The Daily App: Xerox Mobile Print Solution

The need to print from smartphones and tablets preceded the ability to do so by several years, creating the impression that printing from handheld devices was somewhat of an afterthought. No more, as developers large and small are rushing in to fill the void.

One such company is Xerox, whose Xerox Mobile Print Solution lets any device with e-mail print pictures, Web pages and email, as well as Microsoft Office documents, PDFs and other common file formats.

The solution is compatible with virtually any printer because it outputs to existing printers connected to a machine running Mac OS X or Windows. "If we don't offer those kinds of tools, we're limiting ourselves when people need to print," said Tom Gall, director of channel marketing at Xerox. "You have to allow people to print when and where they want to print."

Introduced in 2010, the Xerox Mobile Print Solution will work in any office or other organization where an agent is deployed on the host computer. Bypassing network security entanglements, users simply e-mail the file to be printed to a specific address and the agent outputs to the host computer's default printer. Xerox also offers PrintBack (shown), an Android app that can output to the user's Mac- or Windows-connected printer through a DropBox or other compatible cloud storage account.