Printers

Use the System window to find out if a 32-bit or 64-bit OS is installed.

Parallel ports, commonly used by older printers, transmit data in parallel, eight bits at a time.

Whenever you service the inside of this printer, as a last step always carefully clean the LED erase lamps on the inside of the top cover

Extra memory can speed up memory performance, reduce print errors, and prevent Out of Memory errors.

A laser printer is a type of electrophotographic printer that can range from a small, personal desktop model to a large, network printer capable of handling and printing large volumes continuously.

Laser printers require the interaction of mechanical, electrical, and optical technologies to work.

The seven steps of laser printing are: (1) Processing the image (2) Charging or conditioning (3) Exposing or writing (4) Developing (5) Transferring (6) Fusing and (7) Cleaning.

One bitmap image is produced for monochrome images. For color images, one bitmap is produced for each of four colors.

Text data that contains no graphics or embedded control characters is sent to the printer as is, and the printer can print it without any processing. The data is called raw data.

Routine maintenance and troubleshooting are easier and less expensive on single-purpose printers.

The toner cartridge needs replacing the most often, followed by the image drum, the fuser cartridge, and the transfer assembly, in order.

The pickup roller that pushes forward a sheet of paper from the paper tray.

Impact printers use continuous tractor feeds and fanfold paper (also called computer paper) rather than individual sheets of paper.

Thermal printers use heat to create an image.

To install a local USB printer, all you have to do is plug in the USB printer and Windows 7/Vista installs the printer automatically.

To know the IP address of a network printer, direct the printer to print a configuration page, which should include its IP address.

Windows 7/Vista uses either GDI or XPS for rendering based on the type of printer driver installed.

A bitmap is just a bunch of bits in rows and columns.

Thermal transfer printers are used to print receipts, bar code labels, clothing labels, or container labels.

A local printer connects directly to a computer by way of a USB port, parallel port, serial port, or wireless connection (Bluetooth, infrared, or Wi-Fi). Some printers support more than one method.

A network printer has an Ethernet port to connect directly to the network or uses Wi-Fi to connect to a wireless access point

A network printer is identified on the network by its IP address.

EPP (Enhanced Parallel Port) transmits in both directions.

A parallel cable has a DB25 connection at the PC end of the cable and a 36-pin Centronics connection at the printer end of the cable.

A print server is hardware or software that manages the print jobs sent to one or more printers on a network.

A print server is hardware or software that manages the print jobs sent to one or more printers on a network.

The separation pad that keeps more than one sheet of paper from moving forward.

A printer that is able to print on both sides of the paper is called a duplex printer.

Bubble-jet printers use tubes of ink that have tiny resistors near the end of each tube. These resistors heat up and cause the ink to boil. Then, a tiny air bubble of ionized ink (ink with an electrical charge) is ejected onto the paper.

A stepper motor moves the print head and ink cartridges across the paper using a belt to move the assembly and a stabilizing bar to control the movement

Manufacturers of high-end printers provide printer maintenance kits, which include specific printer components, step-by-step instructions for performing maintenance, and any special tools or equipment you need to do maintenance.

After you have performed the maintenance, be sure to reset the page count so it will be accurate to tell you when you need to do the next routine maintenance.

Weight and brightness are the two primary ways of measuring paper quality.

An impact printer creates a printed page by using some mechanism that touches or hits the paper.

A vacuum cleaner designed to pick up toner is called a toner vacuum.

An inkjet printer might require calibration to align and/or clean the inkjet nozzles.

An inkjet printer uses a type of ink-dispersion printing and does not normally provide the high-quality resolution of laser printers

An inkjet printer uses a print head that moves across the paper, creating one line of the image with each pass.

Several print jobs can accumulate in the queue, and the process is called spooling.

Clean the inside of the printer with a dry cloth and remove dust, bits of paper, and stray toner.

Each row in the bitmap is called a raster line.

GDI draws and formats the page, converting it to bitmap form, and then sends the almost-ready-to-print bitmap to the printer.

Windows can send the commands and data needed to build a page to the printer using the PostScript language by Adobe Systems.

PCL was developed by Hewlett-Packard but is considered a de facto standard in the printing industry.

Parallel ports fall into three categories: Standard Parallel Port (SPP), Enhanced Parallel Port, and Extended Capabilities Port.

Standard Parallel Port (SPP) transmits in only one direction (the computer can communicate with the printer, but the printer cannot communicate with the computer).

A laser printer can produce better quality printouts than a dot matrix printer, even when printing at the same dpi, because it can vary the size of the dots it prints, creating a sharp, clear image. Hewlett-Packard (HP) calls this technology of varying the size of dots REt (Resolution Enhancement technology).

When laser printing, the fuser assembly uses heat and pressure to fuse the toner to the paper.

Remote users will not be able to use a shared printer if the computer sharing the printer is asleep.

You can install a shared printer on a remote computer using one of two methods: (1) Use the Windows 7 Devices and Printers window, the Vista Printer window, or the XP Printers and Faxes window, or (2) use Windows Explorer or the Network or My Network Places window.