[jeystone]

Could some one point me in the direction of how to set up a print erver on a NAS box please.

My setup is a wireless network, 2 Laptops a wireless lexmark 1400 promter and a sumvision 500 GB Nas Box.

Thanks

[spot]

Most people would install the printer driver on each computer in the network and have each computer use the printer directly, without the server being involved.

The reason for involving the server is if you want to have one or more print queues that you can administer from one computer. All the computers in the network send their print output to the server which queues the jobs and the server is the only computer which talks to the printer. Even if you do it that way, you might still need the printer driver installing on every computer in the network if you want to be able to select all the printer-specific options. Alternatively the printer queue can use a generic printer definition and then translate all the print jobs to the lexmark 1400 options when the print queues are sent to the printer.

If you do want print queues on the Sumvision server then it's all down to what operating system's installed on it.

Which way do you want to go? Do you need more information in order to decide, or am I telling you stuff you know?

[jeystone]

Thats fine thanks spot. Thought you could just install the printer on the nas to avoid re-installing when other computers join te network or to save re-installing printer after a format etc. Looks like from what you are saying that it cant be done

[spot]

The program writing the print output has to know what control language to address the printer with. Either it talks to the printer in the printer's native built-in control language or the program has to output an intermediate set of controls (like, perhaps, Postscript) and leave it to the print queue to know how to interpret that to the printer itself.

Either way, the program has to pick up a printer driver, either the real one for the printer or, in the example, the Postscript one.

The Postscript route was often used on Unix computers where the printer manufacturer only wrote a Microsoft driver. It still works but it's no longer the only route, and it was never a reason on an all-Microsoft network. The reason operators use queues is when there's lots of users, few printers and many changes of stationery. I'd think of it as a hangover from the days of mainframes, though I'm sure it's still needed in peculiarly intense environments.