Multiple Users PDF conversion solutions?

seamus

OK, may not be totally suited to this forum, but hey.

Need to bounce a problem of ye, which no doubt plenty of people have come up with before. I'm looking for a multi-user any-document-to-PDF solution. One guy has requested that his entire department be given a PDF creator solution, and I'm investigating the alternatives to Adobe.
As best I can see it, there are a few ways of doing this;

1. Install PDF creation software on each individual machine. Not ideal, but not impossible. I'd guess though that the wigs would like Adobe over PDFCreator, so then cost is a factor, as is keeping track of licences.

2. Install a PDF Printer on the print server. This is the ideal solution if it comes at the right price. Just connect the users to the printer, et voila! Only problem is, I can't find one. Anything remotely like what I want requires proprietary client software to access the server, or uses an add-in for Office.

3. Install an Email-to-PDF converter. Users send email to an address with their doc attached. Server converts and sends converted doc back. This solution is almost as ideal as 2., but I can't find one. I've seen similar for OCR apps, so someone must have written this? I could probably code something in PHP which polls a POP mailbox and does this, but I'm going to guess that someone's already done this grunt work for me.

4. Code a webpage on the intranet site. User uploads document, server converts and returns. Not difficult, but not perfect. Support on this would be the problem.

The two main issues are volume and cost. The department in question could be converting up to 1000 documents per week.

Any replies would be most helpful

Stephen

You could install a virtual PDF printer on each machine, something like PrimoPDF (which is free, but not for commercial use unfortunately). I think there's a few available free for commercial use too, like CutePDF, but i think that also requires ghostscript to be installed separately.

WizZard

I would love a solution like this!
I've been thinking of a similar thing and have been experimenting with PDF995, but it requires local installation too.

If you find anything, especially PDF print server related can you post it here
I've found http://www.pdf-server.net today, but am not sure about it yet.

Capt'n Midnight

pdfcreator - zero cost

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator ( 0.9 is better than 0.8 )

Use the autoname and autosave options so they just print and it goes to a named folder Or they can right click on many documents and convert that way.

You could write a macro to print to the PDF creator printer and assign it to a button on their menus

It has a server option (new to 0.9) but I haven't tried it out yet

seamus

Aha, I knew about PDFCreator, but it was a second choice - purely as I mentioned because there'd be a stigma about it. But a server option; More investigation must be done.

The closest things I've found thus far are:
Doc2PDF - Not the prettiest of things, and I couldn't get it to work. But if it does work for you, then it could be good.
Adlib Express - $2500 for the basic server. Downloaded and installed a trial, and it does pretty much what I'm looking for (email to pdf conversion). Also has add-ons for extra functionality which increase the cost exponentially. So it's the leader but it's too costly to give up the search now.

Cheers for the reples guys, keep 'em coming!

aFlabbyPanda

check out jaws pdf software.

Gosh

For option 1 - see here for 25 license pack works out @ $7.96/PC, for 50 works out @ $6.98/PC

For option 2 - see here

dahamsta

CutePDF is much better than PDF Creator imho.

WizZard

Try PDF Factory. I found it last night and it seems perfect for what I need, and also for what you need.

If comes in a server version that fully supports network shared printers