Let’s face it, you work all day on a computer, but sooner or later, you’re going to have to get your one-of-a-kind project, text document, or photograph off the computer. Computer data finds itself in the most unlikely places. For example, you could save a text document onto a CD or DVD, and then store the CD or DVD away; never to be seen again. Probably the most common place you find computer data is on paper. It might be nice to talk of a paperless society, however, most people prefer the satisfying feel of paper in their hands, as opposed to a cold computer monitor. That’s where Mac OS X steps in and makes your life easy. Not only does Mac OS X give you all the standard ways to print to paper or fax, it also gives you hundreds of printer drives; supporting the vast majority of printers in the market. In addition, you can save paper by previewing your jobs—using Leopard’s print preview feature—which shows you a color-accurate on-screen version of your print job.

If you fax documents, then Leopard is an operating system tailor-made expressly for your needs. Mac OS X integrates its faxing features with a state-of-the-art printing system. Just open the Print & Fax pane in System Preferences, and you can set up your computer to receive faxes. Then, when you go to print a document from virtually any application, you’ll see a Fax button in the Print dialog. In addition, if you have a large print job that you would rather print after work, or a fax that has to be sent at a specific time; Mac OS X lets you schedule a time to print a document, or fax with the click of a button.

Although there are many different kinds of printers, there are two main categories: ink-jet and laser. An ink-jet printer works by spraying ionized ink on a sheet of paper. Ink-jet printers are less expensive and considerably slower than laser printers, but they still produce a good quality output. A laser printer utilizes a laser beam to produce an image on a drum, which is rolled through a reservoir of toner and transferred to the paper through a combination of heat and pressure. Laser printers are faster and produce a higher quality output than ink-jets, but they are also more expensive. Ink-jet and laser printers are combined with other hardware devices, such as a copier and scanner, into a multi-function device. A multi-function device provides common device functionality at a lower cost than purchasing each device separately. Printers are classified by two main characteristics: resolution and speed. Printer resolution refers to the sharpness and clarity of a printed page. For printers, the resolution indicates the number of dots per inch (dpi). For example, a 300-dpi printer is one that is capable of printing 300 distinct dots in a line one-inch long, or 90,000 dots per square inch. The higher the dpi, the sharper the print quality. Printer speed is measured in pages per minute (ppm). The speed of printers varies widely. In general, ink-jet printers range from about 4 to 10 ppm, while laser printers range from about 10 to 30 ppm. The speed depends on the amount of printer memory (the more the better) and the page’s contents: if there is just text or the page has only one color, the ppm is in the high range, but when a page contains graphics and/or has multiple colors, the ppm rate falls to the low range.

Printer drivers are lines of code designed to help an operating system communicate with a specific printer. No two printer models are created equal: Some have two paper trays, while others have one; some are ink-jet, while others are laser; some are color and some black and white. Although there are generic printer drivers available, most printers have a driver program, designed specifically for that make and model. Mac OS X installs all of the printer drivers onto your hard drive when you run the Mac OS X installation program.

The drivers become available when you attach your printer and run the Printer Setup Utility. The good news is that with the release of Snow Leopard, the process of hooking up your printer, and being able to print, just became a lot easier. Mac OS X comes bundled with almost every conceivable printer driver; however, new printers and updates are being released all the time. When you plug in a new printer, Snow Leopard downloads the appropriate driver. Periodically, Snow Leopard checks to make sure it has the lastest driver using Software Update as needed (New!). It’s always a good idea to keep the CD or DVD that came with your printer handy; it contains a driver for that particular model of printer. In addition, the Web sites for the printer companies such as www.epson.com or www.hp.com, contain the latest updates and patches for their printers. You can visit them to see if any updates are available.

Since you’ll only need one or two printer drivers, you can delete the others. All those unused drivers take up over a gigabyte of space on your hard drive. Once you’ve installed the necessary printers, select the Library folder (located on the main hard drive), click Printers folder, and then delete the unused drivers. If necessary, you can always reinstall them from the OS X install disks.

Setting up a printer use to be a difficult and time-consuming process. There were all kinds of questions to answer, driver files to find, and after all that time, you might still have problems. With Mac OS X, setting up a printer is easy. Adding a printer can be as simple as plugging it into your computer. In most cases that’s all you need to do. Mac OS X automatically tries to autoconfigure almost any USB, FireWire, or Bluetooth connection. If you want to install a network printer, such as Bonjour, or your printer doesn’t appear in the printer list, you can add it manually in the Print & Fax pane in System Preferences. If you no longer use a printer, you can quickly remove it while your in Print & Fax preferences.

Using your Macintosh to print and fax is an obvious extension of the normal, everyday computing process. You write and create documents, and send them to paper; you take a photograph using a digital camera and send it to a photo-quality printer. You can use the Print & Fax pane in System Preferences to modify many of the aspects of printing. For example, you can set the default printer, the one that automatically appears when you want to print, and the default paper size. If you want to find out the available options for a specific printer, you can use Options and Supplies, where you can find printer information, change a printer name, select a different driver, and check out printer supplies available online, such as ink and toner.

If you have a printer connected to your computer and your computer is connected to a network, you can share your printer with other network users. Before you can share a printer, you need to turn on printer sharing in the Sharing pane in System Preferences and then enable sharing for each printer in the Print & Fax pane. After you share a printer, other users—with Mac OS X, Mac OS 9, UNIX, or Windows computers—connected to your network can use your printer; you can also connect to other shared printers—including an AirPort base station—available on your network. For security purposes, if you want to share your printer with a Windows user via SMB/CIFS, you need to set Firewall options to allow all incoming connections on the Firewall tab of Security preferences. If a Windows user has Bonjour installed, the user can use the Bonjour wizard to connect to your printer on a Mac. After you share your printer, if a user connected to your network still cannot access your printer, you can provide them with your Mac IP address (available in Network preferences for the network connection, such as Built-in Ethernet) and queue name (available in Print & Fax preferences in Options & Supplies) to make the connection to the shared printer.

With few exceptions, Macintosh applications give you the ability to print a document to paper. Programs such as: Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect; even TextEdit—Macintosh’s proprietary word processing application—give you the option to print what you have committed to type. When you select the Print option (located under the File menu), you’re instructing the application to use an output device (the printer) to place your words on paper. Since all printers have options, it’s important to be able to set those options before printing. You might be using a specific size paper or printing orientation. For this operation, you’ll use the Page Setup command, located within the File menu of most applications.

All applications that allow you to send a document to a printer, give you the ability to set up specific printing parameters. Some print options are generic, such as how many pages to print, and some are more specific, such as what paper tray to use (in a multi-tray printer). Regardless of the options, they’re all located in one specific location, the Print command of the opened application. When you select the Print command, a dialog opens with all the options associated with the default printer; including the ability to change the default printer, and any other printing values.

One of the most frustrating things is looking at a document on your monitor, clicking the Print command, and then deciding that what you see on the paper is not what you wanted. Unfortunately, a monitor is not a piece of paper, and the term What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG), is a phrase that most computer users do not take very seriously. Once again, Macintosh comes to the rescue with a Preview utility that targets your default printer. If you see what you like, you can print a single copy directly from the Preview dialog, or you can close the preview, and then print using the standard Print option.

The PDF (Portable Document File) format is undoubtedly the most successful multi-platform format ever created by any company. Designed by Adobe, it has become the standard for transferring text and graphics documents, spreadsheets; even creating interactive forms, that can be filled out by a visitor, and then sent back to the owner for processing. The reason for the success of the PDF format is Adobe’s tight control over the Adobe Acrobat application (used to create PDF’s), and the Acrobat Reader application (used by visitors to read PDF’s). Once a PDF document is properly saved, it can be opened by virtually anyone that has Acrobat Reader, regardless of computer or operating system. And the good news is that the Reader application is a free download, just point your browser to http://www.acrobat.com, and then click Download Reader to obtain the latest version of the Acrobat Reader application, tailored for your specific operating system.

The typical method for printing a document goes something like this: You open an application, open a document, click the File menu, and then click Print. While the majority of the time that’s exactly what you want to do; especially if you need to make minor corrections to the document before printing, there is an easier way to go from document to printer: Desktop printers. Desktop printers give you the ability to create an icon of a printer, and with a drag and a drop, print a document using any connected printer. Not only is this method fast, it gives you the ability to print from two or more connected printers at a time. Printer icons can be located on the desktop, inside a folder, or even placed in the Dock.

The definition of a queue is a line. In Great Britain the term is used to describe a line of people waiting to get into a movie or restaurant. In printing terms a queue is a group of documents all waiting to be printed on the same printer. Mac OS X handles the queue like a master conductor; keeping everything in order, as it smoothly instructs the printer to print each document in turn. However, sometimes problems can occur that the Print Queue utility doesn’t quite know how to handle. For example, it’s possible that you want to place a job on hold while other jobs print (preferably yours), or you many want to delete a job. In fact, you can even instruct the printer to stop printing altogether.

Sometimes it’s just not the best time to print a document. For example, it’s 10:00 AM and the network printer is jammed with jobs being printed by fellow office workers, who are attempting to get their documents out before lunchtime. You know that by 12:15 PM everyone is out to lunch, and the printers are free, but you don’t want to lose a quarter of your lunch break just to click the Print button. The solution is to instruct the sending application to click the Print button for you, while you enjoy your much-deserved break.

When you print a document, Mac OS X allows you to create a cover page. When you work with secure information, you can print a cover page that indicates the private nature of a document. For example, you can add a cover page with the following tags: classified, confidential, secret, top secret, and unclassified. Many companies require a cover page to be sent with sensitive documents. Since the decision to use a cover sheet is dependent on the document, Mac OS X gives you the choice to add a cover sheet each time you print a document.

Using your Mac to print and fax is an obvious extension of the normal, everyday computing process. You have a document, and you need to fax it to a co-worker or friend. Once you’ve decided whom the fax is to be sent to, and what the fax number is, the next step is to send the fax. When you fax a document, Mac OS X allows you to create a cover page. A cover page indicates to the person receiving the fax, the number of pages in the fax, who is sending the fax, the date and time the fax was sent, and a short text paragraph. Since the decision to use a cover sheet is dependent on the document, Mac OS X gives you the choice to add a cover sheet each time you generate a fax.

It’s actually pretty easy to set up your computer to receive faxes automatically. All you need is a phone line, and Leopard’s Fax utility. You can set up the Fax to answer after a certain number of rings, and you don’t have to be logged in; however, your Macintosh needs to be on and not in sleep mode. To make it easier to work with faxes, you can set the option to show the Fax status menu in the menu bar for easy access. After you send and receive some faxes, you can view information about the completed job. You can manage the fax queue just like the print queue.

When you send a Fax, you need a document, and a fax number to send it. For example, you have a document that needs to be sent to your co-worker, and you remember that you added her fax number to her address card in the Address Book application (smart move). Do you need to open the Address Book, and write that number down, so that you have it when you send the Fax? No. Mac OS X gives you the ability to pull that information directly from the address card with the click of a button. Remember that in order for an address card to be used for faxing, it must first have a fax number entered into the card.