I want to change that. Let’s talk about mobile print!
We've all been there; huddled in a busy cluster at the middle of the day, impatiently scanning the rows of computers for that one empty space which just might give you the five minutes you need to print your work. Frustration grows as you monitor student after student sleepily scanning Facebook, and handfuls of long-abandoned workspaces (all of which are logged in and colonised by a mountain of books). The process can become tiresome; what you need to do only takes a few minutes, yet there you are stuck waiting for the golden moment when your chance to do the creepy “I think they are leaving” stalk will come.
Abandon this procedure altogether; turn to mobile print!
Despite the posters dotted around in the libraries here and there, not everyone realises that mobile print is an option. I myself only learned of this when asking at the ISS desk if there was a way I could print from my own computer. Being impatient has its rewards; turns out the process is super easy.
Step 1. Go to https://mobileprint.leeds.ac.uk
Step 2. Log in with your portal username and password.
Step 3. Upload your desired file with 'Choose File'.
Step 4. Click 'Next', and after a few seconds, it will say 'Printed' under the status bar.
Step 5. When you are ready, swipe your student card at your nearest printer (see here for a list of MyPrint devices on campus) and retrieve your documents. Voilà! You can also quickly attach your documents to mobileprint@leeds.ac.uk and then retrieve them in the normal way, but you’ll need to complete a registration process the first time you do this.
Mobile print supports Office/Open Office/PDF formats and holds documents after printing for 72 hours (a great bonus if you are planning ahead or sending your documents from home, but make sure to collect them in this time before they get deleted). There are limitations, however.
Firstly, mobile print does not support colour printing; this is quite a big disadvantage for me personally, and I’d love to see this option in the future.
The second limitation is a minor one, but nonetheless; there is no option for multiple select when uploading documents to MyPrint. When I'm printing things, it’s usually because I've finally gotten around to sitting down and making sure I have everything I need for the week. It would be great not to have to upload things one by one (I know, I know, the digital is making us lazier). It’s a very minor grievance, bordering on being a non-issue, but it’s one that could hopefully be remedied quite easily.
Lastly, you cannot directly print webpages; however, saving your webpages into PDF format is a simple way to get around this.
To sum up – if you have a personal computer, you don’t need to use cluster computers for general printing purposes unless you really need to manually fiddle with the size/colour options. I hope this saves you all some time (and some sanity)! Happy printing, everyone!
Much prefer Remote Access for printing & stuff. Take a little bit of figuring out but once it works you can log into the university system from your own laptop at home or uni (even if the cluster's full!). Details here: http://access.leeds.ac.uk
ReplyDeleteThanks for the heads up! I've sometimes found Desktop Anywhere to be quite slow but there is so much you can do with it, it's great that it's there.
ReplyDelete