THE NEWS IN PRINT

It is wise for homes to keep one central printer for all its printing needs. For that purpose, a printer should be connected to any computer on the network which should be religiously turned on while the printer is being used.

Here's a brief on sharing your printer on a home network:

Enabling Printer Sharing

1. Open the Properties dialog box for your network connection in Control Panel.

Choose Start --> Control Panel and click Network and Internet Connections. Click Network Connections, right-click the Local Area Connection icon, and choose Properties.

The Local Area Connection Properties dialog box opens.

2. Enable file and printer sharing.

Click the File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks check box to put a check mark in the check box. Then click OK. You do not have to restart the computer.

Sharing the Printer

1. Open the Printers folder.

2. Right-click the icon for the printer you want to share and choose Sharing from the shortcut menu that appears.

3. Select the option to share the printer.

4. Type a name for the printer in the Share Name text box.

5. Click OK.

There are other ways of sharing a printer on a network. A more professional approach would be to go for a network printer hooked on to a router. This is a common of printer sharing in companies.

Our world is tending towards wireless gadgets. There are plenty of wireless printers in the market. Any computer enabled with Bluetooth can access a wireless printer. Honestly, wireless printers are an easier and better option for sharing on home networks.

Printing off Microsoft Excel could be deemed as a challenge to many as there is vast data with no limitation and the segregation of pages is not on our accord. Taking print outs in a readable format is the key to managing data on excel sheets. This small tutorial will explain the way you can print only a selected region on an excel file. This way you are not forced to copy the required contents onto a different sheet and replicate the original format.

Microsoft Excel lets you select a portion of the worksheet and print only that has been selected. Here is how you do it:

1. Select the cells that need to be printed on your worksheet. You can select it either by dragging the mouse cursor over the data or by using the arrow keys in coordination with the shift key.
2. Click on File -> Print or alternatively you can use the shortcut keys - Ctrl+P
3. In the dialog box, as shown in the figure, choose the radio button under Print what as Selection"�

In my next excel printing tutorial, I will deal with printing fixed rows and columns which may be necessary while printing data on multiple pages and to maintain the headings on all sheets.

This tip will work on MS Excel 97, 2000, 2002 and 2003. I hope this tutorial for helpful.

I have picked up the following points from About.com and have added my comments which are certainly much more valuable than the points itself :).

1) Buy a refurbished printer or scanner.
I would rather buy a refurbished product than a new one. Firstly I save money and most importantly it has been inspected thoroughly which I learnt during my tenure at Dell.

2) Buy a low-cost laser for text printing.
If the user plans on printing a lot of text, a low-cost laser printer would be invaluable. Getting hold of a cheap laser printer is not possible in some geographies in the Eastern world.

3) Find a free printer.
Many brands offer free printers when you buy a new computer. I have personally seen almost all the big brands give away MFPs along with desktops that cost less.

4) Save paper by tweaking your documents.
Let's try to avoid printing emails and other documents if they are not absolutely necessary. We can do our bit for our environment as well by consuming less paper.

5) Don't print out Web pages that you don't need.
Same as last point.

6) Pay attention to ink consumption.
I would probably sulk whenever I see my ink monitor in the taskbar. Cartridges these days are so expensive that it be termed as the new liquid gold.

7) Control the process of print-head cleaning.
Use this functionality sparingly. Print head cleaning is absolutely necessary and at the same time, it consumes ink. It's a lose-lose situation.

8) Try third-party cartridges.
My vote is on third party cartridges. But, with the diminishing prices of Kodak cartridges, you would be better off with a branded cartridge.

9) Extend the life of your toner cartridge.
Keep a spare toner cartridge by your side but do not replace it until you start seeing distorted printouts. Indicator on laser printers could be misleading some times.

10) Be ready to return your printer or scanner if it doesn't work properly.
I guess we all do it. We don't need somebody advise us to do so.

It was said - "A time will come when I don't have to store anything on my computer. Everything will be available in a central location that can be accessed as and when needed"�. Internet is a place where you can find almost anything, from movies to games; you name it, you will get it. All kinds of software drivers for computers are available on the internet on multiple locations. The age of storing drivers on CDs and hard disks has gone out of the window (into Windows rather :)). Microsoft has tried to remove the disconnect between hardware and software by providing all the major drivers on XP and Vista but the repository could never be exhaustive.

I want to introduce a website which helped me locate a printer driver for a friend of mine. Printer Drivers is one consolidated website where you can find almost any printer driver. Drivers can be easily located by choosing the appropriate brand like HP, Lexmark etc and then choosing your OS and the printer make. Although drivers don't reside on this website, it points to a third party active websites which lets you download a copy of the required drivers.

Some experts advice users to get drivers from the company website. From my experience, I have found that it is harder to locate drivers on company websites. Company websites don't provide an easy navigation and their concentration lies on selling more products which is logical(but disastrous for users).

There are other driver websites like the Driver Guide which could be best described as a complicated mess. Just as company websites, the navigation system is not up to the required standards.

The ever-growing technology has ensured that we need not carry our computer wherever we go to be able to access it. We can access our workstations through any other computer which acts as a gateway. I had written a dummies guide on remote desktop last year which is one of the leading guides for over a million surfers so far. This piece of tutorial will aim at using a local printer along with a remote workstation.

When we log onto a remote computer and print a document, the document prints on the printer connected to the remote computer. But, if you want to take printouts from the remote computer onto a local printer, here's how you do it:

- Click on Start
- Click on run
- Type "mstsc"� and hit Enter
- Expand the options bar
- Select 'Local Resources' tab
- Check Printers and hit Connect

Here are some important things to remember:

- If the printer driver doesn't exist on Windows XP, you will need to install the drivers on the remote machine before attempting to print
- Printer redirection works on network printers as well
- If multiple printers are configured on the local workstation, remote desktop will use the default printer
- Printer redirection comes as default along with remote desktop

I hope this small tutorial was helpful.