Delay in printing

I read the user manual on my printer but it doesn't say anything about delays to printing due to the spooler in my PC. When I get a document on screen and click PRINT it doesn't print but goes to a file with others. I found out there is a thing called a spooler in the PC an I'm wondering what happens if I switch it off. Would the on-screen documents print on demand with no delay? What's the spooler for?

Yes but what's the spooler there for Easy livin?

Yes but what's the spooler there for Easy livin?

The spooler handles buffering and queuing.

OK Lastnet IT. Thanks Lastnet and Easy livin. Yes I can imagine why someone might want to do that.

Thanks swarfendor43. That looks very useful. I'll use it with my desktop.

The print spooler is the part of windows that translates the document into a "language" your printer can use by way of the drivers installed. It creates a file that can be sent to the printer it can understand and print out your document.

This is a critical part of Windows and if you disable it you will be prevented from printing. In fact your printers will vanish if you turn off the "Print Spooler" service.

Any delay will be due to either the size of the file you are printing or the printer going to sleep and needing to warm up, however the latter should only add a few seconds to a print job. You can test this by sending a blank plain text document to the printer.

OK guys. I've finally got round to looking at my printer settings and now I can make prints as and when I want. Thanks for your help. My problem turned out to be due to finger trouble and my ignorance. Talking to you jerked me into thinking about what I was doing.