scheduling printers

scheduling printers is a technique you can use to help manage the flow of print jobs on your windows 2003 network. scheduling a printer means assigning the hours a specific print device available for use by a specific printer.

when scheduling a printer the hours of availability apply only to the print device, not to the printer. this means that users can print to the printer at any time during the day. and the printer then spools the jobs to the hard disk. however the print jobs are sent to the print device only during the print device's hours of availability.

so why should you want to schedule a printer? well, suppose that you are the administrator for a small network that has 20 windows computers. the owner of the company recently brought a laser print device for network printing, and doesn't want to spend any more money on print devices. one of the employees occasionally generates a print jobs that is 500 to 600 pages long. this report ties up the one available print device for a long time, frustrating other employees. the large reports are for archival and reference purposes, and are not needed immediately.

you solve the problem by scheduling printers. first you create second printer that prints to the laser print device.the you schedule the new printer so that it only sends print jobs to the print devices during non business hours. you instruct the employee who creates the large print jobs to use the new printer for large print jobs. the result is that the employee can generates large print jobs at any time without inconveniencing other employees. the large print jobs are spooled to the hard disk, and then sent to the print device during non business hours.