Day Seventeen and we're still going strong. Only ten days left until launch day! Continuing on with Terminal Services, today's topic is Terminal Services printing in Windows Server 2008 - and more specifically Terminal Services Easy Print.

The big enhancement to Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services printing is the new Terminal Services Easy Print feature. There are also some new Group Policy settings as well as some other features to enhance the TS printing experience. So what is Terminal Services Easy Print? Basically, this feature enables users to print from a Terminal Services session to the local or network printers that are configured on the client computer without the need to install drivers on the Terminal Server. The Easy Print feature uses the drivers installed locally on the client system which results in a more consistent printing experience between local and remote sessions. When a user prints from their Terminal Server session to a local printer, they will see the full printer properties dialog box from the local client and they will have access to all printer functionality. The Easy Print universal driver acts as a proxy and redirects all UI calls to the driver on the client. Administrators can also use Group Policy to limit the number of printers redirected to just the default printer which reduces the overhead and the number of printers that must be managed. To use the Terminal Services Easy Print feature on Windows 2008 Terminal Servers, the clients must be running the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) 6.1 client and have the .NET Framework 3.0 Service Pack 1 installed. Both of these components are included with Windows Server 2008, and will be available for download for Windows Vista and down-level client operating systems.