Printing Over the Internet

Hi Guys,
New to the forum. Looks great with lots of useful info.

Im looking for some advice on the best way to print over the internet.
I have a printer at my office connected to an I Mac. This printer serves 4 users on the local network and works great.
I am looking for a solution so I can print to this printer from my home using a Macbook pro
Whats the best solution for this?

r u able to access the office computer from home?

rpg51 said:

r u able to access the office computer from home?

Click to expand...

Not tried before.
As I see on the mac there is an option to add an ip address for a printer.
Does anyone know if this is the way to do it or do you need a special ip enabled printer?

Ross W said:

Not tried before.
As I see on the mac there is an option to add an ip address for a printer.
Does anyone know if this is the way to do it or do you need a special ip enabled printer?

Click to expand...

One way is by ePrint.
Hewlett Packard do a good range of printers that are ePrint enabled. I can print to my HP Photosmart Premium from my iPhone anywhere. I believe that you can do it from your Mac also. The service is free.

Extract from HP website:

"About ePrint
HP ePrint lets you print from virtually anywhere to an HP printer that supports ePrint. Once enabled, ePrint assigns an email address to your printer. To print, simply send an email containing your document to your printers' address. You can print images, Word and PowerPoint documents, PDFs, and photos. You can view and manage print jobs sent to your printer using your printer Job History that is available on ePrintCenter. Note: HP ePrint provides convenience printing. Documents printed with ePrint may appear different from the original. Style, formatting, and text flow may differ slightly from the original document. For documents that need to be printed with a higher quality (such as legal documents), we recommend that you print from the software application on your computer, where you will have more control over how your printouts appear."


https://h30495.www3.hp.com/c/45553/US/en/

If you just want to orint A4 (or letter) and have no real need to change paper sizes you can use dropbox

Set-up a drpobox account on the iMac and also logon to the same account at home

Use Automator on the imac to create a folder action to print any files in one of your dropbox folders.

You can then drop in PDFs or other files (as long as the imac can print them) into the folder from home and they will print in the office

You can also use this tip to print from an iphone

http://www.mac-forums.com/blog/simple-print-server-using-automator-and-dropbox/

louishen said:

If you just want to orint A4 (or letter) and have no real need to change paper sizes you can use dropbox

Set-up a drpobox account on the iMac and also logon to the same account at home

Use Automator on the imac to create a folder action to print any files in one of your dropbox folders.

You can then drop in PDFs or other files (as long as the imac can print them) into the folder from home and they will print in the office

You can also use this tip to print from an iphone

http://lifehacker.com/5653084/print-files-from-any-phone-or-remote-computer-via-dropbox-mac-edition

Click to expand...

*cough* here *cough* .

The Dropbox solution is nice since it requires little setup and should work for basic jobs. You could also try Google Cloud Print.

Changed linky

Google Cloud print looks interesting

It's all good - I'm not that vain.

GCP is interesting. It's super easy to setup but application support is rather limited. So, if you have a supported application, it's great. Otherwise, you'll need a more comprehensive solution.

I use Drop Box and Printopia but it means leaving your machine and printer on when away from home. It's nice because I can send print jobs using my iPad from the office to my home printer. It works with all printers not just wireless.

If you are able to enable Back to My Mac with your iCloud acct on the iMac at the office you can then enable printer sharing and will be able to print directly from your remote machine to the Printer hooked up to the iMac whenever your remote machine has an internet connection (caution, some hotels do block the needed ports). I do this with my home machine and my Macbook (Cannon printer on my wireless network) and it works well