Adventures with Google Cloud Print

Take 1:
In order to set this up, the Cr-48 chrome browser told me to go to a computer attached to a printer to set it up. First, I do not have one of those. My printer is networked. I figured I’d try it anyway, so I used LogMeIn to remote control my desktop, and went through the process of setting up Google Cloud Print. The set up was easy, and went through with no issues. Well, one issue. No printers were found. I chalked this up to the fact that I don’t have an attached printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.

Take 2:
About a day later I was messing around with my Cr-48, typing up something or another, and clicked “Print” from inside of google docs. To my surprise, all of my printers were found. This includes the two instances of my network printer (I don’t know why there are two, there just are), PDF writer from MS Office, print to OneNote, print to file. So, I figured I’d try to print something. I don’t care about those Microsoft “Printers,” and I may never get around to testing them. Maybe I will, we’ll see. The box popped up, it had all the standard printer settings, I looked those over, and clicked print. The print box told me it had added the print job, and it just sat there staring at me. I had to click cancel to get it to go away. I tried again, same thing. Just so that you are aware, I was expecting the box to go away after the print job was added. Again, I figured it just didn’t work due to the fact that I was trying to print to a networked printer, and decided to end my experiments until network printers are supported.

Take 3:
Working part of the day from home a day later. I go down to my office, log in, and I get a notice that I have two print jobs in queue. My print jobs from before are sitting in the queue and doing absolutely nothing. After clicking on them and looking at the properties, I decided to cancel and re-setup Cloud Printing on my desktop computer. I browsed to the web site and spent a half hour of trying to open the cloud print setup page and getting prompted to install the google chrome beta. After about three installs of the beta, I browsed around a bit more to see if I could just set it up and get passed that page that thought I still needed to update to the Chrome Beta. Found the setting, saw that my printers were still set up from Take 1, and proceeded to try to print a test page. After about 5 minutes of print buttons refusing to respond as I expected, I read the documentation stating that Cloud Printing wasn’t supported there yet, and I’d have to use a device like my Cr-48 to print. Refer to Take 1. I still don’t know if this works, doesn’t work, or is just messing with me, but I will be logging a bug about my print jobs going to the queue and staying there without errors or completion of the print job...after making sure I can actually print from my desktop. If I don’t follow up, assume that I can print from my desktop, and the bug has been logged.

Take 4:
Fine, so there is a print error when printing from my desktop, but there is still an issue. When trying to print directly from my desktop, I get a failure to print due to a communication error. I expect the print jobs submitted by Cloud Print to give me the same info.