Introduction to Computers Printer Configuration

Printer Configuration Definitions In Windows, a printer is not actually a physical printer device, it is a logical software entity, and consists of three components - Print Device, Print Driver, and a Print Spooler Print device The physical device connected to the print server where print output occurs Print driver The software that allows the printer to communicate with the print device Translate data into a recognizable form for the given printer Converts graphics into the appropriate printer commands Allow display and management of the print job in the operating system Print Spooler Software that manages the print queue and sends jobs to the print device Print queue The portion of the hard drive where print jobs are stored before going to the print device

USB Connection Printers are connected to a local PC using a USB, a wireless, or an Ethernet connection. If you're using a USB connection with Windows 7 and 8 install the printer drivers for the printer before you connect the printer to the computer to make sure your system has all the drivers it needs when the printer is plugged in. The printer should come with a CD full of applications and drivers that need to be installed before you install the printer For a USB connection with Windows 10 If your printer connects to your PC using a USB cable, all you have to do is plug the printer in. Your printer will connect automatically, and your PC will download the right drivers so you can begin printing

Test Page After you've set up the system, the first thing to do is to print a test page This is important because if the wrong driver is set up, then everything will look correct, but if you send a document to the printer, it could print the raw data instead of the formatted pages If the test page prints properly, the next step is to calibrate your printer. There are two different types of calibrations that need to be done, color testing and cartridge alignment

Color Test One calibration test that may be necessary is to test the colors from the printer This can be done by comparing the colors that are being printed against a test image on your monitor. There are many images online designed for this purpose Note that this is only effective if the monitor colors are being displayed correctly. If you want to test that, there are applications available Depending on the printer driver and the type of printer, there will be some type of interface provided in the driver or the management software that will allow you to customize the colors until you get the best match between the printout and the image that's displayed on the screen

Aligning Cartridges You may also need to align the ink or toner cartridges when a new one is installed. If the printer cartridges are misaligned, you'll see odd looking colors because the colors aren't mixing correctly, and you may see ghosting The process for aligning the printer depends upon the type of printer, and the printer manufacturer. Usually the process consists of using a special utility that comes with the printer to print out an alignment test page, and you'll be asked to identify which image lines up the best. This tells your printer driver how to align the ink or toner from the four color chambers, to print properly Many printers use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black in various proportions to create different colors Some very low end color printers will mix the other colors together in huge quantities instead of using a black cartridge. Avoid these at all cost

Printing Process When you send a print job to the logical printer, the application on the workstation sends the print job to the print spooler The print spooler then works with the driver to reformat the data from the application into a language that the print device up here can understand, for example PostScript, PCL, or another proprietary print language After that's done, it stores the print job in a file on the hard drive. At that point, the job is said to have been spooled. The spooler then waits for the print device to be available. When it is available, the print job will move from the spool and be sent to the print device, which will actually create the paper document

Virtual Printing You can also save a print job as a file, instead of as a physical document Microsoft offers Microsoft Print to PDF and XPS Document Writer as virtual print options. This is a way to create a file that will show standardized output on multiple machines with minimal formatting errors You can also select “print to file” when trying to use a printer. This creates a print job like it was being sent to the printer, but stores it as a file on the hard drive This is useful for archival and sending a file to be printed on a different computer, but note that the printer used has to have the same printer driver as the printer chosen when the file was created, or it won’t print correctly