UniPrint Version 7 Licensing

As UniPrint users know, printing through UniPrint without a valid license will have a UniPrint banner printed diagonally across all printed pages. (Read more about UniPrint license and banner here.)

UniPrint version 7 came out with a different architecture in terms of its licensing scheme. In previous versions, the license is installed on the UniPrint Server (now called the Application Server), and was tied to that server by the server’s hostname and ip address.

Let’s say you have two UniPrint Servers, each having a valid license. In version 6, this means that you will have two license files: one file ties to server A with server A’s machine name and ip address, the other file ties to server B with server B’s machine name and ip address. You can only use the first file on server A only, not on server B, and likewise with the second file.

With version 7, licensing has been moved from individual Application Server (or UniPrint Server in old terminology) to a centralized License Server. This License Server resides with the Spool Server, so in order for you to install the License Server, you’ll have to also install the Spool Server. Fortunately, both come in the same installation (.msi) package.

With this new licensing scheme, licenses for all previous will not work with version 7. That means existing users will have to upgrade their older licenses to get a new corresponding version 7 license. Users are strongly cautioned to test out version 7 prior to deploying UniPrint into production.

In the scenario above, if you decide to have the two version 6 licenses installed on the same License Server in version 7, you will have to upgrade your licenses. Upgrade can be done through UniPrint's website. After the upgrade, you should receive in email a new version 7 license in one single file that contains information of your two previous version 6 licenses.

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What’s New in UniPrint Version 7?

Despite UniPrint’s website said that UniPrint Version 7 would be available in January 2010 (and in early February changed to “contact UniPrint”), UniPrint version 7 finally came out in early March 2010. What’s new with this two-month overdue product?

Taken out from the first chapter of the admin guide, the new features of UniPrint version 7 are:

Redesigned UniPrint Management Console:
The UniPrint Management Console has been redesigned to improve efficiency and usability, making it more intuitive to use and configure UniPrint components on remote servers as well as the local server can also be managed from any server. Debugging options have been moved to the Components screen, under Properties & Settings.

Improved Licensing Scheme:
UniPrint is still licensed per application server. However, applying a different license file on each individual application server is no longer required. UniPrint now utilizes a license server component that is installed on one of the UniPrint Spool Servers and the license file is applied to this designated license server. Network administrators also have the ability to monitor and track license usage in real time.

The following features are in the UniPrint Gateway Edition only.

Support for Thin Client USB Printers:
Extending the support for thin-client devices running WindowsXPe/ Embedded Standard, UniPrint now also supports USB printers attached to thin-client devices running Windows CE/Embedded CE.

Improved Printer Properties Support:
For printer properties like paper tray, forms and resolution, the actual printer property value is now imported from the native printer driver.

Support for Secure Printing:
UniPrint now supports HP printers with secure printing capability where print jobs are not printed until users enter their PIN codes at the physical printer. Currently, the following printer drivers are supported: HP Universal Printing PCL 5, HP Universal Printing PCL 5 (v 5.0), HP Universal Printing PCL 6, HP Universal Printing PCL 6 (v 5.0), HP Universal Printing PS and HP Universal Printing PS (v 5.0).

Support for Advanced Printer Functions:
Network administrators can now create unique printer profiles with different combinations of advanced printer functionalities (such as stapling, hole punching, binding, etc.) enabled according to users’ specific printer requirements.

New Functionalities to Further Reduce Bandwidth Consumption:
Two new functionalities have been added to further reduce print job size, improve overall printing speed and reduce bandwidth consumption.

Font Replication - Once a day at a prescheduled time UniPrint queries all terminal servers for newly installed fonts and replicates them to all print servers. This feature creates a smaller print job and improves the overall printing speed and print job quality.

Font Caching – When full font embedding is selected, UniPrint strips the font objects from the compressed PDF print job before sending it to the Print Server. At the Print Server, UniPrint then rebuilds the font objects before printing. This reduces the print job size for subsequent print jobs with the same font objects.

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UniPrint and .Net

We came across this podcast on DABCC Radio posted on January 14, 2010. UniPrint’s VP of Software Development Arron Fu was interviewed by Douglas Brown to talk about the upcoming new version 7 of UniPrint.

Arron Fu mentioned that UniPrint will be released "at the end of this year, or the beginning of next year." This would mean that UniPrint will come out by December 2010, or January 2011, which is contradictory to what says on their website. On their website, their banner says UniPrint version 7 is available January 2010. Probably it’s because the interview was done in 2009, but only posted recently.

As well, about 7 minutes 30 seconds into the audio clip, Arron Fu talked about the new things in version 7, one of them being "a new graphic interface, or the console". He continued to reveal that they "were able to rewrite the console completely in .Net platform."

Microsoft’s .Net technology has been around for about ten years by now, and UniPrint has just started writing their products in the .Net platform. Hmm, that makes one wonder, UniPrint being a software technology company, where they are on the technology curve.

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