HP 4250/4350 manual Managing and configuring printer drivers, HP Web Jetadmin software plug-in

Managing and configuring printer drivers

Your system or network administrator can use the driver management and configuration solution to configure printer drivers before you install and deploy them within your environment. This is helpful when you configure printer drivers for multiple workstations or printers that share the same configuration.

When you preconfigure your printer driver to match the printer hardware, you can gain access to all of the printer accessories through the driver. You can also configure most driver feature settings. Five of the driver features can be "locked." This means that you can choose not to allow users to change the duplex, print color as gray, input tray, output tray, and media type settings. (Some features might not apply to all printers. For example, some printers do not include color printing or duplexing.)

The driver management and configuration solution saves time and reduces management costs. Previously, if an administrator wanted to configure printer drivers, the configuration had to be completed at each client workstation. Because the driver management and configuration solution offers multiple configuration options, administrators can create a single configuration, in a central location, that best fits their software installation and deployment strategy.

The driver management and configuration solution also gives administrators more control over their printing environment, because they can deploy drivers that share the same configuration across an entire organization. They can use the "lock" feature to support organization initiatives. For example, if a printer includes a duplexer, locking the duplex setting ensures that all print jobs are printed on two sides to save paper. All of the controls can be deployed from a single computer.

Two methods are available:

●HP Web Jetadmin software plug-in

●Customization utility

Regardless of the configuration method that is used, one configuration can be shared by all printer drivers for a given printer model with one pass through either the plug-in or the utility. The single configuration provides support for multiple operating systems, printer driver languages, and localized language versions.

A single configuration file is associated with all supported drivers, and can be modified by using either the plug-in or the utility.

HP Web Jetadmin software plug-in

A driver management and configuration plug-in is available for the HP Web Jetadmin software. You can use the plug-in to configure the printer drivers before installation and deployment. This method for managing and controlling printer drivers provides a complete, end-to-end solution that you can use to set up and configure the printer, the print path (queue), and the client computers or workstations. The following activities are included in the workflow:

●Discover and configure the printer(s).

●Discover and configure the print path on the server(s). You can have multiple servers configured in a batch, or multiple printers (of the same model type) using a single server.

●Obtain the printer driver(s). You can install multiple drivers for each print queue that is connected to a server in environments that support multiple operating systems.

●Run the configuration editor (the editor is not supported for some older drivers).

ENWW Managing and configuring printer drivers 99