printing option

[MartynL]

Are there plans for a pdf option from the report side of things?  The option to print will rely on installing a print driver on all pcs you use the program on.  My plan is to send a printed report with all computers.  We only have the option to save to html or text file unless there is another way around it?  Obviously we can install a free pdf writer but it would be good to incorporate pdf creation allowing us to print on another computer or email a ready file to the customer.

[fwilson]

MartynL,

There are no plans currently to do this but it is a good idea.  One difficulty that comes to mind would be licensing and the associated cost.  This is the first request I have seen for this so I am wondering how many people would use it.  There are additional issues I can see such as limiting / locking it to the PCDR output.  If it were just installed on the machine it was run on and left there the numbers could get quite large.

It is worth considering though,  I will send it on up the chain for consideration.

-Fred

[Mr C]

I'd definitely make use of a pdf option. 

[fwilson]

Mr C,

Thanks for the input.

-Fred

[DustinWright]

Hi all I’ve been using the product for a while and have been pretty impressed with it.  One BIG disappointment is the customized reports.  I add the company logo, and it looks great, but save it to HTML on the USB device, open it in IE to email to the client and the logo does not display on the report.  Kim told me this is a known issue, and if I use Firefox it will appear and from memory it did.  However, 61.58% of browser usage is Internet Explorer (http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/03/firefox-may-never-hit-25-percent-market-share.ars) so that does me no good when I go to send a report to a client to WOW them.  This is one of the MAIN reasons I bought the product.   Is it possible my SC7.5 is out of date and this has been fixed with an update that I do not have?

Please advise

A possible PDF workaround would be to get yourself one of the free PDF generators and “print” the report from the browser.  Not ideal, but it may work.

I would much rather see a proper PDF solution because these customized reports are very important.

[fwilson]

DustinWright,

There is no update to fix the logo issue currently. As a result of your previous post we are looking into including the PDF output feature in the next release of PC-Doctor.  One downside identified is that if the output goes to PDF the user would have to have a PDF editor (Acrobat $299.00) to modify the report in any way.  This is not an inexpensive option. The legacy HTML output would still be an option but should make everyone happy.

-Fred

[DustinWright]

I have not used PCDR a great deal, hardware just does not break that often.  I don't have a great deal of experience with it, but I thought you could pick and choose what you wanted prior to generating the report, so editing after the fact was not necesary.  Either way, you might want to talk to the boys at Aspire, www.quotewerks.com they have a GREAT PDF generator built into their quoting solution that is fantastic.

I don't know if you guys know this or not, but I use your product for two things typically;

1) Prove there is not a problem with hardware - very common
2) Before & After demonstrating what has been done (changed)

The reports are critical for me.  Please fix the logo issue.

[fwilson]

DustinWright,

Thanks, we will do what we can.

-Fred