Dear Aunt TUAW: How do I print from my iPad?

Dear Aunt TUAW,

I'm trying to figure out how to print from my iPad. I use mine, which is an awesome 64GB WiFi+3G system, for school and work. A 16GB Wi-Fi iPad is the only computer my mother has. My mom does have a wireless printer at home connected to my Dad's computer.

We both use Windows (XP and 7 respectively) and HP printers.

I've been round and round in the App Store and can't make sense out of all of the so-called printer apps in it. Help!

Kisses and cuddles,

Your Dear Nephew Jeremy

Read on for Auntie's response...

Dear Jeremy,

Uncle Steve was just telling me about a wonderfully cheeky Beatles song. Apparently, it was written by a proctologist, and there's a part in there where a girl with colitis goes by! Who knew there was such a wonderful back story to popular songs? Best of all, everything worked out great in in the end.

Auntie isn't much of a Windows person, so she tends to stick to zeroconfig Mac solutions like the kind offered by Avatron's Air Sharing Pro. It automagically finds your Bonjour printers and lets you print from your iPad, without any further software or configuration. I understand your issues, though, and I think I may have a solution.

You might want to look into EuroSmartz's PrintCentral. The iPad version of PrintCentral retails for US $9.99 at the App Store. There's also a universal application, but I'm not sure if the non-iPad version lets you print from third party applications the way that the iPad-specific version does.

PrintCentral doesn't support zeroconf printers yet (there's an update that does, that's waiting for Apple approval, with some pretty exciting features, and the app already supports CUPS printers via Printer Sharing), but it does provide client apps for both Windows and OS X desktops. These helper utilities can receive your print requests and forward them on to any printer connected to the desktop computer. From the iPad side, you open a document and ask PrintCentral to print it. The application communicates over Wi-Fi to the desktop service, and from there, completes the print request.

So why use a print server? Martin Schenkel of EuroSmartz explained over email, "Clearly customers need a solution that is guaranteed to work, and not...be restricted by printer compatibility and supported document formats. [R]unning our print server software will ensure you can print any document to any printer."

You can even stick the print server software onto a flash drive when you're on the go. Schenkel told TUAW that this doesn't require any installation steps, and you don't have to save files to the host computer. At the same time, the software will let you print to hotel or Internet cafe printers, without worrying about printer compatibility.

It's a basic fact that the Windows user world, even among iPhone and iPad users, is larger than the Mac world. PrintCentral offers a Windows-savvy solution.

Love and snuggles,

Auntie T.