Windows 8 In Depth

Printer Pooling

If your network involves heavy-duty printing, you might find that your printers are the bottleneck in getting your work done. One solution is to get faster printers, and another is to add multiple printers. However, if you have two printers shared separately, you’ll have to choose one or the other when you print, and you’ll almost certainly encounter bank-line syndrome: the other line always seems to move faster.

The way around this problem is to use printer pooling. You can set up one printer queue that sends its output to two or more printers. The documents line up single-file, and the printers take jobs from the front of the line, first come, first served.

To set up pooled printers, follow these steps:

1. Buy identical printers—at ...