifi hotspot ?

[obarthelemy]

The easiest way is probably to simply get a Cloud Print-ready printer, and a wifi router. Printer and Chromebook connect via wifi. No messing with card/sticks...
https://www.google.com/cloudpr...

You can do it with your raspberry pi.

[Karmashock]

Plug the pi into the printer and then put it on a wireless network. You can print offline that way.

That said, I don't get the point of chromebooks. They're not any cheaper then the cheap laptops you can find these days. Go to newegg. Same price basically and you get a proper operating system.

Chrome is a stupid OS. I don't know why they don't just install android on them. There are lots of printer apps for android.

Re:You can do it with your raspberry pi.

[amiga3D]

Well said. Chromebooks are crippled by design. With all the reduced functionality and privacy issues they should be giving them away, then it would cost what it's actually worth.

How often? Chromebooks very good for specific ppl

[raymorris]

How often does he print, and how often does he need to print? I make the distinction because many people who grew up with paper use "print" as "save". They print it so they'll have it in case they need it later. Some of these people can take to saving documents rather than printing everything and it might be good and useful as a training aid if printing were slightly less convenient. Other people actually need to print quite often, and some people print maybe twice per year. If dad prints twice per year, the Kinko's service that prints to the FedEx Kinko's around the corner might be good.

Some uber-nerds, or wannabe uber nerds, shout "get a real computer!". Well my wife has had several "real" computers, running various operating systems. Her favorite device, the one she uses all day every day, is her Chrome book. I see why. She can leave it laying around and whenever she picks it up it's instantly ready to do what she needs to do. She charges it maybe a couple of times per week. It has been completely reliable and simple - she never needs to ask her computer geek husband for help. It is IDEAL for certain people.

I say this as a guy who has personally owned a $10,000 network switch and whose name is in the kernel changelog - I know real computers. I have systems with sixteen hard drives each. Those monsters are well suited to their task, and the Chromebook is well suited to its task.

Solution: USB Router

[DaTrueDave]

Get a USB pocket router (the size of a pack of Wrigley's gum), which will let him turn his 3G connection into a hotspot whenever he plugs it in.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

standard gnu.linux distro

[lkcl]

a standard gnu/linux distro like debian, when installed on that ARM11 device, can have CUPS installed on it with no difficulty: CUPS has absolutely nothing to do with ARM itself, especially if you get a proper printer that doesn't try anything stupid like ship proprietary drivers (.deb files) directly off their own web site. basically if you get an HP printer you'll be fine. i did get the absolute latest 3-in-1 printer from Curry's last month, and i did have to install hplip from source but that's because the printer required hplip 3.1.16 and the version of debian i had for a client only had 3.1.12 - however amazingly HP's ready-to-go compilation script walked through the process of installing the prerequisites and got it all done. kinda impressive.

anyway so printing is not a problem. you are then going to *not* get him a chromebook, you're going to replace the OS (as someone else suggested) or you are going to sell the chromebook on ebay and get him a 200 quid Lenovo B30-50 from Tesco's or ebuyer.com or something similar (a big 15in 1366x768 LCD - awesome) - then you're going to install Debian GNU/Linux on that, too. setting up 3G dongles is really easy: remember to install the usbmodeswitch package. there is plenty of advice out there on setting up 3G dongles - remember to look up and set the correct APN settings in wvdial.conf (or whatever you end up using)

then, to make sure that he can print remotely, you're going to install a VPN on both devices (i recommend openvpn however tinc would do just as well and is slightly easier to set up) - both the ARM11 print server and the laptop, and you're going to either use the server that you're already maintaining, or you're going to ask a friend if you can put a VPN on their server, *or* you're going to get *another* of those ARM11 devices and send it to these guys:

http://raspberrycolocation.com...

basically for $EUR 36 per year they will host you an ARM11 device on a 100mbit/sec link. the power requirements and size are so small that it's perfectly feasible.

so that's what you're going to do... or not. it's a lot of work to set up, but if those are the requirements (remote printing access) then that's what needs to be done. it's going to be costly, however, as both the ARM11 device and the portable device will *both* need 3G connectivity.

honestly i can thoroughly recommend going a different route, as follows:

* go to a local three networks store and buy a Huawei MIFI (3G+WIFI gateway) device
* go to Maplin's and get a "mobile" 2-port WIFI router. i looked one up that could be re-flashed with OpenWRT.
* once the firmware is re-flashed on the "mobile" 2-port WIFI router, change it to be a *CLIENT* of the Huawei MIFI device.
* also set up the WIFI router to "bridge" mode (between the WIFI and the 2 ports: make them all on the same LAN space)
* plug the ARM11 device into one of the 2 LAN ports.
* associate the laptop with the MIFI's WIFI network as well

now you have the ARM11 device set up as a printer on the same (bridged) LAN as the WIFI devices, including the MIFI and the laptop. if you have installed OpenWRT as i suggest then you can also install the OpenWRT openvpn package on it (or tinc), and you then have 24x7 access to the systems on the network, and can manage them remotely *including* logging in to the ARM11 device and clearing out any stuck print jobs without needing to drive N+ miles.

this is what i have set up for a client (in one form or another). with this above 2nd scenario you are _still_ not going to get a chromebook, you're going to get a laptop with debian installed that you can actually manage (including remotely). the difference is that it'll be easier for your father because it will be internal WIFI, not a dangling external USB 3G modem. wicd-client is much easier to comprehend, i find, than the 3G management programs for GNU/Linux. err, there's WIFI networks and errr, there's a place where you press "connect" and errr that

It's getting old Google...Stop already...

[yodleboy]

This insistence that everything is in the 'cloud' is getting really old, particularly with Android. There are occasions dear Google when someone is offline. I don't want to have to store my Earth KML files on Drive to view on mobile Earth app. I don't want to have to connect my android phone via USB to copy or move things around on my SD card. I don't want to have to print over the internet. Whatever networked fantasy land you live in at GoogleHQ, is not reality. If I wanted to be restricted to what I could do with my devices "for my own good", I'd go back to the iPhone. You are rapidly chipping away at my reasons for switching to Android.

Re:It's getting old Google...Stop already...

[Greyfox]

So install Cyanogenmod and take some of that stuff back. It's a lot nicer than the vendor-supplied bullshit that comes with your phone by default. I had to install it last time around so I could make full use of my SD card again.

Huh?

[methano]

I thought the only time one would consider a ChromeBook is when you expect to have easy internet access at all time and not some crappy 3G connection.

My dad is thinking of getting a car but he lives in the ocean. Is there some way for him to get to the grocery store? I have an Arduino and and a Raspberry pi.

Poseidon

Epson workforce printer - with mobile apps & w

[sandGorgons]

here's my suggestion: For extra convenience, I recommend the TP-Link WDR 3600 router : this router has 2 USB ports - one to take your 3G dongle and another to connect a USB drive or SD card reader to make these files available. I highly doing this before buying a printer. Note that the USB ports will also be able to drive a printer in case you dont want to spend on a wireless printer.
My printer recommendation is the Epson WF-2540 printer. This is now connected to the router using a regular ethernet cable or the wifi.
Your father can now print his stuff from the laptop or from his mobile phones (both android and iphone) on top of the wifi network.