Microsoft pushes Pull print, so you don't have to dash to the printer to grab the 'Fire everyone' memo Microsoft has made the "Pull Print" feature of Universal Print generally available, which means confidential print jobs should no longer appear in unintended locations. printer rage Printers start speaking in tongues after Windows 11 update READ MORE The feature, also known as "Universal Print Anywhere," allows a user to …
Microsoft’s “Pull Print” means your confidential documents won’t end up in random trays - but you’ll still spend half your day watching the print queue hang like it’s 1998. Forget QR codes and “Universal Print Anywhere”; what offices really need is a permanent taskbar button to nuke and restart the spooler every time Microsoft’s “world-class engineering” forgets how to talk to a printer. After 30 years, maybe fixing printing was just too radical an innovation.
FML, the miles I did back when I was a field tech for idiots who logged service calls with "printer jammed" and it was actually "PC load letter",
One bunch had a US head office and whenever they sent a Word doc that updated the default template we'd get service calls from the UK lot.
I know you're a diehard GNU person. So with your encyclopedic knowledge of things they've ever said, whether or not they matter, how did you come to the conclusion that they have something to do with CUPS? Oh, I know, it's because:
GNU originally wrote CUPS. Oh wait, no, Easy Software Products did that.
GNU now maintains CUPS. Oh wait, no, Apple does that.
GNU operates a modern, serious fork to CUPS. Oh wait, no, OpenPrinting does that.
CUPS at least uses a GNU-written license? Well, no, because the FSF wrote those licenses so if it was one of those, ascribing that to GNU would be flawed logic, and also because CUPS uses the Apache license, which neither GNU nor FSF wrote and I know you don't like.
Clearly one installs GNU and then installs CUPS (I figured I wouldn't need to spell out something so obvious).
If I only mentioned installing CUPS, then there could be confusion, as there is a half-baked port of CUPS to windows (libcups, ippfind, and ipptool only) that likely would be as reliable as window's spooler.
I didn't call cups, GNU, but it's the case that the primary platform CUPS targets and supports is GNU, which is why the default build system is GNU autotools.
Also, the default TLS implementation is gnuTLS (although sadly there is the option to use openssl instead).
There is also some secondary support for BSDs, but the "Free"BSD version does need GNU gdbm, gettext, readline and gmake;
https://ports.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=cups-2.4.12&stype=all&sektion=all
Every time I see good software, I look and I find the touch of GNU.
There is no Apache license, there is Apache-1.0, Apache-1.1 & Apache-2.0 and cups uses Apache-2.0 with an exception for the patent clause for GPLv2 & LGPLv2.1 compatibility.
Apache-2.0 is the least bad weak license written (most weak licenses are terrible written) and I do somewhat like how it encourages people to upgrade to the GPLv3-or-later, or at least GPLv2-or-later and how it makes the "Open"BSD anti-freedom zealots seethe; https://www.openbsd.org/policy.html (yes, they don't follow their own policy - they use LLVM, which is primarily Apache 2.0-with-GPLv2-and-license-notice-exception).
Not quite.
The old 1990’s implementation wasn’t a tangled mess of MS-specific “security” (I use the term very loosely, obvs) and MS-specific “authentication” and MS-specific network goodness-knows-what.
The NEW SHINY version is bugger-all use to anyone using an OS that wasn’t written by clowns and that they didn’t get from a toy shop. As it should be, eh MS?
They really screwed the pooch. Microsoft had the chance to embed AI in the printing process and missed that opportunity Big TimeTM.
AI printing will always predict where you will need your papers to exit. It will automatically choose from the right bin(s) and make sure the label printer prints the label for the invoice printer to put on the envelope from the envelope printer and the auto-binder is setup for mail queue printing to be mass mailed to the your neighbours using the envelope printer's output with the label printer's output and the blessing of AI sending you the invoice from the invoice printer, in triplicate, and CC printing the summary to QA and an executive summary to the CxOs and an overview of reduced costs to the beancounters.
It is a local printer feature. You printo to a specific printer, set your PIN or whatever, walk to **that** printer and retrives your job. This system doesn't send the job to the printer until requiested - and can sent it any printer - with which results if you printent with a specific printer driver and not a generic one, I do not know. PCL/PS jobs should be OK most of the time, others may not.
I used to work at a site that had the pull-printing features - 10 years ago! Print to the big cloudy print queue, walk up to any printer, and scan your badge at it. Bingo, any print job with your username is now shown on the screen, ready to print.
The absolutely massive disadvantage is that the print queue would only handle extremely generic printing settings, as it couldn't count on the printer you end up using having, ex. a Tray 4.
This sorta thing has been around for 30 years, for example it was a billing feature at a law firm I worked at, you sent your job to the document management server, it would spool it and then you collected it from the most conveniently located printer by tapping your RFID employee ID card on the reader and the management software used the case in the document title
Weirdly the number of print jobs collected from the printer in reception right next to the rather lovely receptionist was far higher than any other printer in the office
AC for obvious reasons
Print to the big cloudy print queue, walk up to any printer, and scan your badge at it. Bingo, any print job with your username is now shown on the screen, ready to print.
We have that.
One one set of IT it works just like that - we use our site passes as the token, and it "just works".
The other set of IT, run by a different org (a large government department), err not so well. To start with, despite the fact that "many" (i.e. a significant proportion of the users) have the same type of official ID card they decided not to support that, now the ID cards used by any of the large sites. I'd guess that (plucks number from air) just a small number of ID cards/sites would cover something like 80% of users. But our IT department doesn't do the "we'll do a bit of work so our many many users don't have to" style of IT - they do the "f*** the users, we'll do it the easiest way for us" style. So cue issuing a few hundred thousand separate RFID tags instead - so something extra to carry, something extra to manage, but it saved the IT people a few hours work testing some fo the most common ID cards. For good measure, it looks like they've even nobbled the printer's RFID reader to only read the printing fobs - unlike the first set of IT mentioned above which seems happy to use anything I have to hand (choice of ID cards), the same make fo printer in the second set of IT doesn't recognise any of those cards. It seems they've actually put effort into making sure convenient options for the user don't work instead of putting a similar effort into seeing what does work !
@kmorwarh
I'm literally set next to a printer that does this already (a Sharp).
You just send the print of to your follow me printer, then just collect it from wherever. Ours currently uses a fob, but can be a pin.
My last company introduced this well over a decade ago. So much so I sent all the printed documents off I needed for a particular job, then printed them out...in a different country!.
then printed them out...in a different country!.
That was what was mandated by a previous company I worked for - no need to transport physical documents with confidential/proprietary information across borders - keeps it out of prying eyes. At the other end, retrieve the documents, then shred after use
Not generally the printers themselves, but networks of printers have had lots of ways to allow users to get their job printed at any printer. In my experience as an infrequent user, not an admin, they never work right. For example, the last time I remember using a system, the process worked like this:
1. Print the document to the geographic work queue because the business had offices on multiple continents. The geographic queue was actually named for a city I wasn't in, but the intranet document said that was still the right one, next to all the warnings about what print settings you could use.
2. Go to the nearby printer and scan my badge. The job should print automatically. I don't know what you would do if you had multiple jobs because there was no screen on this printer to select them from, but I only had one, so that shouldn't be a problem.
3. Try scanning your badge again in case that wasn't working.
4. Look closely at the LEDs on the printer, all of which are not illuminated.
5. Try to look to see if the printer is even plugged in (yes, but it takes a while to see that).
6. Ask the colleague who walked by if they've ever used the printer. Colleague repeats steps 3-5.
7. Walk with colleague to the next closest printer. Repeat steps 2-5 on that printer.
8. Ask team members if any of them have ever successfully used a printer here. They all report no, and a couple of them also try steps 2-5.
9. Accept teammate's offer to print this on his home personal printer and bring it back tomorrow.
10. Try to find the original job in the queue to delete it, but fail because it doesn't work like a print queue; every job sent to it is immediately removed from the simulated print queue and stored somewhere on some server, probably, who knows.
I've seen similar things happen to others. Earlier, a university I knew had printers with a similar scan process, each equipped with a USB cable to plug laptops into because that was by far the most reliable way to get something printed. No doubt the thing works sometimes, and probably those who print frequently know how to make it work, but when multiple IT and software people can't make it work, there's a problem. If the Microsoft version manages to work, that would be great, but I have a feeling it will be as broken as any other version.
The benefit of having to stand there is print jobs don't get left on the printer. When we implemented the Canon SecurePrint product over 10 years ago for MFC's in a office 550 people our paper usage and left print jobs disappeared. As most of these devices are leased and you get charged per printed page it's pretty easy to see the cost decrease per month. Another benefit is if some one is doing a big print job you can just go to another printer that's free
I've had Canon SecurePrint at a company that I work for and it ran pretty reliable. Switched to Xerox printers and another centralized printing solution hosted in the company's cloudy premises and issues started to flow... after 5 years, the solution is getting more stable, but still throws a fit from time to time...
M$ seems to reinvent the wheel again, but the number of corners is still pretty low on theirs.
Only some top of the range printers even accommodate this feature. Others could use third-party walk-up printing solutions which will undoubtedly work far better and not need a cloud thingy to work.
For smaller businesses, keep using IPP as it works pretty well (when the vendor's wonderful print solutions software actually works, looking at you Kyocera).
When the vendor's software actually works, the vendor didn't actually write that software and rather the vendor has gone and copied free software (most of the time, the vendor is also infringing copyright by not following the licenses).
The reason why Kyocera printers are reliable is because the printers run GNU+BusyBox+Linux.
Now if only Kyocera wasn't intentionally infringing copyright by infringing the GPLv2, LGPLv2.1 and also GPLv3 by failing to include a written offer with the printer (a license notice hidden on a website is not a valid written offer) and only supplying incomplete source code that does not compile (as the required configuration files, compilation scripts and installation information is excluded).
If you doubt my claims, why not put in a request for whatever model printers you have?; https://contact.kyocera.co.jp/inquiry/gl/kdc_gpl/input.html (chances are you won't get a reply for 3 months to 1.5 years).
"Ringdale invented FollowMe and the print roaming technology in 1997"
I was there when they invented FollowMe. Company was a mess, even though it attached most of the big names printer manufacturers to the network by supplying their network cards. Various dumb decisions like making a DVD-R rack for storage while not realising how large hard disks were going to get made them run out of cash. So they kick out us developers... the fact anything worked was a miracle, but fascinating it was all done on Z80s.
Think the whole place has been struggling along since the 2000s... that website rarely gets updates. Currently has a 2022 copyright.
They also developed highly hackable door security systems. Selling the beta systems before any encryption was put into place. Far too many unprintable stories about that place
Even for a very large company, printers are usually nearby. If you need all of the features for collating, binding and in full color, maybe that would need to be sent to a central whiz-bang printer. For everyday jobs, a bog standard BW job with basic features is all most will need. The C-Level will have their own printers managed by secretaries to keep top secret missives from winding up as evidence in the trial.
I see the application, it's the usefulness for most people I don't see. I know when I print something, I'm going to retrieve it right away. There have been times where I've queued things up on my computer since I'll have several things to print and want to run them all at the same time and there's no point in leaving the printer switched on for a half hour while I get everything ready. I'm sure it will still mean loads of weirdness as people wind up getting the wrong jobs printed out, their queues not being marked as done and walking back and forth to sort out why only part of the job was printed and stopped somewhere mid page and has to be deleted and set up again.
Workaround for their own problem, really.
On a large multisite corporate network Windows often goes ahead and offers every printer in the company, no matter where it or the user are physically located.
So of course, people often do end up printing to an entirely different continent.
The solution is of course to use geography and only ever offer printers in the same building (unless explicitly intended for remote printing) but that's apparently too difficult.
"So of course, people often do end up printing to an entirely different continent."
Another "feature" that solves an undefined problem. If I need to get some sort of document to somebody far away, I send them the file and they can print it out themselves. If I don't want the making any changes, I'll send it as a PDF rather than a word processing document. I wouldn't want to try and troubleshoot a printing problem 6 times zones away.
Hardly new - this has been around since the early 2000s. PrintMe and its competitor PrinterOn were doing this well before the age of smartphones and tablets using a little embedded box to interactively retrieve print jobs from the cloud and format them for the connected USB, parallel port, or network printer.
As other have mentioned, this concept of pulling the print job to your location is nothing new.
I work with a large organization where we no longer install printers, drivers or multiple lists of devices. We install one client app that offers the monochrome or color printers located in every building. After sending the print job, we just go to the nearest printer and tap an ID card. The printer wakes up and asks which account to charge for the print and we get the output. The printer setup on your PC has all of the usual paper and tray choices and they all work if you've got paper ready when you finally say Print at the printer.
It seems that Microsoft is worried about their lack of print sophistication and attempting to reproduce some sense of printing where you are. It can all make sense instead of sorting through endless directory listings of printers named Ricoh_Color_LargeFormat_Bldg122_Floor4_Room426b, only to find that your nearest printer is Ricoh_Color_LargeFormat_Bldg122_Floor4_Room462b and it won't accept your requested A4 output anyway.
It's mid-2025 and we're still needing a requirement for actual trees being killed for paper in regular office settings that aren't external customer-facing for shipping purposes? What on Earth for? Why waste man hours to code an unnecessary feature and burn more production time going back and forth to a printer, when finished reports can be PDF'd or otherwise "printed" to file which then gets sent securely to the required parties via email?
It's not 1990 anymore, and this isn't Hackers using 3.5" FDs and reams of beltfed paper going through a dot matrix (or spinning head) printer.
Find me? Not if I can help it.
Paper cut? More like an amputation.
I cannot imagine Microsoft can inflict any more suffering than that product.
Printers are generally a complete PITA to support and are best dropped from the 5th floor into the BoFH's corporate carpark.
There is one thing worse than the actual printer and that's print accounting which invariably when the total cost of ffaffing around costs far more than providing each user with a self service laser and consumables and telling them to ffaff off.
Printing is not something I do very often these days, but on the rare occasion when I do want to print something, I generally end up printing to pdf, saving it to a network share my MacBook can access and printing it from that. Because getting the printer to work reliably from Windows is far too much effort, whereas Airprint just works.
