Remote Printing to ip printer

trad

I have clients who email documents to me to print and process.

Can I set up my i/p printers so that my clients can select my printers on their print menu at their locations and print directly to my printer?

I have a hp and a ricoh i/p printers.

fionny

You could try setup cloud print?

http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/

trad

fionny wrote: »

You could try setup cloud print?

http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/

not exactly what I am looking for.
I want it set up so that when a client goes to print a document my printer appears on his printer selection menu and when selected their document prints from my printer via the web.

fionny

Do you have a fixed IP?

fionny

This might be to your liking:

http://www.printershare.com/

trad

fionny wrote: »

This might be to your liking:

http://www.printershare.com/

I've had a look at printshare (free version) and you have to pay for printing over 20 pages.

The commercial version might just do what I want to do but I only want my clients using it and that looks like a $1950 investment plus a printer server.

I'll keep looking.

Any more suggestions welcome

I can share my printer via xp and again that may work but I need a way to log incoming print jobs so I can charge for them.

IT-Guy

Have you looked into setting up a vpn server on your XP pc? It might be better suited to your need and cheaper too, have a read through this guide. I've never done this before but it looks promising. In theory your clients would dial the vpn connection to your PC, see your shared printer and be able to print to it. Do you have any folders shared on your PC?

trad

I've had a quick look at the VPN and Data Protection jumps straight out at me.

All the documents I will be printing are confidential and I would be very reluctant to allow customers roam around my files. I doubt my customers would allow me access to their computers either. Thanks for the input.

fionny

I think you are going to have to spend some money, you want your cake and eat it.

If the files are confidential how would the customers feel about what they print just sitting on a printer until someone comes along?

A suggestion you could into is having an FTP server folder for each client and have a script that will automaticlly print and then delete any files placed into it.

trad

Thanks for the input Fionny. The customer documents will print to my printer where I process them through the post. I should have mentioned that this is the final objective so that when the documents are printed from my printers I pack and post them.

I'll have a look at the FTP server folder

Papercut say their software won't do what I would like it to do and CZ solutions looks promising but I still have a few queries for them.
Again thanks for the input.