Managing all the printers centrally (e.g. shared from a Print Server) is
usually the most effective solution.
15 printers and 70 workstations is not a "large" installation. Print
Serving is a low resource utilization process, so having the 15 printers
shared from your file server should not be an issue. For example, we have
an old server (PII 266 with 96 MB RAM - NT 4 SP5) that does file and print
sharing just fine for 100 workstations and over 20 printers. .
Connect the printers to the LAN via either their internal LAN adapter or
external LAN adapters (HP Jet Direct or equivalent) and share the printers
from the print server.
It's pretty easy to add the printers as Network Printers on the workstations
after you have them set up on the print server computer (see
http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/NetPrinterAllUsers.htm that works quite
well).
--
Bruce Sanderson MVP
It is perfectly useless to know the right answer to the wrong question.
"RYan" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:043301c33c30$f684f030$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hello, I am going to be implementing windows 2003 active
> directory into our law office. the questions I have is how
> can I incorporate an effective printing environment. I
> currently have printers connected via lpt1 port shared
> through win 98 in a large workgroup of 70 machines. What I
> was thinking I could do is go to active directory but I
> dont really want to have all the print jobs spooled to the
> 2003 file server. I was thinking of getting print servers
> so we can connect via tcpip. Am I able to load printers on
> individual machines still in an active directory
> environment or is there a better way to do this. I have 15
> printers in a 70 user network.
>
> Thanks