[Closed] Tell me about printing from tablets please.

I think wifi printers just connect to your wifi network and then become available to other devices on that network, rather than connecting directly to the device.

You could try to use your phone as a wifi hotspot and get your tablet and printer to connect to that.

I've got a HP all-in-one wifi printer that I print (and scan) using the HP app on my tablet and phone. It does have its own email address too, so I can connect to it from anything (including my ancient XP laptop) anywhere. Which is nice. However the paper feed motor is broken, so it doesn't work at all. Which isn't nice.

I have a Cannon all-in-one printer that connects to my home wifi network. I can print to it from all my devices (PC's and Android phones and tablets) on the same network using the approprite app or driver. You'll need to have the tablet and pronter on the same network, as suggested you could try doing this with a phone wifi hotspot.

I also have my printer setup as a google cloud printer, so I can print to it remotely from the internet too.

This may be too simple, but the last time I printed from a tablet I used a cable. 🙂

Sounds like you don't have a wifi network so you either set one up or look for a wifi direct printer. Info on wifi direct [url= http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/wi-fi-direct-what-it-is-and-why-you-should-care-1065449 ]here[/url] but a bit of googling should tell you more.

I've got a fairly old wireless printer that just connects to the home network and and Epson app that allows me to print directly to the printer. Only issue is that I don't seem to be able to change printer settings, but I haven't really played about with it.

If you have no Wi-Fi at home at all, then you will presumably need to plug your tablet directly into your printer.
I just googled "print from android tablet using usb cable" and several apps came up that appear to do what you want (you'll need to pay for them for full functionality). You might need to try a few though to see if you get the functionality that you want, but you can normally trial them for free (with watermark or similar).
Here are a few I found:

http://printhand.com/usb_printers.php

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ivc.starprint&hl=en

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dynamixsoftware.printershare

I know next to heehaw about this really but wouldn't a Bluetooth printer work?

Of course it would, so obvious once someone with a brain mentions it 🙂

What make/model of printer do you have ? Or are you looking to buy one that will do the job ?

Will probably buy one. I do have wifi one but it's shagged & pre-dates the whole tablet thing.

mos - Member

Will probably buy one. I do have wifi one but it's shagged & pre-dates the whole tablet thing.

Ah. Originally sounded like you were trying to get an existing printer connected.

A possibility would be to create a WiFi hotspot on your tablet (assuming you can do this 🙂 ), setup the printer to connect to this hotspot and then find an app which is compatible with the printer and makes your printer available to all the other apps on the tablet.

You could use your existing Wifi printer as a dummy run to see if you can get it working.

Sounds like the only issue is with Google print? If you're printing from 'THE CLOUD" (tm) then you'll need internet access to/from your printer, however if your tablet and printer connect to your local wifi network (no internet access required) then you should see it as a local printer. I think. In which case save the document from the cloud to your tablet, and then just print direct to the printer from there.

[quote=tonyd said]In which case save the document from the cloud to your tablet, and then just print direct to the printer from there.

May well work! Still has to do the tablet -> printer comms thing though.

[img] [/img]

😆

SBob.How did you do that?
What tablet and printer?
We can always guarantee our Ipad finding our printer.