Windows 95 printer adjustments

Printers are available to application programs, such as QuickBooks, if they are installed in the Windows system. Installation of printers is part of computer setup. This section describes adjustments in Windows 95. The next section discusses adjustments in Windows 3.1 The several screens involved have not been illustrated. They are not difficult to follow.

Begin in My Computer by clicking on Control Panel. Click on the Printers icon. In the Printers window, right -click on the subject printer, then click on Properties. The Properties window accesses the printer controls.

Details tab brings a window which probably can stand as is. Click on the Spool Settings button to go on to the fourth dungeon and get these choices:

Spool print jobs ... means XE "spooling" that the application (QuickBooks) formats the print job, and writes it to a hard drive file. Windows reads it from the hard drive and prints it. If spooling is used, ... after last page ... lets you get back to work most quickly, but requires the most hard drive space. If disk space is limited, ... after first page ... uses less space. Considering prices of large hard drives, such a problem should not be difficult to solve. Print directly ... gets the printing done sooner, but you can’t get back to work on other things until the entire print job has been completed by the printer.

Paper tab brings up the view of paper choices shown above in Print Reports.

Fonts tab probably (depending on printer) has some choices about downloading TrueType? fonts. Outline soft fonts are most efficient, if available. The next best choice is bitmap soft fonts. Graphics will be slow.

Windows 95 is generally effective at setting up optimized conditions. In most cases, the defaults can be used. When problems are encountered, try changing some of the above settings.