Additional Printing Enhancements in Windows 7

In addition to the previously listed printing improvements first introduced in Windows Vista, printing in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 has now been enhanced in the following ways:

• XPS printing system The XPS printing system has been enhanced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 by the inclusion of a new rendering service for XPS printer drivers, new application programming interfaces (APIs), XPS Viewer enhancements, and miscellaneous performance enhancements. For information concerning one of these enhancements, see the sidebar titled "Direct from the Source: New Rasterization Service for Print Drivers" later in this tutorial.
• Devices And Printers Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 include a new item on the Start menu and Control Panel called Devices And Printers, which provides a single, central location where users can interact with all of the devices connected to their computer. Devices And Printers can display different types of devices, including universal serial bus (USB), WiFi, and Bluetooth devices. Devices And Printers also integrates with Device Stage, a new feature of Windows 7 that makes it easier for users to connect, recognize, and use their devices. For more information about Devices And Printers, see the section titled "Using Devices and Printers" later in this tutorial.
• Installing printer drivers using Windows Update The Add Printer Driver Wizard has been enhanced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to enable downloading of additional printer drivers directly from the Windows Update Web site. This change also means that fewer in-box printer drivers need to be included in Windows. It also makes the Point and Print experience for users easier because if a compatible in-box driver is not found when installing a printer, Windows Update is silently queried for a compatible driver to complete the installation. For more information about this feature, see the sections titled "Managing Printer Drivers" and "Extending Point and Print Using Windows Update" later in this tutorial.
• Cross-platform Point and Print Improvements to the Point and Print experience now make it easy for users having Windows 7 computers running different processor architectures (x86 or x64) to share their printers. For more information about this feature, see the section titled "Extending Point and Print Using Windows Update" later in this tutorial.
• Location-Aware Printing This feature allows mobile users running Windows 7 on their laptop computers to set a different default printer for each configured network location. For more information about this feature, see the section titled "Using Location-Aware Printing" later in this tutorial.
• Printer driver isolation This enhancement to the printing subsystem in Windows Server 2008 R2 can increase the stability of print servers by allowing administrators to isolate unstable printer drivers in a separate process instead of within the spooler process. When this is done and an unstable printer driver crashes, the crash doesn't halt the spooler, which will stop all other printers from functioning on the server. For more information about this feature, see the sections titled "Understanding Printer Driver Isolation" and "Configuring Printer Driver Isolation Mode" later in this tutorial.
• Custom default security settings for print servers Administrators can now define custom default security settings on Windows Server 2008 R2 print servers that apply to all printers installed on the print server. For more information about this feature, see the section titled "Configuring Default Security for Print Servers" later in this tutorial.
• Print Management enhancements The Print Management MMC snap-in has been enhanced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 with new functionality that allows administrators to configure default security settings for print servers and printer driver isolation settings. The filtering capabilities of custom filters have also been enhanced with additional filter criteria to make filtering more powerful. For more information concerning these enhancements, see the section titled "Enhancements to the Print Management Console in Windows 7" later in this tutorial.
• PrintBRM The PrintBRM command-line tool has been enhanced in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to provide more flexibility and improved instrumentation for the administrator. For more information concerning these improvements, see the sidebar titled "Direct from the Source: Enhancements to PrintBRM in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2" later in this tutorial.