Novell yesterday added a TID document related to it’s iPrint service, and Windows Vista. They say “Novell recognizes the urgency to provide an iPrint client that installs on the Vista operating system. Releasing an iPrint client for Vista has been, and continues to be, a top priority for Novell.” Though they recognize this urgency, and Vista has been available in it’s final format for six months now, the iPrint client is still under development, and they’re not estimating a release time. They do, however, have a workaround.

Here are the steps required to enable Windows Vista users to print to an iPrint printer hosted on a NetWare or Linux server:

1. Go to Microsoft’s Add Printer Wizard
2. Choose Network printer
3. Click the “Stop” button to stop the wizard from scanning for network printers.
4. Select ‘The printer that I want isn’t listed’
5. Select the first ’shared printer by name’ box.
6. Type the following URL:
   http://[print server ip address]/ipp/[printer name]
7. Select the appropriate driver.
8. Finish the installation.

As the SysAdmin1138 blog comments:

Vista has native IPP support. Unlike Linux, Vista’s native IPP support supports both SSL and Authentication. So out of the box Vista can print to iPrint printers. It can’t do the nifty automatic setup through a web page like iPrint allows, but at least it can print.

I used to administer a few Novell Servers in the day, back before GUI and Java muddied them up, and they were rock solid. They had the first real directory worth using, long before Microsoft developed Active Directory. ZenWorks was a great product as well. It’s to bad their dominance in that area dwindled and now they struggle just to provide features that aren’t even required anymore. How long until Novell’s dying gasp?