UniPrint vs ScrewDrivers 9

We have been investigating and really testing the limits of UniPrint, Screwdrivers and Thin-Print. All off these have their pro's and con's. All products need a client installed on the remote PC's.

UNIPRINT

To implement Uniprint as a Citrix printing solution requires disabling Native Citrix Printing and installing Uniprint on each Citrix server. This installs a single printer definition on the Citrix server. When a user prints, the Citrix Uniprint print driver creates an Adobe acrobat PDF file. Uniprint then sends this PDF file via the Citrix connection remote drive mapping, to the remote c:\

This product requires that a client is installed at the PC side to process the PDF files that Uniprint sends to the local C drive. This client is very small about 40k and displays in the system tray near the clock. The users PC must also have the Adobe acrobat reader installed as well.

The user has the option of defining where a print job is sent by right clicking on the Uniprint icon in the system tray, and configure the uniprint client to prompt for each print job. The users default printer is selected automatically when the Uniprint client starts. The Uniprint client can either display the pdf file on the screen or send it to the selected printer, the default is to send to the local printer.

If the user want to use any special printer functions such as duplexing, hole punching, paper size etc. these options must be configured on the users PC before the print job is printed in the Citrix Session.

The Pros for using Uniprint as a Citrix printing solution are:
Most types of remote connections have printing support, this includes VPN access.
Allows user to select a different printer without restarting the Citrix Session.
Only one printer definition is used, everyone prints to the Uniprint printer definition. This reduces confusion, training, and administration.
The user has the ability to save print jobs as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. This could then be emailed or saved to disk for future reference, or re-printing.

The Negatives for using Uniprint Citrix Printing are:
Printing does not begin until print job has been completely delivered.
All client PC’s must have the Adobe Acrobat reader installed.
Every time a Citrix session is started the Adobe startup banner is displayed.
If the user has never used the Adobe reader before they will also be prompted to accept the license agreement.
The users will be prompted to allow the Citrix session local drive access. If the wrong choice is made they will not be able to print.
Un-Supported by Citrix, Support is provided only from oem printing vendor Uniprint.

SCREWDRIVERS

To implement Screwdrivers as a Citrix printing solution requires disabling Native Citrix Printing and installing Screwdriver SDServer on each Citrix server. This installs a single printer definition on the Citrix server that runs as a service. When a user prints, the Screwdriver print driver sends the raw print data to the client via IP address, if this isn’t found, it will send it based on the clients local C: drive mapping.

This product requires that a client is installed at the PC to accept the raw print data and send it to the locally defined printers. There is little configuration or maintenance of the client side product. It also runs as a service on the client PC. The user is prompted with a server side print dialog box when they choose to print (at this point, they would select Screwdriver as their printer), a status bar is displayed for the Screwdriver tasks and then the user is prompted with a local print dialog box ( at this point, they would pick which local printer they wish to print to). They must choose the same settings for both sides or undesired results are printed out such as stretched pages.

The user has the option of defining where a print job is sent by selecting which printer to print to in the print dialog box on the local side of the print process.. The users default printer is selected automatically when the Screwdriver client starts, however, they may change which local printer to print to on each print job they print..

If the user want to use any special printer functions such as duplexing, hole punching, paper size etc. these options must be configured on the users PC before the print job is printed in the Citrix Session.

The Pros for using Screwdrivers as a Citrix printing solution are:
Most types of remote connections have printing support, this includes VPN access.
Allows user to select a different printer without restarting the Citrix Session.
Only one printer definition is used, everyone prints to the Screwdriver printer definition. This reduces confusion, training, and administration.
Little administration on the Server and Client side once deployed.
Duplexing as well as special printer functions tested to work well.
For special print functions, settings can be made on the local printer as part of the print job when the print dialog boxes appear. This means the user doesn’t need to remember to make changes before submitting the print job.

The Negatives for using Screwdrivers Citrix Printing are:
Un-Supported by Citrix, Support is provided only from oem printing vendor TriCerate.
Current version does not support all the print functions required by the business. The new version is scheduled for 2002, but the vendor will not give a definite date as to its release.
An expensive solution as the cost is around 1400.00 per server if a quantity of 10 server licenses are purchased.
No Web deployable client, this would need to be created by NCS and would require time to program and configure.
User is presented with 2 print dialog boxes, one from the server side screwdriver printer and one locally for the user specific printer. If these settings don’t match, then the printout will not be what the user requests. The print job may get stretched, or squeezed out of shape.

Thin Print

My partner is working on this portion, but I will try my best to explain in detail as I have with the above products.

To implement ThinPrint as a Citrix printing solution requires disabling Native Citrix Printing and installing ThinPrint client on each PC. This installs a single printer definition on the Citrix server that runs as a service that appears in the clients system tray. When a user prints, the Thin Print print driver compresses and sends the raw print data to the client.
This product requires that a client is installed at the PC to accept the raw print data and send it to the locally defined printers. This productrequires user administration which as we all know, can be a pain. It also runs as a service on the client PC that starts when an ICA connection is made and ends when the connection is broken. The user is prompted with a local print dialog box ( at this point, they would pick which local printer they wish to print to). This gets alittle sticky due to the fact that you need to create printer classes an templates which greatly increases the administration of this product.

The user has the option of defining where a print job is sent by selecting which printer to print to in the print dialog box on the local side of the print process.. The users default printer is selected automatically as long as check box is selected on the client side when the Thin-Print client starts, however, they may change which local printer to print to on each print job they print..

If the user want to use any special printer functions such as duplexing, hole punching, paper size etc. these options must be configured on the users PC before the print job is printed.

The Pros for using ThinPrint as a Citrix printing solution are:
Most types of remote connections have printing support, this includes VPN access.
Allows user to select a different printer without restarting the Citrix Session.
Only one printer definition is used, everyone prints to the Thin Print printer definition. This reduces confusion, training, and administration.

The Negatives for using Thin Print Citrix Printing are:
Un-Supported by Citrix, Support is provided only from oem printing vendor Thin-Print.
Current version does not support all the print functions of all printers. An expensive solution as the cost is around 1500.00 per server if a quantity of 10 server licenses are purchased.
Higher user and server administration is required. The only product we have found that has little is Screwdrivers.
Support, we have been waiting for a return call on some issues we have for over two weeks. This includes phone calls as well as E-Mails.
Vendor is homed in Germany so there may be issues with time as far as support.

We are currently writing a White Paper that will include all this and more that I will post as soon as it is complete. This will speed up the decision process for anyone looking at these products as we have been testing these for almost 2 months and pushing them to their limits.








Mike Brown CCA

WOW!
Thanks, Mike! This is very helpful.
I love this forum.

Kristine

WOW, That was some post!

Thank you for the information and the level of detail you to took the time to go into. Most impressive.

Hi,

Thanks Mike, I've been asked about these products and you've given me loads to throw at people.

Well done, and to your collegue.

Regards,
Carl.

I have had a similar situation. However, instead of standard printers, I have multifunction devices where printing is a part of the process. The printers are namely:
HP3330, HPD145, Canon F50, Brother 6800.
I was able to print to the HP3330, and Brother 6800 using their standard print drivers both on client(2000Pro) and server(NT4). I still had to install the whole client software and extract just the NT drivers for the server end.
However, for the HPD145, which used USB, I had to use HP 300 OfficeJet Driver, for the client off Windows 2000 default drivers, for the server, downloaded. The install was tricky on the client end, the usb printing support had to be enabled in device manager, in order to print.
The CanonF50 still seems to allude me, I may have to resort to a unidriver, screwdriver etc. I have tested all default windows drivers, but to no avail. Canon states it will only work if you install the WHOLE install suite, which is a no no on the server end. Additionally, Canon does not have NT4 drivers nor network support.

Thanks for bumping this to the top - I'll put a link to this thread in my Printing Resources FAQ - which I've just updated (about time!). CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

I might also suggest having a look at Emergent OnLine's "Universal Printer" software. ( )

I've given it a try, and it appears to work quite well - fast, transparent to the user, easy to install, not super expensive..... Pretty similar to UNIPrint, except it has it's own viewer (so no adobe logo, etc) and does print streaming (so printing starts virtually immediately). Haven't tested everything of course, but the only issue I've found so far is that when printing an existing pdf file you have to embed the fonts and then the print outs are darker than the original - and they tell me that will be fixed in the next release due out in a month or so.

Cheers