Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary

In print spooling, documents are loaded into a buffer (usually an area on a disk), and then the printer pulls them off the buffer at its own rate. Because the documents are in a buffer where they can be accessed by the printer, the user is free to perform other operations on the computer while the printing takes place in the background. Spooling also lets users place a number of print jobs on a queue instead of waiting for each one to finish before specifying the next one.

Related Terms

printer spooling