I am considering a TCP/IP print server box (Netgear is in the shops here),
and I will be grateful for some advice on interoperability:-
Which Windows services do they depend on?
You will need TCP/IP installed on any machine which
is going to print directly to the box.
Then configure a TCP/IP printing port in the printer setup.
How do they contend between simultaneous users?
Not very well.
There are 2 ways to set up such boxes.
1) Configure each machine to print directly to the box.
This is simple, but can result in the box falling over with multiple
connections.
I'd use this config only on a small home LAN, up to 3 or 4 machines,
where it's unlikely several users will hit the device simultaneously.
2) Configure only one or two server machines to print to the box directly.
Then share the printer from the server machines.
All the PCs then print via the servers.
This allows the servers to form an orderly queue, and spoon-feed
the boxes in small easily digestible chunks.
I'd always use (2) on a larger network, but this requires an always-on
server.
Can all users cancel jammed print jobs?
Yes, in either configuration.
Although in the server-based configuration it may be necessary for an admin
to go to the server occasionally and clear out the print queue if
Something Bad has happened.
Is there any performance difference between Postscript and bitmap
printers?
Printer performance depends more on the actual printer in question,
than on the language used, in my experience.
We have PCL printers which are agonisingly slow, and PCL printers which have
the page on the output tray before you've finished clicking the OK button.
The same for PS printers. We have fast ones and slow ones.
On printers which can tale PS or PCL, I can't see much difference on which
you use.
If by bitmap printers you mean windows-only printers ( sometimes called GDI
printers ) which are missing the necessary internal processing to accept any
Page Description Language at all, and use windows to rasterise the image,
then these can not normally be used in a network environment easily. The
best place for such printers is in a landfill site.
