Multiple Printer Icons

David Dorn shows you how to set up your system so you don't have to fiddle with printer settings more than once.

Have you ever gone to print a quick draft of something, only to discover, after you've got back from the kettle, that it has printed in the highest resolution your printer will allow, and used half your ink for you? It used always to happen to me, until I came up with this little kink to get past it.

You can install as many printers as you like onto any given port, whether it be LPT1: or a USB port (and serial and network ports as well, come to that). You can also install the same printer to the same port a number of times. So, all you need to do is to install a second (and third and fourth, if you need them) copy of your printer to the same port.

That's not so clever, but here's what is. In most printer drivers, you can establish a set of parameters as the 'default' for that printer. So, what you do is set one copy up as a top-quality printer - say for photo quality, using whichever your 'final copy' paper settings are, and the maximum resolution etc. Then you rename it to, say, 'Photo <name of your printer>". For draft copies, you do the same, but set it to fastest print, lowest quality and so on, and rename it to 'Draft <name of your printer>". You can so the same with any other quality settings you may want to use regularly. The only thing you need to remember is to save the settings you've sorted out for each version of the driver.

Now, when you come to print, you can choose which printer you want to use at the print dialogue box. I usually set the draft version of my own printer as being the default, so that I never mistakenly print to high quality.

If you've got an A3 capable printer, you can use this method to create an A4 setup, A3 setup, 6x4 setup and so on, remembering to label each instance of the driver accordingly. It's invaluable, and saves a lot of time fiddling with the settings every time you print.

David Dorn