Printing from the iPad

It had occurred to me earlier this term that if the iPad was to be effective as a primary tool in my academic life here, it would have to print to Choate printers. Thus began the search for a reliable printing app. Most of you have seen the AirPrint option in many of the available apps, but unfortunately we have no AirPrint compatible printers on the school network. I tried a couple of other apps that claim they will print to any printer, and they worked sometimes, not all the time. I finally found PrintCentral Pro, one of those Swiss Army Knife apps, and discovered that it works almost flawlessly with our networked printers if you are willing to complete the setup.

PrintCentral Pro is expensive ($9.99) by iPad standards, but it seems worth it because it works. Install it on your iPad and install the free companion app called WePrint on your laptop. WePrint operates as a networked print spooler, but also handles printers directly connected to your laptop (meaning you may print to them from your iPad). The catch is that your laptop has to be running and the WePrint app has to be active. Right now I can print to any printer for which the driver is installed on my laptop, and I see all of the printing features on my iPad that I see on my laptop.

Next time I will talk about note-taking apps because I can't seem to find one that meets all of my needs. Therefore, I'm using several, which is less than ideal.