Windows 2000 Administration in a Nutshell

Name

printer

Synopsis

A software interface between the operating system and a print device.

Description

Printing terminology in Microsoft Windows can be confusing for users familiar with other operating-system platforms. You should be familiar with these four main terms:

Print device

A piece of hardware that generates printed documents; in common parlance, this is called a "printer.”

Print server

The computer that is actually responsible for managing the print device. The print server receives print jobs from the client machines, formats them accordingly, and passes them to the print device to generate printed output. You need a print server in order for client computers to use a printer over the network.

Tip

Print servers can be computers or dedicated network devices. If you use a computer running Windows 2000 Professional as a print server, you are limited to 10 simultaneous client connections; Windows 2000 Server has no such limit. To make sure your Windows 2000 print server performs effectively, make sure that it has lots of RAM for document processing and disk space for spooling.

Printer

Not a “printer” in the usual sense, but instead a software interface on the client machine that manages the printing process. This is sometimes called a “logical printer” but is usually just referred to as a “printer.” A printer must first be created on a client machine for that machine to be able to print documents. Printers are also used to configure print devices by specifying things like print ...