[asxless]

I just got back from Kinkos where I printed out some Canvas X documents on their Xerox Phaser 7700 (color tabloid). I had used "Save as PDF" to create a pdf and burned it to a CD. That allowed me to load the CD into one of their G5s and print it via Adobe 6 Pro. This worked fine, BUT....

This method incurs a fair amount of overhead in time and money -- the time it takes to save as pdf & burn it to a CD + $.30/min for the G5.

I had hoped to be able to just print the document directly from my PowerBook.

Kinkos has "laptop stations' that would have allowed me to directly connect to the printer IF I had a parallel port They even had an Ethernet cable which served up a DHCP IP# for my PowerBook. And they told me the printer's IP#. But since they really had no clue how their printer was actually connected to the network, they were unable to help me set up IP or Windows printing

Has anyone printed documents directly from a PowerBook at Kinkos? If so, how did you add the printer (e.g. IP Printing, Windows Printing, etc ) and what were the specific options you selected (e.g. LPD/LPR, Internet Printing Protocol, Socket/HP Jet Direct, etc.)?

-- asxless in iLand

[Mithras]

99% of the time, selecting IP,LPD, adding the printer's IP address, then selecting the printer model from the built-in set of PPD files will work just fine.

[asxless]

Originally posted by Mithras:
99% of the time, selecting IP,LPD, adding the printer's IP address, then selecting the printer model from the built-in set of PPD files will work just fine.

Well that's what I thought too. But in this case, I just got a long period of "connecting to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx on port zzz".

FWIW Kinkos' printers are seriously linked to their automated credit card charging system ( at least when you are printing from their G5s). For example, when you print something, OS X does its thing. And about the time i would expect the Printers icon to appear in the dock, a custom dialog asks you to "approve" the $x.xx charge for the yy pages BEFORE it will actually send the print job to the printer.

-- asxless in iLand

[I Have Questions]

How about sending the print job online and having it waiting for you to pick up when you get there? You can submit print jobs from their website and get them at any Kinko's.

[Gavin]

I've fought with this too and it is possible.

They have a CD with a printer installer.

Trick number one is to get the guy behind the desk to go find it.

The second trick is you have to get them to tell you the right ip address for the printer and the right model so you can enter it into the field when you run the tool. When you get those 2 things right the printer comes right up.

I was completely unable to get the printer working by hand in the printer control panel. They have some funky syntax that only the installer can set up.

[asxless]

Originally posted by I Have Questions:
How about sending the print job online and having it waiting for you to pick up when you get there? You can submit print jobs from their website and get them at any Kinko's.

That's certainly a useful _option_. And it could be very handy for printing documents to be picked up by someone else in a different city/area (e.g. modified plans for a sub-contractor).

But it still has much of the same overhead I described above. I'd still need to "save to pdf" and the CD burn time is replaced with the online upload time, which is negligible on broadband, but could be painfully slow if connected dial up from a motel room while traveling. The only things it saves is the cost of the blank CD and usage charges for Kinkos G5.

I'd still like to know how to hook up the Kinkos printers with my PowerBook. That way i have the flexibility to quickly make changes to a document if it doesn't come out just right the first time

-- asxless in iLand

[asxless]

Originally posted by Gavin:
I've fought with this too and it is possible.

They have a CD with a printer installer.

Trick number one is to get the guy behind the desk to go find it.

The second trick is you have to get them to tell you the right ip address for the printer and the right model so you can enter it into the field when you run the tool. When you get those 2 things right the printer comes right up.

I was completely unable to get the printer working by hand in the printer control panel. They have some funky syntax that only the installer can set up.

Thanks Gavin.

At least I now know its possible

I'll try to get the "guy behind the counter" to find that "CD with a printer installer" the next time. AFAIK I had entered the IP and Printer model correctly. But like you, I didn't find the magic combination of options to 'Add' the printer so that it would actually print.

-- asxless in iLand

[timmerk]

Who pays for computer time at Kinkos anyways!? crazy kids. :-D

This is what you do - use the computer for as long as you want, and if it has the machine that has your credit card in it, just do a hard reset of the G5. It will restart and your credit card will spit out, uncharged.

If the cc machine is not connected to G5, and you have to pay at front, hard reset, tell them it froze, and say you don't need it anymore. No record of how long you were using it.

lol.. not like I've done this before, I'm a good person! ;-)

[arekkusu]

Insane Kinko's charges aside, I was just there yesterday and was able to print without any issue from my PowerBook:

1) hook up to Ethernet and USB (for the credit card reader)
2) insert their laptop CD (which they had copies of at all the stations)
3) run the little app that sets up the printers (no, I was not able to set them up manually)
4) print your document-- the app keeps a window open the whole time, charging $0.10/minute, and asks you to confirm each print job, indicating the amount it will cost.

Worked just fine, other than being about 10 times too expensive.

[romeosc]

Originally posted by arekkusu:
Insane Kinko's charges aside, I was just there yesterday and was able to print without any issue from my PowerBook:

1) hook up to Ethernet and USB (for the credit card reader)
2) insert their laptop CD (which they had copies of at all the stations)
3) run the little app that sets up the printers (no, I was not able to set them up manually)
4) print your document-- the app keeps a window open the whole time, charging $0.10/minute, and asks you to confirm each print job, indicating the amount it will cost.

Worked just fine, other than being about 10 times too expensive.

Cheaper than buying a Xerox Phaser 7700 (color tabloid)!


When you need it its worth it!


That's why Uhaul stays in business..... cheaper than buying a truck for an occasional use!

I remember paying a lady to type my college term papers. (before computers were available)


Good business provides services people need. I paid for my first Qume Daisywheel printer ($5,000) by printing documents for people who hated dot matrix printers!

[leperkuhn]

Put it on a USB drive. I have a 128 MB one i bought like a year and a half ago. .30 cents a minute is really not a big deal either.

short of buying one of those printers, I don't really think there's much you can do to save any more time, since save as PDF takes 10 seconds.

[iREZ]

You could be like me and work somewhere that has a Phaser. I get all my design class assignments printed for free and people are always amazed when I show them my nice and shiney toner black to their crap grey inkjet black.

[asxless]

Thanks to everyone who offered advise. Thats one of the nice things about the MacNN community. Its a little like a family. You will always get advise -- whether you want it or not. So you may as well ask for it

Well I'm on the road working out a hotel room with the closest Kinkos in another town about 30 miles away.

It appears that each Kinkos has a slightly different way of handling the PowerBook -> printer connection issue. In this one --- the "lady behind the counter" quickly found the "CD with a printer installer" that also had the IP#'s of their printers scribbled on the back of the paper CD sleeve. So I quickly loaded the Kinko's "drivers" typed in the IP# and was able to print easily In this case, I showed up at the service desk, they counted the printed pages and I charged it on a credit card. The guy in front of me paid cash! What a concept - notes of tender backed by the government being accepted for goods and services by a vendor

-- asxless in iLand

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by asxless:
That's certainly a useful _option_. And it could be very handy for printing documents to be picked up by someone else in a different city/area (e.g. modified plans for a sub-contractor).

But it still has much of the same overhead I described above. I'd still need to "save to pdf" and the CD burn time is replaced with the online upload time, which is negligible on broadband, but could be painfully slow if connected dial up from a motel room while traveling. The only things it saves is the cost of the blank CD and usage charges for Kinkos G5.

Does Save as PDF really take longer than packing up your laptop?

[asxless]

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Does Save as PDF really take longer than packing up your laptop?

For simple printouts saving to pdf is quick and works fine. But the base assumption of the PDF method is that you know _exactly_ how you want to print your document without seeing a sample of the output.

For example, exactly what the pages you are printing will look like on that printer and the scale they will be when printed. If you are not sure of these factors you need to cart your PowerBook to Kinkos anyway and be prepared to make changes on your PowerBook then transfer them to Kinkos G5 (using a CD, USB drive, etc.) then print another test. It just gets more cumbersome and potentially costly if you decide to make changes after seeing that first test page.

In this case, the document was a set of architectural drawings and color "blueprints" on tabloid size paper with significant use of transparency to render multiple levels on the same page. I needed to see if the transparency worked well on hard copy and I needed to be sure the final output was at true scale. So I really wanted to just see a page before I sent another $30 worth of printing to a printer I had never seen before.

-- asxless in iLand

[Macola]

If color accuracy is important for your work, you shouldn't be using "Save as PDF" anyway. Get Acrobat Professional, or export PDFs from the CS apps.

FWIW, I've used Kinkos for outputting color proofs for my clients (from PDF) and the quality has been equivalent to match prints from the printer.