Personal Computer Fundamentals
Printing Documents
In this lesson, you will learn:
One way to print a document is simply to drag and drop it onto a printer object on your desktop. To do that, you need to place the printer shortcut in an area of your desktop where you can drag files onto it for fast printing. To create a desktop printer shortcut, see the lesson on Creating Shortcuts.
Create a shortcut to the printer and place it in an easy to access location. Then re-size the windows so you can easily see the shortcut and drag the file onto it.
Here'show the drag and drop method works once you have created the shortcut.
Suppose you have a number of documents you want to print, but you have to leave the office area. In each program, you would have to load each document and press 'Print' on the file menu, which could take some time. You could also right click each file and select print, but this also opens up the file momentarily to print it, which can take considerable time for some programs.
Using the drag and drop technique, you can select a group of documents to print and drag them all onto the printer object. Note: to select multiple files, hold the control key while clicking on each file you want, or the Shift key to select contiguous files at once. When you droo them you will get a warning dialog box informing you that you are trying to print multiple files at once. Since this is what you want, the warning is actually also serving as a confirmation that all is well and the PC is behaving the way you want it to. Clicking 'Yes' will send them all to the printer. They will start printing in the order you selected them.
Another trick is to use 'Send To'. This is simply a quick alternative to the drag and drop techniques described earlier.If you ever have had problems dragging files or arranging windows for drag and drop, a technique like 'Send To' can save you a lot of time. 'Send To' saves you the trouble of dragging files onto folders that are not open or opening another window just to copy or print a file. Every document has the option of where to send the file to. 'Send To' is found on the context menu. You can see this by Right Clicking the file and choosing 'Send To' or on File > Send To.
Send To can include "My Documents, Disk Drives both local to the computer and Network, Printers and Fax-Printers, Programs, compressed folders, the Desktop and mail programs, like Outlook, Outlook Express etc.
To add or remove items in the Send To Folder follow these steps:
NOTE: If you want to add a location to the SendTo menus of other users on the computer, you do not have to repeat these steps, you can copy the shortcut into the other users' SendTo folders.
The location can be selected from the drop down list to include what ever you have installed on the computer. You can (and should) add the option for your printer if it is not already there. Rename the printer by removing "shortcut to" from the name.
Open the 'Run' program (Start > Run) and enter sendto and click ok. Use Drag and Drop (right click and drag then drop) to create a SHORTCUT to the object. As mentioned above, you can also send to CD, Floppy or USB Disk or Desktop Shortcut, or to My Documents Folders.
You can also navigate to the Documents and settings folder, click on the profile name for how you are logged in (or all users) and click on the 'Send To' folder and add objects into it.
Removing items from 'Send To' is done the same way. Simply open the folder and delete the shortcut, or Run > SendTo and delete the shortcut from there.
You can check the status of print jobs sent to the printer and pause, stop and re- arrange them as needed.
The owner information is important when connected to a network and sharing a printer because it tells you who sent the job. You might need to contact the person to cancel the job if there is a problem.
Click the document in the print queue and choose 'Pause Printing' or 'Cancel Printing' from the Document Menu. 'Pause' will temporarily stop the job and 'Cancel' stops the job and then removes it from the queue. To pause all print jobs at once choose 'Pause Printing' from the Printer Menu.
This is where you would set the value for the default printer. If one printer needs ink or maintenance, re-setting the default printer will send any NEW print jobs to the new default printer. To send the documents that are already in process, the presently queued jobs would have to be re-directed to an alternative printer through the properties page.
To delete all print jobs at once choose 'Cancel All Documents' from the 'Document' Menu. To re-arrange the print order, click and drag the print job to the position that you need it above or below another job.
The printer's properties can be changed by choosing 'Properties' from the Printer Menu. The settings changed here will affect THIS PRINT JOB ONLY. Likewise, if you select a print shortcut and change the properties, the changes will only affect the jobs in the queue at this time.
If you click on Start > Settings > Printers and Faxes, the setting changes here will affect ALL of the print jobs from now on.
Regardless of which method you choose, these options allow you to change the port, fax, paper size, orientation, color depth, paper source tray and shading density.
Color in printing is measure ddifferently than colors for rendering photos, because of the properties of light interaction. Color for printing is measured in degrees of intensity of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. Below is a simple chart to show how colors are arrived at for inkjet printers.
| Simple Color Chart for Printing | |||
| MAGENTA | CYAN | YELLOW | |
| MAGENTA | Magenta | Blue | Red |
| CYAN | Blue | Cyan | Green |
| YELLOW | Red | Green | Yellow |
Some printers have only one cartridge, and arrive at black by mixing all of the colors. This, needless to say, is very expensive. Modern Ink-Jet and Bubble Jet printers do have both. However, there is one situation on an All- In- One Printer that can use the color cartridge to print black.
Printers that have a scanner, copier and printer are called All-In-One, and they have a feature that allows you to press the color button to photocopy a black and white document. Why would you do that? Besides being able to print when the black cartridge runs out, you will also notice that the color 'Black' is actually different. So depending on the type of document and the quality that you need, you can choose what is best when you need it
The cost of printers is no longer tied to whether the printer is color or black & white. The home and small office consumer simply will not buy a black and white only printer, as it does not suit their needs. Black & White printers are almost exclusively used in paper documents and the Laser Printers do an excellent job of printing these much faster than an older style Bubble Jet, Desk Jet or the newer Ink Jet printers can.
So why are printers, and especially All-In-One printers, so cheap? Even the casual observer sees that there is no way of developing the newest technology, manufacturing the printer, then marketing it and shipping it for under 100 Dollars. So how do they do it?
Different companies categorize printer Cartridges differently. Lexmark, Epson, Hewlett-Packard and other manufactures all have their own codes that label the cartridge as to which cartridge goes to which printer. But the same cartridges are also labeled according to the amount of ink contained in it. So if, in HPs case, you get a cartridge labeled 'C1823 a',you know it has the least amount of ink. By shipping the printers with "a" cartridges, it guarantees that in 10 more days you spend another 35 dollars on the printer! By not knowing this trick, if you buy another "a" cartridge rather than a "d", you will give the factory an extra 70 dollars within a couple of months!
The bottom line on buying printers is: Cheaper is not necessarily better. Find out about how much ink the printer takes to print a standard sheet. These specs are usually on the sales card or flyer for the printer. If it is not available, buy the printer with the largest physical cartridge, which will hold a larger volume of ink. Refill kits are available for most printers now.
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