Issue #0819/2 – In addition to the Mobile Express Driver, Xerox has announced another new printer driver, Xerox Global Print Driver, which is claimed to make network administrator’s jobs easier than any other network print driver deployment mechanism by supporting any network PostScript, PCL5 or PCL6 compatible printer, regardless of brand.
Again free of charge, the Xerox Global Print Driver (GPD) is targeted primarily at corporations or other large organisations with large numbers of PCs and a variety of printers. It allows network administrator to manage the deployment, updating and configuration of drivers for all compatible devices on the network.
As printer fleets in these large organisations are highly likely to be PostScript and PCL compatible anyway, rather than host-based, this driver should cover the vast majority of devices installed. Certainly, as IT departments see the benefits, there may be an increased tendency to avoid host-based devices at the purchase stage anyway.
However, consider the implications even to small businesses. In this environment there is no IT department to fall back on for management of print drivers and this task often falls to one individual who is knowledgeable enough and maintains the IT infrastructure of the company.
Even where the number of PCs and printers in a company is restricted to a handful, the ability to deploy drivers quickly from one location could save that individual a considerable amount of time and hassle.
Taking this a stage further, many small businesses have no IT-savvy individual and must rely on local dealers and maintenance specialists for this type of support.
Here, a Virtual Private Network (VPN) between customer and IT support specialist should allow driver deployment without the specialist even setting foot on the customer’s premises – thus saving travel time, and therefore cost, as well as reducing that all-important carbon footprint and road congestion. If a new device is added to the network, the customer needs only to plug it in (and ensure that it has an IP address) and the specialist should be able to do the rest remotely.
One brilliant feature for large organisations allows a printer or MFP to be replaced with a new device, using the same IP address, and for the GPD even to discover that device automatically and update all users’ options to reflect the change.
Apart from installing or updating drivers, the GPD allows the administrator to set global default print parameters for all users and devices. For instance, access to colour printing can be controlled or duplex printing can be set as the default, thus controlling and reducing Total Cost of Printing for the organisation.
For the user, real-time status information is fed to them through a common driver interface, regardless of which print device they are trying to use, and they see only devices that they have permission to use.
A further feature of the driver (and one that CharisCo Printer Labs has long lobbied for) is that the most commonly used driver features are shown on the first tab of the driver dialog. This is great because most users are not prepared to delve deep into the driver just to find a feature that will save money, even if they are told to by their managers. With this driver, those features are at Level 1 and there can be no excuse for not using them.
The potential here is for Xerox’s GPD to become a de facto standard for print driver deployment in much the same way that Hewlett-Packard’s Web JetAdmin has become a de facto standard for network management of print devices in multi-vendor environments.
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