Ask Molly
“Hey, Molly. I overheard a coworker talking about ‘spooled output’ the other day, and was confused as to its proper meaning and usage. Can you clarify?”
Georgio P. – Las Vegas, NM
Hi Georgio,
Spool is an acronym that stands for Simultaneous Peripheral Operations Online. In other words, it refers to a program or device that controls the flow of data to an outputting machine such as a printer.
The benefit of this system is that you can send data to a device that is currently busy and the spooler will buffer your data until it’s ready to be processed. So you can move on to other projects, confident that when you return later your document will be waiting for you.
Unless, of course, the printer is out of paper…
Good luck!
-Molly