2014/04/24

How to print together multiple documents and files (PDF, DOC, XLS, DWG) or photos (JPG, BMP, PNG)?

Here some recurrent question:

  • Can I print multiple PDF documents at once?
  • Can you print multiple documents without opening them?
  • How do I put multiple files into one PDF?


Do you need to automatically print multiple documents, present in a folder, without opening them?

On Windows 98, XP, VISTA there is not natively a function like that, so you need to use a third-party software.
Print Conductor is an utility that do this and I tried! It works very well and it's free!



You must download and install the software application, then you create the list of files to be sequentially printed by selecting the files with the dialog box "Open File", or dragging them with drag and drop, or by automatic scanning of a specific folder. You can also choose different folders or files of different types from those available.



Print Conductor supports 26 different types of documents, here they are: 
  • Adobe ® PDF files, 
  • Microsoft ® Word DOC and DOCX documents, 
  • Microsoft ® Excel XLS and XLSX spreadsheets, 
  • Microsoft ® PowerPoint PPT and PPTX presentations, 
  • Microsoft ® Visio VSD drawings, Publisher PUB files, 
  • Autodesk AutoCAD ® DXF and DWG drawings, 
  • OpenOffice ODT documents, 
  • JPEG, TIFF, GIF, PNG, PCX, TGA, DCX and BMP images, 
  • XPS, SVG, TXT, WRI, RTF and HTML files.

Print Conductor can print documents on any printer:
  • Local printer,
  • Network printer,
  • Virtual printer.

Also, you can change the configuration of the printer selection before starting the printing process.

WARNING: The only condition you must abide is that on your PC, you must have already installed all the applications you normally use to open the same documents that you would like to print automatically. 
So for example, to print CAD files (DXF or DWG), you must have installed AutoCAD, to print Word or Excel files you must have a suite of Office installed, to print PDF files you must have Adobe Reader pre-installed, and so on.

The free version of Print Conductor has no limitation of use., but  insert a page of advertising in the print queue of your printer. Commercial version doesn't print advertising pages.

Print Conductor works well on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8 and 8.1. 
Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2012 are supported, too. 

[Link features] Print Conductor features
[Download] Print Conductor

If you have Windows 7, 8 or 10 you can use this convenient feature natively in the operating system. Just open the folder containing the file to be printed and select those that interest you. To select multiple files with the mouse at the same time hold down the SHIFT key if they are contiguous instead if there are NOT contiguous hold the CTRL key. Immediately after you click on it with the right mouse button and select the item Print in the context menu. The important thing is that all the files must to be of the same type and NOT to be mixed (only PDF, only WORD, only EXCEL, etc..) The only downside is that the files are sent to print directly to the default printer, and then you can not choose your printer from the menu. With this method, normally you can select up to 15 files contemporary to print. 

An alternative method, with Windows Seven, is to search for the printer on "Devices and Printers" in the Start menu. Click with the right mouse button on the selected printer, then select "See what's printing" in the context menu. 
When appears the "queues" window of the printer, that you have chosen, you can drag and drop the files to print. 
Then another dialog box will appear asking if you want to "print multiple files at once." 
By clicking on 'Yes' all the files will be opened and printed in their entirety, with the default settings. With this method it is possible to mix different types of files! This method does NOT have limits on the number of files to be printed simultaneously.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE: 
Print Conductor is intuitive to use and effective, I like it very much!
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2014/03/17

NAS4Free: the heir of FreeNAS 0.7, an Open Source Network Disk

NAS4Free version 9.2.1 is a free distribution of FreeBSD 9 that has been optimized to provide a service of Network Attached Storage (NAS) or external network drive. It is a software distribution that can be installed on your obsolete computers and turns them into storage disks with redundancy and security features often available only on paid and high-end products!
NAS4Free logo

I have already reviewed a previous version of FreeNAS (exactly the versions 0.7.x and previous in FreeNAS - How to create a network drive free), but since then there has been a fork of the project by the new partner / sponsor iXsystems, which has brought several changes, so now there are two types of products: 

a) FreeNAS 9.1.1 - which is a new project, always open source, completely renovated and improved both in graphic and in functionality and that is managed by iXsystems which bought the brand FreeNAS in 2011. 

b) NAS4Free 9.2.1 - the direct heir of the old FreeNAS version 0.7, which has been renamed and is developed and maintained by a team of volunteers and also Open Source.

NAS4Free volume manager


NAS4Free 9.2.1 supports data sharing systems: Windows, Apple, and UNIX / LINUX

Hard disks and volumes can be managed with:
  • ZFS v.28 (RAIDZ, RAIDZ2, RAIDZ3), 
  • Software RAID (0,1,5) or mix (1+0,1+1, ecc…), 
  • disk encryption (with adapter hardware acceleration if available),
  • Filesystem ZFS v.28, UFS, Ext2/3, FAT, NTFS, 
  • Partition (MBR andGPT)
  • iSCSI (initiator), 


Supports the following network protocols:
  • SMB/CIFS (samba3, samba2, samba) 4.1.5, 
  • AFP (Netatalk), 
  • NFS, 
  • FTP (ProFTPD), 
  • TFTP (tftp-hpa), 
  • RSYNC (client / server), 
  • Unison, 
  • SCP (SSH)
  • iSCSI (target), 


The Extra Services available are:
  • UPnP server (FUPPES), 
  • BitTorent client (transmission)
  • iTunes/DAAP server (Firefly),
  • Webserver (Lighttpd),
  • Network Bandwidth measure (IPERF),


About Networking:
  • 802.1q vlan tagging,
  • Wireless,
  • link aggregation,
  • Wake On Lan,
  • Bridge
  • CARP (Common Address Redundancy Protocol)
  • HAST (Highly Available Storage)


About monitoring::
  • S.M.A.R.T (smartmontools)
  •  E-mail notification
  • SNMPSyslog
  • UPS (NUT) 

Everything is configurable through its web interface.

NAS4Free 9.2.1 can be installed on Compact Flash memory / USB / SSD and HDD, or it can be started on LIVE CD and can use a small USB key to store the configuration data. Also exists in two versions: 
  • 32bit, with which you will be able to use the hardware with MAX 4 GB of RAM
  • 64bit, with which you can install and use more than 4GB of RAM

Despite having improved compatibility with newer hardware (thanks to an upgrade of the operating system) remains compatible hardware "obsolete" and therefore suitable for use on a PC also "very old" for their re-use. Here is the list of compatible hardware supported
The user interface (GUI) has undergone a makeover but remains very similar to the previous version. 
Among the goodies available, there is also the possibility of installing an LCD panel that displays in real time the most important information, and that is managed through the service LCDproc.

NAS4Free 9.2.1 adds support for SMB3, the ability for FreeNAS to be a Windows Domain Controller, and advanced features like server-side copy support in Windows 2012 and later.

[Source:] NAS4Free

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE :
I recently upgraded an older PC (already used as FreeNAS ) and consists of an Intel Pentium III with about 704 MB of RAM, reformatting and passing from the old to the new FreeNAS 0.69 NAS4Free 9.1. Because I thought that the hardware of this particular PC was NOT suitable for use as Zettabyte File System ( ZFS), due to the limited RAM and processor 32-bit inappropriate, I decided to fall back on a simple RAID 1 volume mounted on two SATA disks and shared with the service through Windows CIFS / Samba. Everything works great !
Also on this NAS4Free also use the service RSYNC client to synchronize the contents of a folder on disk to another PC version of FreeNAS 0.69 ( so for now not yet updated ) .

For some years now I'm running some old converted PC , here's the list :
n.2 - FreeNAS 0.69.2 PC - Intel Pentium 3
n.1 - FreeNAS 0.7.2 PC - Intel Pentium 3
n.1 - NAS4Free 9.1 PC - Intel Pentium 3 (*** Updated ***)
n.1 - FreeNAS 8.3.1 PC - Intel Pentium 4 (*** new project created by the fork ! ***)
Until now ... I was very pleased with their behavior !

One of the features I like the most in these products ( FreeNAS and NAS4Free ) is the ability to upgrade the firmware ( or the whole operating system software ) without having to reformat the whole thing!
Another feature important to me , is the presence of both an editor of an internal file manager, which eventually delete or modify files and folders that you do not have permissions to the share level .
NAS4Free has developed very good diagnostic functions and LOG disks , and the system.

Now some advice about the options in the BIOS of the PC:
If you can enable BIOS to automatically start the PC every day at a set time , so if you miss the current PC would restart by itself at the latest the next day!
Select the option that indicates hardware failures other than the keyboard , or "ALL, but keyboard" , so you can run the PC without having to connect a keyboard .
Disable the cache VIDEO or otherwise any kind of cache memory that subtracts the main RAM , since in any case there would benefit significantly to the functioning of the operating system.
Update of 03/09/2013 : Occasionally you have to upgrade the operating system of yours NAS devices in order to fix bugs and possibly take advantage of the new features implemented. So I proceeded to upgrade to one of the 5 NAS systems that use. In particular, I updated the software on the NAS already mounted NAS4Free 9.1.0.1 (revision 531) NAS4Free to version 9.1.0.1 (revision 847) using the function updates the firmware. I did not expect any particular problems in upgradin , in fact everything went well , very fast!

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



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