PRINTER UTILITY CONVERTS, ENHANCES, CAPTURES AND MORE
End-user software products are usually either applications or
utilities. Applications are mostly designed to perform a specific
productivity task such as a word processor. However, these
individual applications are often combined into seamlessly
integrated suites that can do many things. A perfect example of that
is Microsoft Office. Utilities on the other hand, tend to be more
specialized although we're seeing more utility suites appear as
well. Internet security suites for example typically include
anti-virus, firewall, spyware detection and anti-spam protection
utilities. Suites are great but finding a single utility that does
many different things is a bit more rare. To that end, I just
recently discovered an interesting printer utility that does a lot
more than just enhance your printer's output.
ePrint IV from Lead Technologies is technically a printer utility
in that it operates from within the way Windows lets you print
something. If the application you are using has the ability to send
something to a printer, you can use the power of ePrint to do many
different things. For starters, it lets you enhance your printing
options. From the print dialog you can print 2, 4 or 8 pages on a
single sheet. ePrint lets you add watermarks to identify and protect
your work. You have full control on the watermark's opacity, font,
alignment and page position. It can automatically create photo
contact sheets from full to wallet size. It can format your print
job into a booklet. If a document contains embedded images, ePrint
can eliminate them and only print the text. Plus you can adjust
margins, gutters, headers, footers and borders on the fly. There's
more but actually that's just the enhanced printing ability of this
utility. Now it begins to get interesting.
ePrint lets you do file conversions. From any print dialog, you
can convert the document to be printed into any one of over 140 file
formats. For example, you can export your .DOC file as a PDF file in
MS Word or save your TEXT files to TIFF files in Notepad. If you
want to convert a PNG or JPEG image to a BMP from Internet Explorer,
ePrint turns your Internet Explorer a PNG converter by just printing
with it. As long as you have a Windows application that prints,
ePrint can save the information to be printed into the format that
you specify.
When it comes to converting PDF files, you can control your PDF
output with features like Font embedding, watermarks, compression
options, Unicode support, Bookmarks, Security Options and more.
Normally you would need a PDF application such as Adobe Acrobat to
create these kinds of PDF files.
Other ePrint abilities includes being able to combine multiple
documents into one file. You can for example, combine four or five
multiple documents into one single PDF file or combine a number of
JPEG image files into one single multiple page TIFF file. Email
options include being able to configure your settings to redirect
your print job to an email attachment. The print job is saved as an
image and you can then send it to multiple recipients.
If you're on a network, a real time saver is ePrint's
broadcasting ability. With one command, you can send your pages to
more than one printer. Once you set things up, you can print to
every specified printer or to just one specific one. And here's the
kicker. You can perform the aforementioned file conversions at the
moment of printing so that you can send the documents to each person
on the broadcast list in the file format of your choosing. That way,
you know each person will be receive the file in the format they
prefer. Additionally, if you have a printer driver that is capable
of sending a fax, you can print a hardcopy and fax the document to
one, two or more printers in only one step.
Finally, ePrint has a screen capture ability. This last ability
is actually a separate utility but is designed to work directly with
the ePrint driver and can be used as an Explorer toolbar or as a
stand alone application. It allows you to capture an entire screen,
active window or selected menu, a cursor, toolbar or an icon, as
well as the wallpaper, mouse pointer, or a selected area such as a
rectangle, ellipse or triangle.
This is one super printing utility and certainly worth the $99.
ePrint IV works with and requires Windows.
www.eprintdriver.com |
