Xerox eases laptop printing woes

Xerox has made available two free-to-download print utilities to make it easier to print without the need to install specific drivers for each printer on a network.

The Mobile Express Driver, available from Xerox's web site, is designed to let mobile workers print while visiting another office or site. Once their laptop is connected to a network, the Mobile Express Driver searches for all available printers, and lets them simply select one and click 'print', according to Xerox.

“The Mobile Express Driver removes a real headache for the travelling office worker,” said Darren Cassidy, director of Xerox UK's Office Group.

The mobile driver scans the IP subnet that the user's laptop is plugged into, according to Xerox, and thus does not need the laptop to be joined to the corporate domain in order to print.

It supports laptops running either Windows XP or Windows Vista, and works with both Xerox and non-Xerox printers and multi-function devices, provided they support PostScript.

Xerox also made available its Global Print Driver for Windows XP and Vista, a universal print driver that will output to any device supporting PostScript, PCL 5 and PCL 6.

This enables administrators to use the same print driver even if they upgrade their printers, doing away with the need to qualify and deploy new print drivers, according to Xerox, while end users see a consistent interface no matter which device they print to.