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Universal printer driver

Managing printer drivers is a constant battle—whether an organisation has one IT administrator or an entire IT department. Maintaining several printer drivers is also expensive for a business.

Ricoh’s universal printer driver lets your customers simplify printer support and lower management costs without sacrificing the features that are important to their users. 

The universal printer driver gives users the ability to print to virtually any printing device. There is no need to change drivers when new printers or multifunction products (MFPs) are installed, and the same universal printer driver can be used for both MFPs and laser printers.

You need to install it just once, and when output devices are upgraded or replaced, there is no need to uninstall or reinstall another printer driver.

When used with the PrinterSwitcher utility, the universal printer driver offers mobile printing. PrinterSwitcher automatically searches for available devices on the network and adds them to the list of print destinations that users can choose from when printing a document.

The universal printer driver is available at no cost, and can be downloaded directly from Ricoh’s website, or linked to a company’s internal website for easy access. 

The universal printer driver is not supported by original equipment manufacturer (OEM) devices. 

How does it work?

The universal printer driver enables users to have a consistent printing experience, no matter which printer they select.

Once the driver is installed on a PC or server, it communicates with each supported printing device, via the device’s IP address, to determine its capabilities.

PrinterSwitcher is available with multiple supported models. With the universal printer driver, it automatically customises the user interface (UI) according to the capabilities of the connected device, ensuring a consistent UI design.

What are the benefits?

The benefits of a simplified, streamlined solution across the business include:

  • Easy distribution and cost savings for IT 
  • Easy training for help desk and reduction in printer-related queries
  • Consistent, easy-to-use interface for end users. 

Who are the target customers?

The target customers are small to medium businesses and major accounts. The universal printer driver is ideal for office customers with a large number of printing devices and workstations.

Improved IT efficiency

IT departments typically spend a large amount of time managing printer drivers and responding to printer related issues, so they benefit greatly from the deployment of the universal printer driver.

Less time spent on testing, deploying, and supporting numerous printer drivers frees up IT resources for other tasks.

The universal printer driver does this by:

  • Eliminating the need to distribute different printer drivers for each printer
  • Reducing the amount of training required for help desk operators and end users
  • Reducing the problems that can occur when managing many different MFPs and printers.

Reduced support costs

The universal printer driver helps your customers reduce their total cost of ownership (TCO), and makes life easier for IT by eliminating time-consuming tasks. The universal printer driver—used with PrinterSwitcher—allows users to print from a wide range of Ricoh MFPs and laser printers using a single, flexible driver that replaces device-specific drivers. 

The universal printer driver also shortens the certification process for new print devices. Once it is certified for use, only new functionality needs to be tested, saving time and IT resources. 

The universal printer driver—used with PrinterSwitcher—integrates Ricoh devices on the network without installing new drivers. This reduces issues with driver incompatibility and help desk calls from users who can’t print because of these issues. 

Increased user convenience

The universal printer driver creates an environment where every user can print quickly and easily. It removes any confusion about which printer driver users should select. This improves productivity by allowing access to all printing functions on Ricoh devices. 

The universal printer driver also reduces the need for expensive IT outsourcing in small to medium businesses (SMBs). In addition, the universal printer driver can be deployed in multilingual environments—its interface supports six languages.

Note:

The PCL 6 universal printer driver can be used for other MFPs or printers supporting PCL with a generic UI. However, the behaviour of the generic UI is not guaranteed. 

The devices using an EFI Fiery printer controller are not supported by the PCL 6 universal printer driver. 

 
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