While many of us dream of a paperless office, the reality is that, more often than not, we're still left slinging a lot of dead tree strips around. But the cloud can even make our contact with paper easier, as demonstrated by some new updates to Google's Cloud Print, which will make sharing printers a much simpler task than it was in the past.

The improvements to Google Cloud Print have been coming over the course of the last several years, with gradual refinements stepping in on a fairly regular basis. That's a welcome development strategy, especially for those who still print and often find sharing printers necessary. But there was something of a problem previously, as Cloud Print only had support in Chrome for the Chrome OS, leaving a fairly substantial portion of the potential market out of the action. Though there were some third-party tools available for that fairly large swath that used OS X or Windows, Google's specific support in the third party was rather slim.

That's changed with the recent launch of the Cloud Print Service for Windows, which steps up the availability significantly by allowing those running Windows 7, Windows Vista, and even Windows XP with the XPS Essentials Pack installed to get in on the action. The service connects printers to Google's cloud, though it's worth noting that the service is as yet in beta, which means Chrome will need to be in play as well to make the whole thing work.

Image via Google

Additionally, Google took a step to make cloud printing a little easier thanks to the recent launch of Google Cloud Printer for Windows, which means that any application on a computer can use Cloud Print thanks to Google Cloud Printer's ability to act like a printer driver. Thanks to this set of tools, it even becomes possible to manage the activities of printers, including limiting the number of pages that can be printed per day.

Of course, it still being in beta and all means that there are likely to be a few issues in the process, and these will likely go away the farther along the system goes and gets closer to a full version. Still, in the short term, this is likely to prove valuable for those who need to print and from various devices. This is also likely to benefit companies that use a BYOD philosophy and need a way to print from a variety of different devices, as this looks like it would do a sound job of offering multiple devices ways to print.

While Google Cloud Print may not be the solution to everyone's printing issues, chances are it will likely be a major help to some, so looking into Google Cloud Print could be a very worthwhile practice indeed.