Kyocera Mita Corporation

Kyocera Technology Development, Inc.

Zhencai Wang

Katherine Bayquen Lao

David Chamberlin

Hong Yan

Sang Yoon Lee

Lu-Chun Liao

A method seamlessly installs, upgrades, and deletes printer and other device drivers over a network. Instead of a computer periodically searching or scanning the network, searching occurs when a user logs into a computer. If a new device is found, driver installation is carried out using seamless pop-up GUI integrated into the OS, rather than by a wizard. The method includes providing a domain controller and a user computer connected to the network; searching the network for newly added devices when detecting a user login; and installing device drivers for the found newly added devices. The method also includes optionally-silent and seamless pop-up GUI; use of scripts and WSH (Windows Scripting Host); deletion grace periods; TCP/IP and/or SNMP; automatically upgrading existing drivers if necessary; maintaining tables of currently installed, to-be-installed, and to-be-deleted devices; applying pre-defined device settings; and obtaining information of a device and applying the information to the driver.

Seamless network installation of device drivers

Method for efficient printing of large-volume documents to multiple printers, comprising GUI for administrators to configure a virtual port associated with physical and virtual printers; print job to a virtual printer spooled to the associated virtual port; and administrators sending spooled print job to the associated physical printers. Options include Spool without printing, Spool and print immediately, and Spool and print at a scheduled time. Printing policies include Tandem (the same copies to printers), Direct (to one printer), Broadcast (specified copies to printers), and Cluster (a print job is divided into pieces at page boundaries). Cluster dividing subpolicies match color, paper size, media type, and finishing characteristics of the pieces with the printer characteristics, and sending subpolicies optimize based on printer speeds and distribute equal number of pages. Bidirectional communication and monitoring using SNMP and PJL enable Pool (the first available printer) and Recovery (job transfer after a failure) printing policies. Methods also include job previewing and accounting.

Print job spooling and distribution system

Growing community of inventors

Concord, CA, United States of America

Zhencai Wang