Can I print from my iPhone?

My sister-in-law emailed me with this question today. She's a new iPhone user with a PC. I held back from asking, "why would you want to do that?" because, after all, people do things their own way.

She told me anyway: "I need to print out my iCal. I use it as a diary to record my mileage for tax deductions." See what I mean? Everybody has their own way of getting stuff done. We emailed back and forth a couple of times. She'd heard about MileBug, which is what I use for this purpose. It's a cute little program that makes it easy to make a habit of dialing in your mileage every time you get in the car for business, charity, doctor, whatever. You download the log to your Mac or PC at tax time.

But Deb had been doing it her way for a while, and wasn't ready to change to a new app. The problem is, with an iPhone and a PC, you can't really print your calendar. You can't beam or zap your iCal file to a nearby printer and get anything out of it. Of course, with a Mac, you just make sure you've synced up your calendar through MobileMe, and print it out from your Mac. But PCs don't have MobilMe or iCal.

The best solution I found, if you really want to do this, is to sync your iPhone calendar and other apps with Google Calendar using Google Sync, then print your Google Calendar. It actually doesn't look that hard, especially if you're into Google Apps already. I haven't tried it myself, but it all looks pretty straightforward.

There ARE however, some cool apps for printing photos and other documents. The best one out right now is HP iPrint, which of course is designed to work with HP printers, like this hot new PhotoSmart all-in-one. (It looks like printers have come a long way since I bought my last PhotoSmart (I believe the Smothers Brothers were still on CBS at the time). I can't wait for one of our four printers to blow up so I can buy a new one.) HP iPrint is free from the Apps store, installs without a hassle, finds a printer, and lets you print photos, as they say, seamlessly. I downloaded it and loved it.

There are a bazillion other apps in the App store (search "print") for printing photos to any printer, in case you don't have an HP (I have at least two. They breed like animals.)

If you want to print documents from your iPhone, I would place my bet on a suite of apps from a company called EuroSmartz. Four different apps print everything from photos to labels, spreadsheets, notes and other docs ... but alas, not iCal. They are priced from $2.99 up.

Bottom line, Deb decided to give MileBug a try. After all, why print something unless you absolutely have to?

As Deb's iPhone would say, "Good call."