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How to Clean Inkjet Printer Cartridges
You need to clean your inkjet cartridge nozzles about once every three months or whenever the output from your printer suddenly starts streaking. You don’t need a scrub brush to clean your printer cartridges [more…]
How to Access Network Printers from Your Laptop
Printers can be connected to other computers on the network, or they can dwell on the network directly. Either way, after your laptop is on the network, it can access those other computers. [more…]
How to Connect a USB Printer to Your Laptop
Because most laptops lack a printer port, USB printers are the way to go. You can connect your USB printer by following a few easy steps: [more…]
How to Clean Your Laser Printer
Your laser printer needs a cleaning every now and then. Although you should follow the specific cleaning instructions for your brand and model of laser printer while cleaning its interior, you generally [more…]
How to Set Up a Printer for Your Laptop
To use a printer with your laptop, you must first set it up. A few laptops still feature a printer port, but most use a regular USB port. [more…]
How to Calibrate Inkjet Printer Cartridges
Calibration refers to the proper alignment of the inkjet cartridge nozzles to the paper and each other; without a properly calibrated printer, your print quality degrades. You’ll want to calibrate your [more…]
Choosing between an Inkjet or Laser Printer
In the digital days of yore, choosing between an inkjet and a laser printer was easy. Laser printer cost and lack of color capabilities led every home PC owner to get an inkjet printer. These days, however [more…]
How to Set Up Your Computer Printer
Printers are one of the easiest devices to set up and configure. With some printers, you can set up your printer by simply connecting the printer to your PC and a power supply. Other printers require a [more…]
The Types of Computer Printers
Computer printers are categorized by how the ink gets splattered on the paper. Other subcategories of printer are based on the printer’s features. Printers fall into several general groups. Here’s the [more…]
How to Change Inkjet Printer Cartridges
You can determine when you need to change the cartridges in your inkjet printer by letting the printer itself tell you when it needs new cartridges (an on-screen alert appears) or when your printer’s cartridges [more…]
How to Choose Printer Paper
There’s really no such thing as a typical sheet of printer paper. Printer paper comes in different sizes, weights (degrees of thickness), colors, styles, and textures. Printer paper can, however, be divided [more…]
Label Printers
The personal label printer, like the DYMO LabelWriter, might look a little like a toy — it’s not much bigger than the label tape it uses — but a label printer can make printing labels for all kinds of [more…]
Choosing between a Photo Printer or Inkjet Printer
Photo printers are specifically designed to create photographs that rival any 35mm film print. Photo printers use inkjet or dye-sublimation (dye-sub) technology [more…]
Your Computer Printer’s Control Panel
Every printer has a control panel somewhere on its body. The fancy printers have LCD control panels that display text, or preview and select photos for printing. Less fancy printers may have a control [more…]
How to Add Paper to Your Computer Printer
It should be pretty straightforward to add paper to your printer. But like feeding a baby, there’s a right end and a wrong end to feed paper into your printer. The paper goes into a feeder tray either [more…]
The Parts of a Computer Printer
All printers share some common components, regardless of the specific printer type and manufacturer. Take a moment to examine your printer and look for some handy items, as labeled in this figure: [more…]
Differences Between Older and Newer Printers
If you are going to troubleshoot in the personal computer world, you must be prepared to troubleshoot the printer as well as the computer. There have been rapid advances in printer technology recently, [more…]
Use Print Settings to Troubleshoot PC Printing
Printing from Windows PCs is pretty straightforward, but occasionally things don’t work exactly the way you would hop and you have to don your troubleshooting hat. In that case, the first thing you need [more…]
Use Page Setup to Troubleshoot PC Printing
The Print dialog box is where settings are made that affect how things are printed, but it’s not the only place to look to try to diagnose printing problems. Another location is the Page Setup dialog box [more…]
Manage Printers on a Windows PC
Windows sports a spot for showing which printers are connected to and used by your computer. You can use this box to install a new printer, set the default printer, or remove a printer. [more…]
View, Order, or Cancel Print Jobs on Windows PCs
When you print something in Windows, you’re creating a print job. That’s a good, general name for anything you print: Printing is handled by the operating system and not by individual programs. Therefore [more…]
Use the Printing Troubleshooter on Windows PCs
The Windows Help system contains a number of useful troubleshooting tools, which can often guide you to a quick solution by asking step-by-step questions. [more…]
Troubleshoot “The Print Out Doesn’t Look Right”
Sometimes the PC talks to the printer and the printer prints, but it certainly doesn’t look like what you expected. To troubleshoot that problem depends on exactly what the print out does look like. [more…]
Troubleshoot Printer Paper Jams
So, your printer has jammed and you need to troubleshoot. The solution to a printer jam is to find the jam and remove the paper. If the printer is smart enough to tell you where the jam occurred, heed [more…]
Print Envelopes from a Windows PC
Most printers have an envelope slot, feeder, or tray. The better printers even let you stack up envelopes for mass mailings. Finding the tray is the first step in printing an envelope. The second step [more…]
