First look: xPrintServer for Android, Chrome OS

A couple years ago, Lantronix released its xPrintServer and made it supereasy to print to almost any printer from an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Until then, you needed a printer specifically designed to work with Apple’s AirPrint protocol, and they were rare beasts. Attach the xPrintServer to your network and voilà! Your iOS device sees network-attached printers automatically.

Over time, Lantronix refined the product with versions that allow IT management and USB printer connections. Now, Lantronix has an xPrintServer designed for Google’s Cloud Print service, which Android and Chrome OS both use and which is built into just a small number of printers.

[ Review: 6 AirPrint solutions for iPhones and iPads. | As with BlackBerry and Nokia, Microsoft’s mobile failure wasn’t caused Apple’s or Google’s superiority — but its own inadequacies. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobilize newsletter. ]

xPrintServer for Cloud Print is being released today, and I’ve been testing a prerelease unit for a couple weeks. As with the AirPrint version, it’s really easy to set up the $150 xPrintServer for Cloud Print: Connect it to power and to an Ethernet port. It autodetects your compatible network printers; you can plug a USB printer (or several via a USB hub) into it as well — just what you’d expect from an xPrintServer.

But Google’s Cloud Print service is much harder to work with than Apple’s AirPrint. Although Lantronix has made the xPrintServer for Cloud Print very simple, the overall setup and printing experience is terribly complicated and messy. That’s entirely Google’s fault, not Lantronix’s — if you want to Cloud Print-enable your printers, the xPrintServer is a great way to do so.

If you do Cloud Print-enable your printers, what do you need to know about those Google-created difficulties?

Cloud Print requires lots of manual setup First, Cloud Print isn’t plug-and-play like Apple’s AirPrint. With AirPrint, any iOS device from any user can see the available printers on the wireless network. Lantronix provides a Web-based console to let you manage visibility of and access to printers on your local network; you can connect to Active Directory to manage user permissions as well. A home or small office can gain AirPrint compatibility in minutes, while a large business can let IT do the legwork to secure its printers as desired.

CloudPrint, by contrast, requires that both printers and users be explicitly enabled. You register printers with Google over the Web, tying them to a specific Google account. Lantronix has a very simple way to do that in the xPrintServer. Actually, it has two: You can scan a QR code on the device to register it from an Android device, or you can enter the serial number from your browser, then sign in via your Google account.

The disadvantage is that the printer is tied to a particular Google account, so other users — even on the same local network — can’t, by default, see the printer.

Instead, you need to send them an invitation from Google’s admin tool; to accept the invitations to be able to print, they must go to a computer (not their Android device) and follow the very convoluted instructions. You can also set up a Google Group and give anyone in that group permission to print to selected printers via Cloud Print, but they have to navigate the same convoluted setup process. It’s a horrible experience that IT will likely decide not to bother itself or its users with.

A second option is to expose the printer for anyone to use. In that case, the people require a URL to access the printer, so you typically need to set up a Web page with that link for them. Google’s documentation explains the process.

For a business with multiple users or for a home environment, Cloud Print requires much, much more hands-on management than AirPrint. For a large business, that management can’t be tied into Active Directory, so Cloud Print doesn’t realistically scale up if managed via the Google Cloud Print admin console. Server tools for Active Directory integration and management of Cloud Print are available from Collobos, Ecamm Network, and EFI, but they require real network admin know-how to use.

Still, there’s one advantage to the Cloud Print approach that AirPrint can’t match: You can print to a printer anywhere on the Internet, as long as it is registered with your Google account and, of course, available outside your firewall. By contrast, Apple’s AirPrint is a local protocol, for devices visible to the current wireless network.

Cloud Print is haphazardly available in Android The other limitation of Cloud Print is that it’s not broadly or consistently deployed in Android. Some devices such as the Google Nexus 5 have Cloud Print preinstalled. But most Android devices don’t, requiring users to install the free Cloud Print app from the Google Play Store. By contrast, AirPrint has been built into iOS since November 2010.

Cloud Print is native to Chrome OS, and it is available to OS X and Windows via the Chrome browser. Ironically, the xPrintServer for Cloud Print can print to a USB-connected printer from OS X and Windows by using Apple’s Bonjour networking protocol, which is native to OS X but must be separately installed in Windows. AirPrint is native to OS X (as of Mountain Lion) and is available for Windows through third-party apps like Ecamm’s Printopia.

Using Cloud Print is more difficult in Android than in iOS. Only a few apps, such as Chrome, let you print from within the app, so most of the time you need to open the Cloud Print app and select a compatible file to be printed. But even Chrome is inconsistent: On a Nexus 5, Chrome had the Print menu option, but on a Samsung Galaxy S 4, I had to go to the Share menu to find Cloud Print.

In iOS, in-app printing is not universal, but many more apps support printing than in Android because it is an OS-level capability in iOS. iOS apps that support it are consistent from device to device. And if your iOS app can’t print, you can work around it for common file types by opening the file in a file-manager app like GoodReader and printing it from there — like using the Cloud Print app in Android.

If you use Cloud Print, don’t expect the simple, consistent experience of AirPrint. The horribly difficult setup is likely to keep most businesses from even bothering. But thanks to Lantronix, you can now bring Cloud Print to most of your printers, should you decide to bite the Cloud Print bullet. I only wish Lantronix sold a xPrintServer model that supported AirPrint and Cloud Print, both to save the number of boxes on the network and to let you use the same USB printer via both protocols.

This article, “First look: xPrintServer for Android, Chrome OS,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Mobile Edge blog and follow the latest developments in mobile technology at InfoWorld.com. Follow Galen’s mobile musings on Twitter at MobileGalen. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.