print server / print management or just add printer

[MattDLEA]

Think this should be a easy question.

When we got our new network put in the guys set it up and everything works.

The classrooms have local printers, the head / office / dept head have a networked printer that was hp. and we printed via I.p address to it.

the way it was set up was they logged onto the computer and added a printer manually via IP looking at our server it doenst look like it is set up as either a print server or has print managment installed Install Print Components .

 

Is there any advantages in making the server a print server or installing print management or is the old way the best in this case

[Gaz]

If its all setup locally on the client machines theres virtually nothing to go wrong (printers not mapping or mapping to wrong room) but using a print server does have some benefits, such as being able to to centrally manage printers, view printers with problems, view printer queues, assign printers to users or computers etc etc etc.

When I setup my first network way back when I used locally mapped printers but as I learned more about print servers the benefits outweigh the cons.