Good free print-screen utility

[bthylafh]

So I've got some users who are absolutely wedded to the idea of dumping the active window's contents to their printer using the "Print Screen" key on their keyboards. Problem is, the software we've been using turns out to be personal-use only.

Any suggestions for a good free-for-any-use PrintScreen utility? It'd need to run on WinXP and 32 & 64-bit versions of Vista and 7.

[just brew it!]

I guess I am a little puzzled as to why you even need a 3rd party utility for this. Ctrl-Alt-PrintScreen to copy the current window to the clipboard, paste it into an empty WordPad document, click Print. You're done.

What am I missing here?

[bthylafh]

The fact that these users are utterly lazy and have been trained to use that key for a straight-to-printer dump since the DOS days.

There would be plenty of griping if I made them do it that way, trust me.

[Fighthouse]

We have a few users at work who do this process literally hundreds of times a day. If we have them copy, open word, paste, print, for each one, I think we would have a mutiny on our hands. Instead, we use a program called Printnow, but I am afraid that is horribly outdated (1997?). The printnow website google brings up looks doesn't look like the software we use, but i am sure there are other options out there.

[bthylafh]

We've used Printnow before, but I don't think it works so well for Win7, likewise ScreenPrint32. Gadwin PrintScreen is nice, but there's that licensing problem.

[Skrying]

Sorry I can't help with your problem but I'm really confused on why anyone would do this. What's the purpose in printing the entire screen? It seems to remind me of people who print off email... I don't get that either.

[drsauced]

Sometimes it is OK to force users to change their workflow, even though they may gripe about it. Of course, be ready to give them good reasons, not the least of which--if they're really wedded to the idea, then they will also understand compromise

[Captain Ned]

Sorry I can't help with your problem but I'm really confused on why anyone would do this. What's the purpose in printing the entire screen? It seems to remind me of people who print off email... I don't get that either.

Many drones in the finance/banking/insurance world labor on with core apps written for and still running on ancient IBM big iron accessed through emulation on the PC (low-margin businesses milk their computing hardware looooooong past the "rotten by" date). I still see IRMA boards out in my regulated population. Most of those legacy apps, if requested to print, print on green bar in the computing center which, in some cases, may not even be in the same state. Therefore, these people need the ability to print screenscrapes to serve their customers.

Give this one a whirl:

http://www.printdesktop.com/

[just brew it!]

Many drones in the finance/banking/insurance world labor on with core apps written for and still running on ancient IBM big iron accessed through emulation on the PC (low-margin businesses milk their computing hardware looooooong past the "rotten by" date).

It isn't restricted to those industries either. Where I work, stuff like inventory and purchasing still goes through a mainframe system located halfway across the country. The people who need to deal with that side of things have terminal emulator software installed on their PCs, which connects to the mainframe over a T1. I am quite thankful that I don't need to use that system (I only need to occasionally help people get the software installed on their PCs, which is bad enough).

[Captain Ned]

Mike:

Back in the long-ago day I installed IRMA boards in original IBM PCs and ran the coax back to the mainframe temple when I worked for Bank X. Twenty-plus years later much of it is still in use.

[axeman]

www.hardcopy.de

[PhilipMcc]

Snagit can be found at www.techsmith.com - I am not sure of the license requirements.

[Dizik]

Snagit can be found at http://www.techsmith.com - I am not sure of the license requirements.

SnagIt is a great tool, but it is commercial software, albeit with a 30 day free trial. I'm not even seeing options for an enterprise license, but rather per user licenses.

[bdwilcox]

Excellent free PrintScreen utilities are Gadwin PrintScreen and ScreenHunter

[bthylafh]

HardCopy looks pretty decent, and free in the legal sense that we care about. The folks behind Snagit have another free utility that's mainly for vidcap called Jing, which can also be used for print-screens, but we need to have a look at the license for this one.

We're going to evaluate both of these. Thanks all.

[gerbilspy]

A great program called "Snipping tool" comes free with W7. At least the version I have, which is Pro 64

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... reen-shots

You can email the screenshot directly from the program, copy it, or save it. Even annotate it with diff colors of "ink". AND, you can capture just part of the screen if you like.

I use it constantly in my job, and it's a great time saver compared to the old way of Alt + Printscreen
No cropping required because you can snip any part of a page, large or small.

[mackintire]

PicPick http://picpick.wiziple.net/

[bthylafh]

"This software is provided as freeware for only personal use. In this case, you are granted the right to use this program free of charge. Otherwise, you need to pay for a license for commercial use. "

Right there on the first page where it's easy to find.