Physical media discs day by day are becoming more obsolete, they do not last for a long time, they get scratched, you can lose them easily, and if you are a tech enthusiast just like I’m, and you like to play with new software, you know what a waste it is to burn a CD today and tomorrow you need to download and burn a new copy.
I think that it is easier and more practical to backup those important discs into a hard driver with a good image file format like for example .ISO , but the problem comes when you need to install or reinstall a program and you don’t have a physical disc.
How do you solve this problem without wasting anymore discs? Well, you will have to mount the image file to access the installation. Now, there are many softwares that you can use and that allows you to mount a CD/DVD image into a virtual CD/DVD drive, most of them cost money and some are free but they are not very good, so here is where WinCDEmu from SysProgs.org comes in.
WinCDEmu is a free open-source really lightweight software for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, that allows you to mount an image file by just double-clicking the file or by right-clicking and select Select drive letter & mount .
And these are the additional settings that you can configure after to select Select drive letter & mount :
To unmount just double-click once again in the image file or go to Computer , right-click the virtual drive where you have mounted the image file and simply select Eject .
WinCDEmu features
- Really simple image mounting and unmounting, just double-click an image file and WinCDEmu will do the rest.
- You can mount as many images as you want!
- You don’t need to reserve any drive letters when nothing is mounted.
- WinCDEmu support many image file formats: ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, IMG, CCD .
- All the image mounting formats are supported on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.
- WinCDEmu is a lightweight software.
- WinCDEmu has translation for English, Russian, Japanese, Italian, French, German, Greek, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch and Traditional Chinese languages.
- And the best of all, it is FREE!
To wrap-up, WinCDEmu (virtual CD/DVD-ROM) is a great tool that gets the job done, it uses almost non of the computer resources, it will not slowdown your computer boot up time, and nothing needs to load at the start-up. I know there are many tools out there and they even offer more features, but if you just need to mount an image file, you don’t need more of what this little program can offer.
- You can download WinCDEmu here .
Google came out with another good idea, this time, what about being able to print to your printer from anywhere (computers, smart phones and Cloud-Aware Printer) ? Google Cloud Print is a web service that allows you just to do that.
The idea behind Google Cloud Print is to provide a cloud based print service, where printers do not have to rely on the PC anymore and at the same time, have a similar or better printing experience either with web-based apps or with traditional applications, like the ones we use today on computers or mobile devices. The user will just need to associate the printer with the Google Account, and Google Cloud Print service will take care of the rest. In the future, users will be able to share printers with family, friends, and co-workers from any where in the planet. The up coming Google Chrome OS will use this new print service for all the printing, so no drivers worries in this department.
There are 2 different methods on how a printer connects with Google Cloud Print. The first one is with Cloud-Aware Printers (the best solution) , we don’t yet have these kind of printers, but it is possible to designed a protocol that printers can use to connect directly to Google’s print service without the need of extra software or configuration — we may see these kind of printers in the near feature –. And the second one is with the Legacy Printers , these are the kind of printers we use today (USB, Networked, and the new Web Connected printers) , these printers do not know how to talk the Google Cloud Print service. This problem can be solved by creating a software that is installed in the computer and it acts as a proxy between Google Cloud Print service and the printer itself — this is the piece of software that you can enable today with the latest beta version of Google Chrome that we are reviewing below –. The issue with this solution is that requires to have the computer to be turned on and connected to the internet in order to print, but it will do the job just fine! Also there are possibilities that someone will be able to create a proxy in other devices like in a router, for example, eliminating the need of a computer turned on all the time just to use the printer.
Note: Google Cloud Print is currently available for Windows 7, Vista, and for XP, Linux and Mac support will be coming pretty soon. And you also need to have installed the latest beta version of Google Chrome 9.
Follow these steps to connect your printer to Google Cloud Print using Chrome
First launch Google Chrome, go to tools and select Options .
Click the Under the Hood tab, scroll down and click on Sing in to Google Cloud Print.
A dialog box will appear and sign in with your Google Account.
If you have successfully signed in your Google Account a confirmation will appear. If you want you can also print a test page by clicking the Print a Test Page button and choose to which printer would you like to send the print job.
Now, that you have completed the configuration you will have 2 new options Disable Google Cloud Print and Manage Print Settings…, that I think are self-explanatory!
Manage Print Settings
You can now close the Google Chrome settings and print like your normally would, going to wrench and select Print… or using the Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut.
Download Google Chrome beta
Conclusion
Google Cloud Print is just great and it works! I was able to enable the feature really quick, Google Cloud Print detected all the printers right away, and I printed test page without any problems.
Source Google code labs
Mar. 30, 2011 Update
Starting Google Chrome 10 there is a new settings interface . So to get your location tracking settings by just cutting and pasting this URL chrome://settings/search#cloud into the address bar.
