In this chapter:
PC's and printers go together like ham and eggs as long as they're set up correctly...
The screen is a great place to create and edit documents, but when it's time to share them with others, you don't want to lug your monitor all over the office. And one of the most important jobs Windows NT does is to make sure that you can capture your work on paper for other people to see.
It's not a small job, either. With the right software, you can create some impressively complex documents--filled with fancy fonts, all manner of lines and boxes, and eye-grabbing graphics using a full palette of colors. If your printer and Windows don't have perfect communication, there's no telling what will wind up on the page.
Best of all, you don't have to have your own printer, because Windows NT lets two or more people share a printer over a network. Your company might not be able to justify an expensive color printer for just one person, but it starts to make a lot more sense when ten people can share it.
As long as you set up your printer properly and keep it filled with paper and toner, and as long as your documents are relatively simple--letters and memos on plain ol' 8-1/2 by 11 paper--you shouldn't ever have to think about it. But it helps if you have a basic understanding of how Windows NT works with a printer.
The goal of printing, of course, is to be perfectly WYSIWYG--which is pronounced whizzy-wig and means What You See (on the screen) Is What You Get (on paper). Here's how it works:
After you get your screen looking just right, you tell Windows to print the job. Right away, it looks to see that you have a printer hooked up; then it looks for the driver for that printer.
Plain English, please!This printer isn't a car, so why does it have a driver? Ahem. A driver is a special piece of software that lets your computer talk intelligently with a piece of hardware. In this case the printer driver acts like a PC-to-printer dictionary for Windows. Your PC is filled with drivers; fortunately, you rarely have to think about them.
All the printer settings are gathered in one folder; to find it, choose Settings
on the Start menu.
This all happens very fast, which is good news for your speedy PC, but lousy news for your printer, which actually has a lot of physical work to do while it handles the paper. There's no way the printer can keep up with the PC, so Windows puts the job in a special holding area called a print queue, and dribbles it out, a little bit at a time, to the printer.
When you set up a new printer, you're really installing special driver software that tells Windows NT exactly how to turn What You See into What You Get. Fortunately, setting up a new printer ranges from easy to ridiculously easy.
Sorry, no. That other Microsoft operating system, Windows 95, uses a feature called Plug and Play to automatically sniff out your printer and get it talking to Windows like they were old buddies. But as long as you know the make and model of your printer, installing a printer in Windows NT is no problem if you use the Add Printer Wizard.
To begin the step-by-step process, click the Start button, choose Settings, and open the Printers folder. Double-click the Add Printer icon, and you'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 15.1.
Fig. 15.1
Where's that printer? The first thing Windows needs to know is whether the new printer is plugged into your computer or available elsewhere on your company's network.
Follow the wizard's instructions, which will be slightly different depending on whether the printer is local or out on the network.
Plain English, please!A port is the socket on the back of your computer where you plug in the cable that goes to your printer. You have your choice of parallel ports (also known as printer ports) and serial ports (aka communication ports). Except in very rare cases, the correct choice is a parallel port, usually the one called LPT1. Make sure you have the correct printer cable, then connect it securely to the printer and the back of the PC.
Fig. 15.2
Pick a printer port. LPT1 is the most common choice for printers. The COM options identify serial ports, which are more commonly used to hook up modems and mice.
Fig. 15.3
Find the name of the printer and the computer it's attached to. As soon as you select it from this list, Windows NT fills in the box at the top.
Fig. 15.4
Windows NT can install a printer driver automatically, but this process doesn't always work. If you see this message, you'll need to find your own copy of the printer software.
CAUTION: Be careful to choose the right printer driver. Even subtle differences in a model name or number can have a big impact on your print jobs. For example, there are 22 different printers whose names include "HP LaserJet 4." Use the wrong driver, and you might not be able to use some of the special features you bought the printer for in the first place!
Fig. 15.5
Make the printer name as descriptive and helpful as possible. Even a temp could probably find this printer...once he found the right office.
When you first install a new printer, Windows offers to print a test page for you. Just say yes! This is the best way to make sure that the printer works correctly. Later, if you have any problems, come here (see Fig. 15.6) and print another test page to determine whether the problem is with your printer or your application.
Fig. 15.6
Is your printer hooked up correctly? To find out, right-click on its icon in the Printers folder, choose Properties, then click the Print Test Page button.
Hey, this isn't the Late Show with David Letterman. No Stupid Printer Tricks, please!
But it's true that every printer is different, and you may find that your printer is capable of doing some Smart Printer Tricks. The best way to find out is to right-click the printer icon, choose Properties, and click the Device Settings tab. What will you find? Lots and lots of settings, as the dialog box in Figure 15.7 shows.
You'll find all the routine information about your printer here--its name, port, and location, for example. But, depending on the kind of printer, you may also find some surprises.
Fig. 15.7
If your printer has more than one paper tray, you can tell Windows NT exactly which size you store in which tray, along with many other options.
Plain English, please!If you look in the printer properties sheet, you'll see references to the enhanced metafile format, sometimes abbreviated as EMF. That's the ten-dollar name for the temporary file that Windows creates and then sends to your printer. A very small number of printers can't handle EMFs.
But wait! There's more. Right-click on the printer icon once again, and this time choose Document Defaults from the pop-up menu. You'll run into another long list of options that help you control the way your printer handles each document. These options, like the ones in Figure 15.8, allow you to specify which resolution you'll use for printing (lower resolutions don't look as sharp, but they save toner); tell the printer to automatically make more than one copy unless you say otherwise; even shrink documents down in size, if that feature is available on your printer.
Fig. 15.8
Save a tree, if your printer will let you. The Default Document Properties dialog box lets you print using both sides of the page on certain laser printers.
Eventually, you get everything looking just the way you want it on your screen, complete with fonts and lines and boxes and margins and pie charts and pictures (not the ones from your vacation, please). Of course, you want everything to look exactly the same on the paper as it did on the screen. What do you do now?
With most applications, you can just choose File, Print, or click the Print button. When you do, you'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 15.9, taken from WordPad.
TIP: Many programs offer a Print Preview option. If the program from which you're trying to print gives you this choice, take advantage of it. You can quickly look at what Windows thinks it's going to send to the printer. If it doesn't look the way you expect it to look, fix the problem before you've wasted paper (and time) printing it out the wrong way.
CAUTION: Old Windows programs don't use the same dialog boxes as new ones written especially for Windows 95 and Windows NT, so with these programs you may not be able to set up your pages and printers completely. If you find yourself in this situation, contact the company that made the program and ask it if it has a new version designed for Windows NT.
Fig. 15.9
Choose File, Print; most applications will show you a dialog box like this one.
When you buy a new printer, you can choose from literally thousands of different models. But eventually it all comes down to a single choice: Do you want to use the PostScript language? Or will you be more comfortable with the Hewlett-Packard language?
No, you don't have to actually learn a foreign language to use one of these printers. The Windows printer drivers take care of these translations for you. But there are differences between the two types of printers.
PostScript is the most common language among people who do desktop publishing. If anyone you know uses an Apple Macintosh, chances are it's hooked up to an Apple LaserWriter, the best-known PostScript printer. It's not super fast, but a PostScript printer lets you print complex graphics with beautiful results. If you plan to make your own newsletters, this is your choice.
The Hewlett-Packard Page Control Language (PCL) is the way that LaserJets and most ink-jet printers talk to Windows. The graphics aren't as good-looking as the ones that come out of a PostScript printer, but these printers are fast and can handle just about any job you can throw at them.
There's a third standard, too, for old, noisy dot-matrix printers, but these are becoming less common. And there's even a fourth standard, for ink-jet printers, although these are more common at home than in the office.
Most printers, no matter who manufactured them, use one or both of these languages.
If you can't find your printer on the official list of Windows NT drivers, look at
the printer manual and see whether it emulates one of these printers. If it does,
you can choose the Apple LaserWriter II NT or the Hewlett-Packard LaserJet III and
be very happy with the results.
When you tell Windows NT to print (either by choosing a menu item or clicking a button) it starts a complicated process that would make a rocket scientist proud. And something can go wrong at any of these steps.
| What Windows does | What can go wrong | How to fix it |
| Matches up fonts. With non-TrueType fonts, you need both a screen font and printer font. Windows uses the screen font to show you how the document will look, and the printer font to print it. | The fonts you see on the screen don't match the ones on the printed pages. | Replace the fonts that aren't printing properly with TrueType fonts. |
| Converts graphics on the screen into dot patterns that your printer can print. | Graphics are missing or don't look right. | The printer may need more memory to handle complex graphics. Try printing at a lower resolution. |
| Looks to see whether you've issued any special instructions, like extra copies or two-sided | You asked for two-sided printing, but nothing appened. |
This feature is only available on some printers when a special hardware option is installed. printing. |
| Sends the job to the print queue at the right speed. | Pages are missing, especially sections with graphics, because Windows waits longer | Check the printer properties and increase the timeout setting so printer can't keep up for the for the printer to finish.with the PC. |
Plain English, please!A print queue is the name for the line that your print jobs wait in. In a busy office, print jobs stack up like 747s waiting to land at O'Hare Airport. When print jobs are coming from every direction, Windows NT makes like an air traffic controller and keeps each job in a holding pattern until the printer is ready; then it waves the next job through and lets each job in turn make a safe final approach to the printer. The process of doling out print jobs at just the right speed is called spooling.
Q&A: My fonts don't look right on the printed page. What went wrong?
You chose a non-TrueType font that isn't available on your printer. (For more information about TrueType fonts, skip to the next chapter.) When that happens, Windows looks around for another font and tries to print using this font instead. If the results of this substitution process aren't good enough for you, choose a new font, preferably one with the TT (TrueType) symbol next to it.
You wanted zig, but Windows NT set up the printer for zag. It happens, because Windows has at least two settings for each piece of paper. With standard American 8-1/2 by 11-inch paper, you can print in portrait mode (with the long edge going from top to bottom, the way letters typically are printed) or in landscape mode, which is what happens when you give that same piece of paper a quarter turn so the long edge runs from left to right. (Some printer drivers include a setting called landscape 2, in which the paper rotates a quarter-turn in the opposite direction.)
Changing orientation between portrait and landscape is easy with new Windows NT applications (including Paint and WordPad). Just choose File, Page Setup to see a dialog box like the one in Figure 15.10. Can't remember which is portrait and which is landscape? Just click the appropriate button and the graphic at the top of the box shifts to give you the answer.
Fig. 15.10
Choose File, Page Setup to pick a new paper type and orientation. The graphic at the top reminds you that landscape is sideways.
When you print to a shared printer, especially a slow one like a color printer, you sometimes have to wait in line while other jobs work their way through the printer. But sometimes delays are caused by hardware problems: The printer might be out of paper, jammed, or just not turned on. (Don't laugh-- it happens.) You won't know exactly why your print job is moving like rush hour traffic on an L.A. freeway unless you check your place in the print queue.
Did I say freeway? Actually, the print queue is more like a one-lane highway. When four or five people try to print at once, only one job gets to actually go to the printer at a time. The others have to slow down, line up single-file, and wait their turns. If you tell Windows to pause one of the jobs, though, traffic doesn't come screeching to a halt. Instead, Windows moves on to the next job in the list if it can.
Double-click on the printer icon in the Printers folder and you'll see a list of all the jobs waiting to be printed, including yours (see Fig. 15.11).
Fig. 15.11
There's no traffic jam here, because the lower documents are able to continue printing even when the top document is paused.
Here's what you need to know about print queues:
TIP: Every time you send a job to the printer, Windows NT puts a tiny printer icon into the notification area at the right of the taskbar. To see all the jobs that are waiting in the queue, double-click on this icon.
Sooner or later, it happens to everyone: You send a big job (40 pages? 100? 400?) to the printer, and the instant you finish clicking the Print button you realize that you left out a paragraph on page 1. You could just let the printer chew through all those pages, then throw everything away and start over. But if you're quick enough, you can jump in right now and stop everything.
You have to be quick, though, because you can only cancel a print job if the job is still in the queue. Open the printer window, select the job, right-click, and choose Cancel Printing from the shortcut menu (see Fig. 15.12). If you don't want to kill the job, but just want to stop it temporarily, choose Pause Printing instead.
Fig. 15.12
To kill a print job, open the printer window, select the job, right-click, and choose Cancel.
TIP: Want to make sure you can always see where you stand in the line for the printer? Add the printer icon to your Startup folder. First, open the Printers folder. Then use the Find command on the Start menu to search for and open your StartUp folder. Drag the printer icon from the Printers folder into the StartUp folder and restart Windows NT. Now, every time you start up your computer, the printer window will open automatically. All you have to do is click its taskbar button to look at the queue or cancel a print job.
What makes printing on a network different? Not much, except that you'll probably have to walk down the hall to get your job instead of reaching a few feet away from your desk. On your company's network, you can hook up a printer to any PC (even yours) and share it among everyone on the network. Here's how.
If there's a printer out there that you want to use, it's easy to get connected. If your network administrator or another Windows user has given you the rights to use the printer, you just need to find its icon, point, and click. Here are step-by-step instructions:
Before you can let other people use your printer, you have to agree to share it with them. Here's how:
Click the Start button and choose Settings, Printers to open the Printers folder. Right-click on the printer you want to let other people use, and choose Sharing. You'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 15.13. To tell Windows who can and can't use the printer, click the Security tab and click the Permissions button.
Fig. 15.13
Before you can let others send jobs to your printer, you have to tell Windows it's OK to share it with others. Right-click the printer's icon and choose Sharing to pop up this dialog box.
Click OK, and Windows adds a little outstretched hand to the bottom of the printer's icon. Now, other people can share your printer, although you can restrict access by only letting selected users have permission to use your printer.
TIP: If you want your assistant to be able to send jobs to your laser printer but you really hate the idea of having other people share it, hide it! When Windows asks you to give the share a name, add a dollar sign to the end--LaserJet4$, for example. When Windows sees the dollar sign, it knows to hide the printer in the Network Neighborhood on other machines. Anyone who knows the secret name can still hook up to the printer by typing it in, but no one will be able to browse through the network and see it.
You can tell Windows to add a separator page every time it starts a new print job. It wastes one sheet of paper for each job you send to the printer, but in a big office it can be the only way to make sure your print jobs don't wind up on someone else's desk by mistake.
TIP: You can only control the option for separator pages if the printer is attached directly to your computer. If you want Windows to print a special page to help you spot the beginning of each new document you print on a shared printer, you'll have to ask the owner of the PC to which the printer is hooked up.
To turn this feature on, right-click the printer's icon, and look on the General properties tab. You'll find a selection of ready-made separator pages in the System32 folder, inside the Winnt folder.
There's a special variant of Murphy's Law that applies to shared printers. Let's say you're late for a meeting where you're supposed to present the sales results for the last quarter. You've sent the job to the printer, but it's not coming out. You check the print queue and discover that Bob in Accounting has 27 big jobs stacked up, and it might be hours before they all finish printing.
What do you do? Hey--it's time to cut in line in front of Bob. (Don't worry, he'll probably understand.)
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