A. The Basics of the Printing Process
This material introduces a number of terms. Make sure students know API (application programming interface) and GDI (graphical device interface). Define each as you review this material:

• print job
• print driver
• print processor
• print router
• spooler
• print monitor
• API
• GDI

B. Defining Printers

There are three ways to define (install) a printer:

• Locally, meaning attached to the machine being set up. Use Exercise 5-1 on page 250 to demonstrate this installation.
• Network, another machine connected to the machine being set up. Use Exercise 5-2 on page 255to demonstrate this installation.
• Internet, a printer connected via the Internet to the network. Use Exercise 5-3 on page 258 to demonstrate this installation.

The final section explains how to install printers using Active Directory. This is a key feature of Windows 2000. Be sure to check out the Exam Watch, which explains how easy it is to search for a printer.

C. Managing Printers

Managing printers is an administrative responsibility. It involves assigning permissions, as you would with any other resource. (For an example, review the On the Job at the bottom of page 261) One printer is going to be the default printer, which works the same as with other Windows OS. Review the Printing Preferences options shown in Figure 5-1 on page 261.

D. Managing Print Jobs

Examine the use of the print queue (Figure 5-2 on page 262), which is rarely utilized. It gives the administrator a lot more control over the print process.

Look at how to to set up faxing (page 262) as this is a very useful feature and easy to use, once set up.

E. Setting Up a Network Printer

Use Exercise 5-4 on page 264.

F. Using Permissions to Control Access to Printers

Networked printers mean establishing permissions, and this gets into administration and administrator permissions. Review Figures 5-4 and 5-5 on pages 266 and 267. These explain how this is done. Stress the utility of Active Directory in working with permissions.

II.  Configuring and Managing File Systems

Managing files and folders is probably the most important administrative task.

A. Partitioning Basics

This section begins with a review of hard disk principles. Use the From the Classroom on page 272 to augment your review.

There is an authoritative white paper on partitioning on the PowerQuest website. PowerQuest makes Partition Magic software.

www.powerquest.com/whitepaper/PM5_white.PDF

B. Selecting a File System

This section examines the pros and cons of FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. Be sure you understand that there is no backward migration from NTFS to FAT. You might also want to review the advantages of NTFS on pages 273-274.

• Disk writing – better at maintaining contiguous sectors when writing single files.
• Disk logging – stores critical file system information so disk crash recovery is made easier.
• File attributes – allows setting permissions on files, folders, printers, etc.
• Built-in encryption and compression, for files, folders, and partitions. Be sure to reiterate that Windows 2000 will not permit both.
•  

A recommended solution to FAT vs. NTFS is found in the On the Job on page 275. Move from this to the Scenario & Solution on the following page to work through some practical problems and solutions.

C. Convert from One File System to Another

Information Architectures, Architects and Information

The world is exactly the way you think it is – and that’s why. Our individual perception of the world is how we perceive it. This very uniqueness, especially when we are open to a wide variety of perceptions and viewpoints, is what makes life so interesting. It’s especially important to people who work with the visual information, such as architects. Frank Lloyd Wright revolutionized the way homes, churches, public buildings, and business structures were designed.

Wright’s mentor, architect Louis Sullivan, coined the phrase "form follows function," which became the mantra of modern architecture. Wright’s vision reinvented the concept as "form and function are one," using nature to represent it. In time, Wright came to refer to his vision as "organic architecture," meaning that nature’s principles had been reinterpreted by the human intellect and thus reinvented into forms more "natural" than even nature.

Just as Wright took information from nature to imagine and design buildings, so has Richard Saul Wurman used architecture as a concept to understand the nature and structure of information. Wurman has a college degree in architecture, but his interests have flowed into many other areas. He started ACCESSPress Ltd., to publish graphically rich, and easy-to-understand guides to such cities as London, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, Hawaii, Chicago, and Boston. Wurman’s company, The Understanding Business, re-conceptualized and redesigned Pacific Bell’s Smart Yellow Pages directories.

Richard Saul Wurman has written over 60 books, including Information Anxiety and Information Architects. "Using over 100 examples of information design," says Wurman, "the book reveals the heart of a good explanation, showing that inside every one, beneath every clever application of technology and style, lies a disciplined process of logic and common sense. A worthy thought process is the only constant on these pages."

Wurman approached architecture as information. Clive Finkelstein, an Australian computer expert, approached information as architecture. He wrote a seminal book, Information Engineering, which lent the engineer’s and architect’s perspective to organizing a corporation’s information technology (IT) resources. That work led to a completely and fundamentally new way of thinking about information itself.

Many years ago, a young visionary named Ted Nelson imagined an information architecture that would create and hold the accumulated knowledge and information of just about the whole world. He called it Project Xanadu, but he could not tempt any financial backers. His idea sounded like a folly. Ultimately, it would take more than a single person to found such a mammoth. But it does exist, as the Internet, or the World Wide Web. Today, there are few subjects you can’t learn about in this vastness of information. The character, organization, and usefulness of what you find is not of uniform quality, because anyone can post ideas to a web site or an FTP server. But this freedom to read and express ideas teaches us to be discriminating and develop our own opinions.

Today, we are bombarded by new ways to receive information, through multimedia and the Web. And as our perceptions of what information is change, so do our ways of thinking about how to use it. The world is just as we think it is – and more.

Websites:

Richard Saul Wurman: www.ted.com

Clive Finkelstein and Information Engineering: www.ies.aust.com/~visible/papers/bripaper.htm

Learn more about an Information Architecture project: http://www.infoarch.ai.mit.edu/

D. Loving Your Disk Management