Managing Local and Network Print Devices

You manage print devices in Windows XP Professional from the Printers And
Faxes folder, which is accessible from the Control Panel, or by clicking Start|Printers
And Faxes. When working with printing in Windows XP, you need to fully understand
the following printing terminology as defined by Microsoft:
➤ Printer—A software interface between the operating system and a print device.
It defines ports through which print jobs get routed. Printer names direct
print jobs to one or more print devices.
➤ Print device—A piece of equipment (hardware) that physically produces printed
documents. A print device may be attached to a local computer or connected
via a network interface.
➤ Printer port—A software interface through which print jobs get directed to
either a locally attached print device, or a network-connected print device.
Windows XP supports local line printer terminal (LPT), COM (serial), and
Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports. It also supports network-connected printer
port devices such as the Intel NetPort and the Hewlett-Packard (HP) JetDirect.
➤ Print server—A computer that serves as the host for printers that are associated
with print devices.
➤ Printer driver—Software specific to each print device (designed to run in
Windows XP) that translates printing commands into printer language codes
for each print device. PCL5 and PostScript are examples of two types of printer
languages.
➤ Print job—The actual document to be printed along with the necessary print
processing command.
➤ Print resolution—What determines the quality and smoothness of the text or
images that the print device will render. This specification is expressed in dots
per inch (dpi). Higher dpi numbers generally result in better print quality.
➤ Print spooler—The process (service) that runs in the background of Windows
XP that initiates, processes, and distributes print jobs. The spooler saves print
jobs into a temporary physical file on disk. Print jobs are then despooled and
transferred to the appropriate print device.
➤ Print queue—A logical “waiting area” where print jobs are temporarily stored
until the print device is available and ready to process each job according to
the job’s priority level, and according to its order within the queue.