A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC Fifth Edition Chapter 21 Supporting Printers

2 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition How Printers Work Connect to a PC by parallel, serial, USB, IEEE 1394, or SCSI port, or by infrared, wireless, PC Card, or network connection Can be combined with fax machines, copiers and scanners in the same machine Most often use AC power

3 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Major Categories of Printers Laser (highest quality) Inkjet Dot-matrix ……

4 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Laser Printers The highest quality The most expensive The fastest

5 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Inkjet Printers Use ink-dispersion printing Popular: small and print color inexpensively Most give photo-quality results (eg, PhotoREt II color technology) Paper quality affects quality of printed output Slower than lasers

6 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Inkjet Printer Ink Cartridges

7 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Dot-Matrix Printers Less expensive; lesser quality Print multicopy documents (impact printer) Print head moves across the paper, using pins to shoot against a cloth ribbon and print a matrix of dots If print head fails, buy a new printer

8 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Dot-Matrix Printers

9 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Installing and Sharing a Printer Local printers Network printers Default printer

10 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Hands-on Project: Installing a Local Printer pp. 974

11 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Hands-on Project: Sharing a Printer pp. 975

12 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Hands-on Project: Using a Shared Printer pp

13 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Ways to Make a Printer Available on a Network Attach regular printer to a PC using a port on the PC  PC can share printer with network Connect network printer with embedded logic to manage network communication directly to network with its own NIC Use a print server to control several printers

14 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition How Windows Handles Print Jobs Windows NT/2000/XP or Windows 9x using a PostScript printer  Converts print job data to PostScript language  Windows 2000/XP can also use Printer Control Language (PCL) Windows 9x using a non-PostScript printer  Converts print job data to Enhanced Metafile Format (EMF)

15 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition How Windows Handles Print Jobs ( continued ) Text data lacking embedded control characters is sent as raw data (DOS) Spooling  Printing jobs are placed in a queue, so the applications finish printing ASAP  The queued jobs are served by FCFS (First Come First Serve)