When you're installing a printer for the very first
time, you not only need the hardware printer itself, but
you also need the appropriate drivers to use for the
operating system so that it can talk
properly to that printer.
You need to make sure that the printer drivers that you're
getting are exactly the ones you should have for the
operating system you're using.
In some cases, even specific versions of
the operating system.
For example, a Windows XP driver is different than a
Windows 7 driver.
So make sure you know what version of the operating
system you're using and use the appropriate printer driver
for that version.
You also have to make sure you pick exactly the right driver
for the printer that you're installing.
That's because the printer driver has a lot of very
important information in there.
It defines what type of language the printer is using.
Maybe it's using PCL, maybe it's using PostScript, maybe
it's using something different.
The printer driver determines how your computer will talk to
that printer.
It also knows the type of paper trays that are expected
on that printer type.
If there are different colors that printer can support.
Perhaps any fonts that might already be enabled inside of
the printer.
That would certainly enhance any
printouts that you're doing.
And anything else that the printer uses to be able to
finally give you an output from that printing device.
Here's a good example of why choosing the exact printer
driver is so important.
Let's look at these two printers.
This is one that is an Epson ActionLaser 1000.
This other one also a laser jet, an HP LaserJet 8150.
These are two different printers made by two different
manufacturers.
And if we look at the Epson ActionLaser we can see there
is an upper paper tray.
There is a manual paper feed tray.
There is a lower paper tray.
And some font cartridge options which have nothing
installed on them.
Notice the differences on the HP side.
The Hewlett Packard printer has many different paper trays
associated with it.
There's even an envelope feeder along with
the manual feed tray.
So when you send, for instance, information to print
out on a letter and you send that to the Epson ActionLaser
you have the choice of an upper, a manual, and a lower.
When you send that to an HP LaserJet 8150 you can choose
from all of these other options.
And the only way those options would be available to you on
the screen is if you had installed the
proper printer driver.
If you're connecting to a wired printer you may see a
number of different interfaces being used.
If you are using point of sale type printers, you may see
something like a serial port being used.
We don't commonly see serial ports being used on our
desktop computers or our laptop computers.
It's something that is very specific to point of sale.
On our desktop systems commonly in the past we have
used something like a parallel connection with this
Centronics connector on the back of the printer.
And usually there is a parallel 25 pin connection
that is plugging into the computer.
These days that's more of a legacy connection.
They're very big 25 pin connectors, and usually you
don't see those on laptop computers where the amount of
real estate on that particular device is at such a premium.
Commonly these days we're seeing something like USB.
USB has turned into this very common interface that we would
use for almost everything.
We use it for our keyboards.
We use it for our mouse.
We can also, of course, use it for our printers, as well.
And if you're plugging in a modern wired printer to your
computer it's probably going to use USB.
Another way to connect a printer using a wire is to
plug in an ethernet connection.
You can get something like a print server like this one
that has an ethernet connection on one end so you
can plug into the network and have everyone access the
printer that you then plug in onto this USB connection.
So this allows you to connect the computer as you normally
would through a USB.
But instead of plugging that USB connection into your
computer you're plugging it into this print server that
everyone on the network would have access to.
Just as there are many interfaces used for printing
on a wired computer, there's also many ways to print
wirelessly.
One legacy method of wireless printing is infrared.
This is commonly seen as IrDA which stands for the Infrared
Data Association.
This used a line of sight between your mobile device or
your computer to the printer itself.
And although it was used for a short period of time, the
infrared had too many limitations associated with
it, drivers that had to be loaded, printers that needed
to support it, and eventually it was a technology that was
phased out.
If you have a mobile device that can communicate via
Bluetooth you might want to look at connecting to a
Bluetooth enabled printer.
A Bluetooth printer is using this personal area network.
It's not a huge network.
Once you get a number of yards away, the network is not
accessible any longer.
Those two devices can't communicate to each other.
But generally when you're printing to a printer that
might be in your office, it's in a relatively short
distance from you.
That way you don't have to have any wires
going to the printer.
You could be relatively mobile.
And the speed and connectivity to the printer is somewhere
between one to three megabits per second so you still get
very good throughput even though you're
using a wireless network.
But perhaps the most common wireless printing technology
available today is 802.11.
That is the standard that we tend to use for everything.
For our mobile devices, for our laptop machines, and also
for our printers.
Our printers might have an antenna right on the side of
them that's able to communicate via standard
802.11a, b, g, or n.
And that way we're able to use standards that we already have
in our laptops and our desktops to be able to
naturally communicate directly to the printer without having
any type of wire or any type of print server in between.
If you have installed a printer and you've connected
it to your computer you still have the option in Microsoft
Windows to share that printer with everybody else who might
be on the network.
That way you can connect your printer to your device, but
anybody else in the office would be able to
print to that printer.
In Windows XP you would do this
through the control panel.
You would choose printers and faxes.
You would right click the printer, choose the properties
for the printer, and inside of that will be a sharing tab
that you can enable the sharing
capabilities for that printer.
Here's our Windows XP desktop.
To find that particular setting you can go either to
the control panel and then go to all of your
printers and faxes.
Or you can simply start at the Start menu and choose printers
and faxes and go to the same place.
If I right mouse click the printer you will see the
properties option at the very bottom.
And inside that properties option is the sharing tab.
And this is what allows you to share that printer.
You can give that printer a name.
And then everyone on the network would be able to see
that printer and be able to use it just by browsing
through it on the network and connecting to it through a
network link.
In Windows 7 it's a similar configuration.
Almost in the same exact place.
It's under control panel, devices and printers.
You would right click the printer and choose printer
properties and that's where you will find the sharing tab.
Let's see how this looks.
We'll start at the Start menu.
There is a control panel.
Notice Devices and Printers is also in that Start menu.
But to show you everything we'll go into the control
panel under Devices and Printers, one extra step.
Under Devices and Printers you'll see everything
including all of the printers that you have installed.
This is where we take a little bit of a deviation from the
Windows XP config.
If we right mouse click the printer, the option that will
be available to you is Printer Properties.
If you go all the way down to Properties you will not get a
sharing tab.
Instead you will right mouse click and choose Printer
Properties.
And inside of the Printer Properties will be that
sharing tab.
And it looks almost identical to the sharing tab you have in
Windows XP.
It's very common in large environments for many
different kinds of operating systems to need access to
different resources.
And one of the things that can make things a little bit
easier for everyone else in the office is that if you load
the printer drivers for your printer right onto your
computer for all of those different operating systems.
That way when a 64-bit operating system connects
they'll be able to download the drivers directly from your
computer rather than having to go out to a Windows site or
the manufacturer's site to find out where there's
drivers might be.