SERVICES - Handling Electronic Files

There are a number of ways to handle electronic files that you wish to work on or bring to for printing or to take away after downloading or scanning.

Transporting (transfering) Files

At MIRAJ electronic files may be transfered using following devices/methods.

- USB Flash memory devices

- CD & DVD ROM

- Flash cards - SD, xD, MemoryStick (incl. Pro & Duo), CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MMC, Microdrive etc

- Bluetooth - transfer to or files from your laptop, PDA or other Bluetooth-equipped device

- USB flash disk - we have USB flash disk that can be plugged into your laptop to allow transfer of files

- Online email such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Google Mail etc

- Floppy disk. Please note that floppy disks are unreliable and we do not recommend their use. If you must use them, we would advise you to make more than one copy.

Please note that it is very difficult to connect Window-based laptops to our Ethernet network if they are already set up to access the internet and we would therefore recommend that you use one of the options above. Our network security will also prevent file sharing between your laptop and our computers.

File formats

We operate MS Windows PCs (Windows XP and Windows 7) with a variety of software packages pre installed.

While you can print from a number of applications, you are advised to bring a PDF (Acrobat) file to minimise the chance of any problems for example with fonts, and also, in particular, Word documents changing which is a common problem. If you use MacxOS X, you can make a PDF via the print command. If you use Windows, then you will need software to create a PDF; a free PDF creator is available called PrimoPDF. N.B. MIRAJ provide a link to PrimoPDF for the benefit of our customers however we cannot offer any assistance in using this software, nor can we be held responsible for any problems that arise with downloading, installing and using PrimoPDF.

The programs available are shown below. Note that programs in pink are not available on the customer PCs and can be used only by MIRAJ staff.

Windows programs

Minimise printing problems - Convert to PDF

If you are printing a non-graphic file format i.e. not EPS, JPEG, TIFF, etc, please convert to a PDF file. This helps minimise problems with missing fonts and layout changing that we often get, especially with Microsoft Word and Publisher files. If you use an Apple Mac, you can create a PDF using the Print command. If you use Microsoft Windows, you can get free software to make PDFs called PrimoPDF.