Xerox's Mobile Express Driver is a free download that helps laptop users connect and print to a variety of printers without having to install specific drivers.

If you are a travelling executive, or anyone who has taken a laptop on a business trip, the chances are that at sometime you've wanted to print a document but been unable to because you didn't have network access rights, or the correct drivers.

I tried out the Mobile Express Driver on both a Windows Vista laptop and on a Windows XP desktop, neither of which were joined to the corporate Windows domain in IT Week's offices.

Once installed, the tool looks like any other print driver on your computer, and you simply select it as you would any standard printer when sending a document for output from an application.

The Mobile Express Driver then scans the network subnet your PC is connected to, and lists any printers it finds. If it does not find any, you can instead specify an IP address range to search through.

In my tests, the Mobile Express Driver quickly found about a dozen printers, allowing me to select one that I knew was close by and hit 'print'.

There are some limitations users should be aware of; the Mobile Express Driver only works with printers that support PostScript, although this should include pretty much any network or departmental printer that ships these days.

If you are using a laptop and have jumped on the Wi-Fi guest access at a site you are visiting, then the chances are that you won't find any printers. Guest access often provides users with a connection only to the internet, for obvious security reasons.

However, if you can find a live Ethernet port and plug into it, the chances are that you will be able to find a printer and use it, making the Mobile Express Driver a handy tool to have if you want to print out and leave some documents with a customer, for example.

The Xerox Mobile Express Driver can be downloaded here. The full version is about 48MB in size.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on June 26, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Following IT Week's full review of the Eee PC 900 and HP Mini-Note a couple of weeks back, I grabbed the chance to have a quick look at two new mini laptops that are currently being evaluated by colleagues on other publications at our offices.

The Asus Eee PC 901 is, as you might expect, very similar to its predecessor, but has a more polished feel and slightly more rounded styling. It actually costs less, at about £272 + VAT, but has the same 8.9in screen and is pretty much the same size and shape.

In fact, the most significant differences are that the 901 is based on a 1.6GHz version of Intel's new Atom processor and has a larger 6-cell battery. The older model had a 900MHz ULV Celeron and a 3-cell battery.

Sadly, the larger battery bumps up the weight from just under 1kg to 1.15kg - nearly a 20 percent increase. However, one of my colleagues reports that the battery life is much improved because of this, going from just over an hour and a half to several hours.

The same Intel Atom processor powers Acer's Aspire One. This is very similar in size to the Eee PC and also has an 8.9in screen, but is just a couple of centimetres wider. This extra width allows for a keyboard with slightly bigger keys that I found much easier to type on.

Like the Eee PC, the Aspire One ships in Linux or Windows versions. The Linux model has 512MB memory, a 3-cell battery and an 8GB Flash SSD for storage and costs £199 +VAT, while the Windows version has 1GB, a 6-cell battery and an 80GB hard drive and costs £299 + VAT.

The Linux-based Aspire One is lighter at just under a kilogram, while the Windows-based unit weighs about 1.26kg. With Linux, the Aspire has a battery life of just over two hours, according to another colleague who has used it at length.

Both of the models I looked at here were Linux models, and the two had quite similar user interfaces that separated the built-in functions and applications into categories such as 'work' and 'play'. Both have a built-in office suite - StarOffice 8 on the Eee PC and OpenOffice.org 2.3 on the Aspire One.

For users who just need a light, low-cost device for word processing or surfing the Web, both of these machines would seem to fit the bill, although I found the larger keyboard of the Aspire One preferable. Both are also capable of running Windows, but are only available with Windows XP Home edition.

One of my colleagues hopes to have a Windows version of the Eee PC soon, so that we can compare benchmark scores between the 901 and the 900. However, we will not be able to do the same for the Aspire, as Acer has said it wants to push the Linux version and so will not be making any Windows models available for testing.

Posted by Daniel Robinson on June 19, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've finally got my hands on one of the glorious Asus mini notebooks, the snappily titled Eee PC, and so far so good - the little white chap is unlikely ever to be wrested from this grasp.

Sadly though, there is stiff competition out there. I got mine at a briefing with reseller RM and Microsoft where the two discussed how great an educational device it was. Supporting this were videos of teachers and some kids - yeah man, tha' kids! - talking about how much they all liked it too. Well, they'd better get their own, this one is staying put.

If there is one criticism to make, it is that the keyboard makes me feel a bit like Edward Spoonsforfingers - the little known sequel to Edward Scissorhands. The keys are small and close together. But, realistically, that is taking nit-picking to a high art, the keys are supposed to be small, and the Eee is pitched, well it was at Sneak's early morning briefing, as a companion device.

It may require something of a traveling roadshow if a worker is to get the most out of it - a large additional memory source is almost a necessity and in my case an attachable, large keyboard would be a bonus, but otherwise it is a great bridging device and one sure to draw envious stares on the train. There are other great features to. In the words of one of the kids on the video, "Once I get my work done I can play games on it".

Son, you'll go far in business with that attitude, welcome to the world.

Author: David Neal

Posted by Madeline Bennett on June 18, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, today is D-Day, or i-Day, the day that Apple is due, or at the very least, expected to make a number of significant announcements.

The internet, well, tech blogs, and some of the bigger news sites are full of predictions as to what Steve Jobs will announce in his MacWorld keynote later today, but one thing is for sure, whatever it is, it is currently being splashed onto the Apple store web sites across the world.

All the sites are currently down – with just over an hour to go to the speech starts, and predictably this has added some 'excito-fuel' to the bloggers engines. Will we see a new 3G iPhone launched? Will it come in a range of colours? Will it be bigger? Or smaller? Cheaper? Or more expensive?

Who knows. Not many people, apart from everyone at Apple, and all the code monkeys currently uploading pics, stats and prices to the sites all across the world.

Surely someone out there has a window onto their offices, and a set of binoculars? Go on, climb on a ladder and get the skinny..

The wait is too hard to bear.

 

Posted by Editor on June 9, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0)