Advanced Printer Management

Windows 7 comes with a printer management tool that's part of the Windows Management Console system. It's intended primarily for network administrators who sometimes have to manage dozens of printers spread around an office. I won't go into great detail on this tool here because it's fairly self-explanatory, but I'll show you how it works.

To run the tool, click Start, Control Panel, System and Security, Administrative Tools. Then, doubleclick Print Management. You might need to confirm the User Account Control prompt or enter an Administrator password, because this tool requires elevated privileges.

The left pane lets you choose views that include lists of all the printers installed on the local computer (or on a domain network), all printers that have documents pending, and so on. You can also create custom "filters" to select only printers with specific attributes.

Under the Print Servers section, the local computer is listed, and you can right-click the "Print Servers" title to add the names of other computers on your network (or named print server devices). You can use this feature to build a single panel that lists all your organization's printers. Print servers that you add to this list will remain in the list the next time you run the printer management tool.