Overview

• Printer Overview

• Installing and Managing Printers

• Managing Fax Printers and Shared Fax Services

• Group Policy for Printers

The End Result

In this chapter, we ll focus on managing printers on your Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 network. You ll learn some of the fundamental concepts about printers in a Windows environment. Next, you ll learn how to install and manage network printers, how to audit printer activity, and how to set Group Policy for printers. You ll also learn about the fax features in SBS 2003, since printing and faxing are first cousins.

Printer Overview

Let s start off with a bit of architecture the software kind (for those of you expecting a tour of medieval castles of Europe, sorry to disappoint you). Printers are connected either to client computers, servers, or directly to the network. As you probably know, printers come in many flavors. The two most commonly used printers these days are laser printers and inkjet printers. Older impact-type printers (those that slam something into a ribbon that slams into the paper to make the characters) are still in use in many companies, though their popularity is waning, as the cost of laser printers has dropped dramatically over the years. Color laser printers are now affordable as well, blurring the once distinct line between high quality black and white output (laser) and high quality color output (inkjet).

Many companies elect to place printers in two ways. In locations where confidential information is frequently printed, it makes sense to install low-end laser or inkjet...