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Lesson 1: Introducing Windows 2000 Printing

With Windows 2000 printing, you can share printing resources across an entire network and administer printing from a central location. You can easily set up printing on client computers running Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, Windows 98, and Windows 95.

After this lesson, you will be able to

• Define Microsoft Windows 2000 printing terms.

Estimated lesson time: 15 minutes

Terminology

Before you set up printing, become familiar with Windows 2000 printing terminology to understand how the different components fit together, as shown in Figure 12.1.

Figure 12.1 Printing terminology

If you are new to Windows 2000, you might find some of the printing terminology to be different from what you expected. The following list defines a few Windows 2000 printing terms:

• Printer. A printer is the software interface between the operating system and the print device. The printer defines where a document will go to reach the print device (that is, to a local port, a port for a network connection, or a file), when it will go, and how various other aspects of the printing process will be handled. When users make connections to printers, they use printer names, which point to one or more print devices.
• Print device. A print device is the hardware device that produces printed documents.

Windows 2000 supports the following print devices:



• Local print devices, which are connected to a physical port on the print server.
• Network-interface print devices, which are connected to a print server through the network instead of a physical port. Network-interface print devices require their own network interface cards and have their own network address, or they are attached to an external network adapter.



• Printer port. A printer port is the software interface through which a computer communicates with a print device by means of a locally attached interface.

Windows 2000 supports these interfaces: line printer (LPT), COM, USB, and network-attached devices such as the HP JetDirect and Intel NetPort.

• Print server. A print server is the computer on which the printers that are associated with local and network-interface print devices reside. The print server receives and processes documents from client computers. You set up and share network printers on print servers.
• Printer driver. A printer driver is one or more files containing information that Windows 2000 requires to convert print commands into a specific printer language, such as PostScript. This conversion makes it possible for a print device to print a document. A printer driver is specific to each print device model.

The requirements for setting up printing on a Windows 2000 network include the following:

• At least one computer to operate as the print server. If the print server will manage many heavily used printers, Microsoft recommends a dedicated print server. The computer can run either of the following:


• Windows 2000 Server, which can handle a large number of connections and supports Macintosh and UNIX computers and NetWare clients.
• Windows 2000 Professional, which is limited to 10 concurrent connections from other computers for file and print services. It doesn't support Macintosh computers or NetWare clients, but it does support UNIX computers.



• Sufficient RAM to process documents.

If a print server manages a large number of printers or many large documents, the server might require additional RAM beyond what Windows 2000 requires for other tasks. If a print server doesn't have sufficient RAM for its workload, printing performance deteriorates.

• Sufficient disk space on the print server to ensure that Windows 2000 can store documents that are sent to the print server until the print server sends the documents to the print device.

This is critical when documents are large or likely to accumulate. For example, if 10 users send large documents to print at the same time, the print server must have enough disk space to hold all of the documents until the print server sends them to the print device. If there isn't enough space to hold all of the documents, users will get error messages and be unable to print.

Before you set up network printing, develop a network-wide printing strategy to meet users' printing needs without unnecessary duplication of resources or delays in printing. Table 12.1 provides some guidelines for developing a network printing strategy.

Table 12.1 Network Printing Environment Guidelines

Lesson Summary

In this lesson, your learned that in Windows 2000 terminology, a printer is the software interface between the operating system and the print device. The print device is the hardware device that produces printed documents. Windows 2000 supports local print devices, which are connected to a physical port on the print server, and network-interface print devices, which are connected to a print server through the network instead of through a physical port.

You also learned that a print server is a computer running either Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server on which the printers reside. The print server receives and processes documents from client computers. You set up and share network printers on print servers. A printer driver is one or more files containing information that Windows 2000 requires to convert print commands into a specific printer language, such as PostScript. This conversion makes it possible for a print device to print a document. A printer driver is specific to each print device model.

Finally, you learned that the requirements for setting up printing on a Windows 2000 network include at least one computer to operate as the print server. If the print server will manage many heavily used printers, Microsoft recommends that you use a dedicated print server. A print server running Windows 2000 Professional is limited to 10 concurrent connections from other computers for file and print services, and it doesn't support Macintosh computers or NetWare clients but does support UNIX computers.