Turn a laptop into a printer?

[Steve Day]

I know that's a silly title, but that's the shortest way I could describe it.

I'm a field engineer for an office equipment company, and I'm looking for an app, tool, or utility that does something very specific.

Quite often requests for service are placed on office machines when the problem truly lies in the network, or the machine sending the print job. Many times, one specific machine, or workgroup, or building cannot print, but others can. This is of particular importance to us as calls placed due to machine failure/malfunction are covered under our customers service contracts, but calls placed due to network/machine issues are billable at a high rate for time and mileage (especially important covering a multi-state area). A full billable day (including drive time) can exceed $1000.00, so customers get a bit upset at receiving this bill if they don't believe the problem was caused by their network, and our directors get a little cranky if refuse to pay.

You'd think that the mere fact that it is possible to print from one machine, but not another would be sufficient to convince the local "IT guru" that he has a network issue. You'd be wrong. I've actually heard the phrase "It can't be the network. I installed it myself!" So, this is what I'm looking for...

I'd like to be able to unplug the office machine, and plug my laptop into the same jack.
I'd like to then assign my laptop the same IP address as the now disconnected printer.
I'd like it to show (in plain english) any print jobs that were received (and if possible - sender, document name, file size, etc).
I'd like it work even across multiple switches and routers.
I'd like it to accept print jobs from any OS and any print driver.

My thinking is that if I can show Mr. IT Guru, a specific list of print jobs that made it to that wall jack and where they came from (and more importantly which ones didn't), I might relieve alot of stress for company and client. Is something like this even possible????????????

I'm sorry this was such a long convoluted post, or if this is the wrong forum or heading, or if this is just the wrong site to be asking...

Thanks in Advance!!!
Steve

 

[dubesinhower]

im not exactly sure how to accomplish all of this. one direction you might want to head is vmware. with a virtual machine, you can assign it a specific ip address. you can even specify mac addresses! not sure about listing print jobs, but alot of things are possible with vmware and linux.

 

[DizzlyDood]

That's a pretty wild request....I'm by no means qualified to say that's impossible, but I do know enough to say it's unlikely.

You would need software that could mimic the job duties of a printer, language processing etc. I'm assuming there's a print server involved and that's another link you would have to trick. The server won't send the job if it doesn't think the printer is attached on the other end. Just throwing this out there, but the software would have to mimic a specific make/model of printer with a matching DNS entry in order to even have the job sent/make it through the network. It would have to be a "virtual printer" type setup.

It's an incredible thought/idea and am all for someone finding a way to do this.

I dont know how large/advanced these networks are, but there are plenty of more feasable ways to determine if a print job is being lost due to network or device issues.