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iPad printing

tortyperson

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Hi I'm new to this forum. I have an iPad 2 and would be grateful for help with how I print from the iPad. I have a Canon Pixma MP560. I hear people talking about air printers but as far as I can see its just another name for wireless printing. Am I right in thinking this please? Can anyone tell me whether I can use my existing printer please? (Which by the way has stopped "talking" to my laptop - don't know why - have gone through settings on the printer several times!!) As you may have guessed I am a bit of a technical dinosaur :) Many thanks.
 

Skull One

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The MP560 is not an Airprint compatible printer. Sorry.

I know you can use a Mac to intercept Airprint print jobs and send it to any printer you have connectd, buy you have to have the Mac on at the time you want to do that.
 

lizzieh

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Skull One said:
The MP560 is not an Airprint compatible printer. Sorry.

I know you can use a Mac to intercept Airprint print jobs and send it to any printer you have connectd, buy you have to have the Mac on at the time you want to do that.

I use pic flick hd to print from my ipad, it only prints photos so I printscreen documents.

Sent from my iPad using iPF
 

Sally Marshall

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PrintCentral and Print n Share Pro both work with the MP 560 model ; I know I installed it on my sisters' iPad2 ; she has no complaints (well not about printing!)
 

twerppoet

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The MP560 is not an Airprint compatible printer. Sorry.

I know you can use a Mac to intercept Airprint print jobs and send it to any printer you have connectd, buy you have to have the Mac on at the time you want to do that.

Doesn't have to be a Mac. There are AirPrint enabling apps for Windows too. The most popular is FingerPrint, which will run on a Mac or Windows. Printopia is Mac only.

-----------------

My usual printing post, because it might be useful and has links to the some of the software: (and I'm too lazy to type just the relevant parts again. ;)


Some printers are directly compatible with AirPrint on the iPad. If you want this feature be absolutely certain the printer supports AirPrint before buying. Some printers may require a firmware update to work. These are usually available on the manufacturers site. If you get this kind of printer you can print directly from within apps that support the feature, which is many.

AirPrint 101

Of course some of us already have printers and do not want to buy a new one. There are several ways to do this.

One is to use a printing app on the iPad.

Most (or all) printing apps can only print pictures and/or files that have been copied to that app via Open In or another method. Several printer manufacturers have their own apps for their printers. In general those apps will probably have the best results, quality wise.

Another method is to load a program on the computer that will emulate an AirPrint compatible printer. Your computer must be on and have the printer available to it. The cheapest (free) is Airprint Activator. More features can be had with FingerPrint (mac and windows) and Printopia (mac only).

Printopia - Ecamm Network
FingerPrint - Collobos Software
How to Install AirPrint Activator for Windows?

A few printers (mostly HP's again) can be set up with their own email address. PDF attachments can be sent via this address to be printed. The last review I saw (many months ago) said it could be quite slow (big files not recommended), and sometimes the emails got lost and never printed. The advantage was that you could literally send/print from anywhere you have an internet connection.

For small business owners and those with more than one printer who would like all their printers to work, but don't want to leave a computer on all the time. The Lantronix XPrintServer is a small box that connects to your network and is supposed to detect and make all your wireless printers available to iOS as AirPrint printers. I haven't seen a full review on it yet, so do your research.

Some NetGear router models support NetGear Genie, which will add AirPrint support for printers on your network. If the printer is not wireless, it must be shared on the network, and the computer it is connected to must be on.
 
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tortyperson

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Thank you for all the help suggestions. I have plenty to try now.
 

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