There are many situations when you may need PrinterShare®. These are just a few real-life scenarios (the names as made-up) when our solution helped people. We publish them here so it may help you better understand where PrinterShare® fits in your needs and how you can use it.
John lives in Los Angeles and wants to send a few documents to his friend Barbara who lives in New York. The documents are Microsoft Word files. In the past, Barbara had problems receiving documents via email. Some Microsoft Word files from other people contained viruses; other emails with documents were blocked by spam filter and never reached her. This time all she needs is paper copies of the documents from John. And, she does not have a fax machine at the moment. Moreover, she doesn't even have a phone line to connect the fax machine to. Her mobile phone is primary and the only communication tool.
Both install PrinterShare® software and register with the system. Barbara shares her printer and John finds her on the network. John prints documents from his computer directly on Barbara's printer. In no time Barbara's printer in New York makes sound and starts producing pages exactly the way they look on John's computer screen in Los Angeles. John receives a confirmation that his papers were successfully printed. Done!
Ops... There's misspelling on the page 25. Barbara calls John asking to correct the original document and re-print only that page. John corrects the text then prints page 25 on PrinterShare® (Barbara is already in the list). Easy!
Dave works as an engineer in Chicago and wants to send his Microsoft Visio drawings to Fred, one of his colleagues in Dallas. After several emails with attached files they realized that Fred has older version of Visio software and cannot open Dave's files. Dave tries to work it out by saving file in a different (older) format, but nothing works – one of the features he used in drawing requires the latest version of Visio that Fred does not have.
Dave used PrinterShare® before. He recommends Fred to install the package from website and it takes a minute or two of Fred's time. Fred registers with the network and shared his printer. After a few clicks on Dave's computer (File / Print / PrinterShare® / Find and add Fred / OK) colorful diagram comes out of the printer in Dallas. The drawing looks precisely the way it's originally designed. Done!
Mark is a lawyer and Tracy is one of his clients. Mark needs to send a few documents for Tracy to sign and mail paper copies. Normally he would fax the documents to his client. Tracy has fax machine and its working for her. The problem is – Mark is at the airport and there is no fax machine there. Nearest Kinko's would take some time to get to. Perhaps, if he went there he would miss his flight.
The good news is – there's wireless connection at the airport and all the documents file are on Mark's laptop computer. But, Mark doesn't want to send an email because of sensitive nature of the documents. Besides, he doesn't want to take any risk of documents being forwarded via email to third-parties, be modified or misused in any way. Mark starts PrinterShare® from his laptop and prints one copy of the documents on Tracy's shared printer. All the data is encrypted so nobody in the middle could tamper with or read the documents. Done!
Bob is running a small business. He is trying to send to his order form to Chen, one of his suppliers overseas in China. Typically, he faxes the form to Chen but today the quality of the phone line (in spite of the cost of international calls!) is worse than usual. Several times fax calls dropped in the middle. Once the fax went through but 3 out of 4 pages Chen received were black and not readable at all.
Both Bob and Chen are connected to the Internet. They find PrinterShare® solution and install the software (it's free and takes minutes to get started). Chen shares his printer and Bob finds him on the network. Bob prints order his form directly on Chen's printer with original quality. Dropped fax calls and unreadable all-black pages are history! From now on they don't rely on fax to exchange documents, they use PrinterShare®.
Simon has small home network with four computers – one for him, one for his wife and two more for the sons. All the machines are connected to the network so everybody is able to browse the Internet. But, Simon has only one printer hooked up to his computer. The other family members often need to print on it.
Simon could not share the printer for everybody. Network printer sharing never seemed to be working for him. His wife cannot see the printer in the list, one of his sons can but after selecting and printing nothing happens. The other son is asked for a network password (which nobody knows including Simon) every time when trying to print. Everyone sends emails with attachments to Simon asking "please print this (please!)".
After installing PrinterShare® on all the four machines and sharing one printer, everyone can easily print right from their computer without asking anyone. Simon doesn't even need to be there. Happy!
