Change the drive letter in the Drive drop-down list, if you want to.

printer, you are in effect standing in line behind other network users, wait- ing to share the printer. This complicates things in several ways: ⻬ If several users print to the network printer at the same time, the net- work has to keep the print jobs separate from one another. If it didn’t, the result would be a jumbled mess, with your 168-page report getting mixed up with the payroll checks. That would be bad. Fortunately, the network takes care of this situation by using a fancy feature called print spooling. ⻬ Invariably, when I get in line at the hardware store, the person in front of me is trying to buy something that doesn’t have a product code on it. I end up standing there for hours waiting for someone in Plumbing to pick up the phone for a price check. Network printing can be like that. If someone sends a two-hour print job to the printer before you send your half-page memo, you have to wait. Network printing works on a first- come, first-served basis, unless you know some of the tricks that I dis- cuss in Chapter 3. ⻬ Before you were forced to use the network, your computer probably had just one printer attached to it. Now you may have access to a local printer and several network printers. You may want to print some docu- ments on your cheap oops, I mean local inkjet printer but use the net- work laser printer for really important stuff. To do that, you have to find out how to use your programs’ functions for switching printers. ⻬ Network printing is really too important a subject to squeeze into this chapter. So Chapter 3 goes into this topic in more detail. Logging Off the Network After you finish using the network, you should log off. Logging off the net- work makes the network drives and printers unavailable. Your computer is still physically connected to the network unless you cut the network cable with pruning shears — bad idea Don’t do it, but the network and its resources are unavailable to you. ⻬ After you turn off your computer, you’re automatically logged off the net- work. After you start your computer, you have to log in again. Logging off the network is a good idea if you’re going to leave your computer unattended for a while. As long as your computer is logged in to the net- work, anyone can use it to access the network. And because unautho- rized users can access it under your user ID, you get the blame for any damage they do. ⻬ In Windows, you can log off the network by clicking the Start button and choosing the Log Off command. This process logs you off the network without restarting Windows. In some versions of Windows 95, you must choose the Start➪Shut Down command to log off the network. 32 Part I: Getting Started with Networking