Monday, January 28, 2002		Article

Print later with virtual printer
Vipul Verma

THE printer is the most ignored yet one of the most important peripheral of the computer system. It is an important output device and to a large extent helps in operational efficiency as far as the output of the computer is concerned. Despite its many uses, it does not get the same attention like other hardware and peripherals. The word 'attention' has two meanings:

1) The care and attention related to its physical care and maintenance

2) Wide usages for which the printer can be used most effectively.

Now as far as the first point or the physical care and maintenance of the printer is concerned, not much is required at the user end as the printer is a stable peripheral. However, you should protect it from heat, direct sunlight, dust and excessive humidity. So, the best way to take care of your printer is to cover it when it is not in use. Secondly, while using make sure that you have kept the printer on stable and flat surface as otherwise there are chances of unexpected results and also physical damage to the printer. Thirdly, you must be familiar with the worst enemies of the printer. These are clotting of ink, dust and deposits inside your printer including, importantly on the rollers and the slot where the ink cartridge rests, clogging of ink cartridge and jammed papers. You must keep these things in mind and should take adequate care to keep it clean.

For keeping the ink cartridge clean, use the ink cartridge cleaning utility, which is a part of the printer driver is a good idea, especially if you are using the printer after long intervals. Now as far as the second point is concerned, following tips and tricks can really work well for you.

Have you ever been in a situation, when you had to print a file on someone else's printer? Well! You would say that it is not a problem as you will simply copy the file on a floppy and would take it to the computer from which this file is to be printed. However, this is not as easy as said, because your document could get disturbed, if the fonts, which you have used are not present on the other computer. As in this case, your font would be substituted by any other matching font on the other computer and may disturb all formatting of the data.

Moreover, specific settings of the other computer could also affect the document and thus the printing the document could get disturbed. However, in this situation, if you use this tip, then all these problems could be tackled easily. As per this tip, you can direct your output not to the printer but to a file, which can be printed on the target printer. This is called creating the print file. For creating a print file, first of all you have to install the driver of the target printer on the computer. If planning to print the output on a laser printer say, for example, HP1100. Then you should first install the driver for this printer on your system. The driver can be installed by simply clicking on Start>Settings> Printers. Now click on add printer and then under the Add printer Winzard, add the target printer on the computer.

After the printer is installed, right click on its icon in the printers' window and then from the drop down list click on properties. This will open the Properties Window on the computer screen. Here click on the ports tab and then instead of choosing LPT1, choose file option and then click OK. Now, this printer is set to print the output to the file instead of the normal LPT1 or printer. Now open the document that you want to print on the other computer and then from the file menu, click Print menu. Now in the Print window, change the name of the printer to the one on which you plan to print the document and after changing the necessary settings like paper size, print resolution, orientation of the print i.e. Portrait or Landmark etc. click the print button.

You will see that instead of printing the output to the printer, you will be asked to save your print file. Here you can choose the destination where you would like to save the file and give it a name. Once you click OK, your job is done, as a print file would be created, ready to be printed on the target printer. For printing the document on the target printer, you would need to give only one command i.e. print <filename> LPT1 and then press Enter. Now, you will see that the document would be printed easily without any distortion and disturbances.

Sometimes there could be problem in finding out the driver of the target printer or alternatively the output may have to be taken on a number of different printers. In such cases, we have found that the driver for LaserJet IIIP postscript has compatibility for a large number of laser printers. Thus if you compose your file on this printer, then the output can be taken out even through an unknown printer.

There could be another situation, where you do not have the printer ready or you do not have the access to the printer at that moment. In this case you can send documents to a virtual printer, then print them out later when you have access to a printer. To locate the virtual printer on your computer simply open the Printers folder in Control Panel and check Work Offline in the File menu. Now, provided spooling is enabled ( Properties, Details, Spool Settings) and you've installed the printer's drivers, anything you print will be stored on the hard disk. When you return to your printer in the office, go to the File menu and uncheck Work Offline. Windows '98 will sense the connection and initiate a print job. This is a cool way of utilising the printer to the maximum.