if 99% of the stuff is going to print, why would you first run it to an outq that a user has to turn around and send it to another outq to print. Because those P1, HP7400, etc are output queues but with a writer attached.

I have maybe 75 printers on the little i we have, and they all of course are attached to outq's and I do have a few outq that are not attached to any printer. I have a program for example that puts out a log report that once in a while we need to see, so rather than hold it, I send it to an outq that doesn't have a writer attached.

One of our offsite programmers, all his compiles go to an outq (via *workstation in his user profile), that has no printer so he can see his stuff and such.

Alot depends on "how it is to be used". If users do alot of looking and maybe printing, then an outq for them makes sense, if not, then sending directly to an outq that has a writer attached makes sense.

I have one outq that creates pdf's all day long off reports and files them onto a NAS. That works pretty slick, and obviously the writer in that case is not physical printer.

You didn't say if they are running in a S/36EE situation or fully native, but that is my two cents for what it is worth.

IIRC, the order of checking for the outq/prtdev is printer file, job de!--script--ion, user profile, and workstation name (device).  The checking stops at the level that a specific outq/prtdev is found.  The default for each level is to check at the next level up.  So, to use the outq/prtdev values at the user profile level, make sure that any printer file and job de!--script--ion that the user will use are created with the default values for the OUTQ and PRTDEV parameters.

To use the PRTDEV rather than OUTQ (if that's easier for them to understand), then specify OUTQ(*DEV) on the CRT/CHGUSRPRF command.

So the priority is:

1. Printer File (PRTF)
2. Job Desc (JOBD)
3. User Profile (USRPRF)
4. Workstation (WORKSTN)

Yes.  If you look at the defaults for the PRTDEV/OUTQ parameters, they are:

1. DEV(*JOB), OUTQ(*JOB) for CRTPRTF
2. PRTDEV(*USRPRF), OUTQ(*USRPRF) for CRTJOBD
3. PRTDEV(*WRKSTN), OUTQ(*WRKSTN) for CRTUSRPRF
4. PRTDEV(*SYSVAL), OUTQ(*DEV) for CRTDEVDSP

So if you let everything default, the outq it would go to would be the value in the QPRTDEV system value.

It's actually a little more complicated than I first thought.  I found a good explanation in the Information Center with several examples and rather than repeat all that here, I'll just give the address: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v7r1m0/index.jsp?topic=%2Frzalu%2Frzaluroutingexamples.htm (it's 7.1 documentation, but I don't think it has changed in several releases)