HP Jetdirect 300x External Print Servers

[beeswax]

We're looking to replace 5 old HP Jetdirect 300x External Print Servers in our school with something that can handle all the print jobs being thrown at them now. They currently retail at around £180.00 each. Has anyone come across similar, reliable external print servers, but maybe cheaper than HP?

[Dos_Box]

To be honest you get what you pay for. Intel used to do some nice ones (until they got hot and crashed!), but they stopped making them now. What seems to be the problem with your current external print servers? The processing and flow control happens at the software server end. Or are you printing directly to the external server from your clients?

[Ric_]

I used to use JetDire4ct 170x print servers. These were approx. £100 (I think) but they have probably been replaced now. I much prefer using printers with internal print servers and you'd be surprised at some of the prices. For instance, a HP Business Inkjet 1200dtn is £152 and that has a print server, is duplex and has a second paper tray!

BTW - I LOVE HP printers and print servers. I wouldn't use anything else.

Try ringing Stuart at 1st Technologies too (2nd user gear is MUCH cheaper - e.g. HP 4050n for £130!) - 01254 878800

[beeswax]

I'm no great shakes with print servers, but you live and learn. The set up is this - central print server from where we can administer each printer, 5 IT rooms with 2 printers in each room, each connected to a jetdirect, and script so that everyone can pick up "their" printers. My view is that the bottleneck is with the jetdirect print servers, which are 4-5 years old. However, if someone tells me this is not the case, and explains why, then I'm willing to try something else.

[Ric_]

Depends what you are using to share the printers out.

Need plenty of RAM, fast NIC, decent hard disk and not too much other traffic hitting that server.

[Dos_Box]

I would suggest you look at your servers first.
Do you have the spooler file on the Windows root partition still? If so fit an new 40GB HD (dirt cheap these days) and put your spooler folder on that. That should free up any bottlenecks you might have and speed up printing..

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314105

[Dos_Box]

If you can't afford to buy a new disk simply put the spooler folder on a larger partition.

[beeswax]

Thanks for the help. I'm sure I can get my hands on a 40 gig hdd. The only major problem is that school finished today for the summer break, so I'll have to run around each machine sending out print jobs to see if this solves the problem.

[Dos_Box]

The problem lies in the fact that the print jobs (especially Publisher documents) sit in the spooler folder deep in the Windows directory and if your page file is also in your root partition these rapidly fill up and reduce your printing ability to a crawl. As I said earlier. If you can;t get a bigger drive then shift the spooler folder to a larger partition. You will notice the improvement almost immediately. You can always add the new drive later as swapping the directory over only takes a min.

[tarquel]

I used to use JetDire4ct 170x print servers. These were approx. £100 (I think) but they have probably been replaced now. I much prefer using printers with internal print servers and you'd be surprised at some of the prices. For instance, a HP Business Inkjet 1200dtn is £152 and that has a print server, is duplex and has a second paper tray!

BTW - I LOVE HP printers and print servers. I wouldn't use anything else.

http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpr...duct_id=HP1320 is what I've put on a old JetDirect 300X (see down the linked page for the item - lol its still available and its a 3 pack for that price i believe lol) and all i had to do was buy the PSU for the jetdirect 300X as ours was powered by the hp 2000C that we got it with about 6-ish years ago

I think we have the buisness inkjet you are on about but not the full blown one, tho it did cost alot but its a nice machine tho naturally, its been abused alot since we had it - furthest point away from me

Attached to the local machine (only as there's not enough network ports in that room and they couldnt afford to buy anything more expensive) but will be (I hope) adding it to the new pc suite we are planning for the humanities block. Should complement the HP laser printer in the block already very nicely then when its networked

As you can tell, like Ric - I luv HP stuff - not just printers in my case desktops and servers too

@DB:

Yet another gem of edugeek shines thru...

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;314105

Thanks for that (even tho i havent opened it yet - i intend to give it a whirl too. So glad you've mentioned it. Not that printing is that much of a prob, but it may improve things when large print jobs are sent

Cheers
Nath

[beeswax]

thanks to all for your help. Because of holidays, and break-ins at school (I don't think there's much as depressing as coming into work to find you've been robbed), it's taken me some time to get round to reading all your replies. Have moved the print spooler to a new hdd in the print server, but can't really test it out until everyones' back in September. Unfortunately, I start work in a new school the same day so will have to keeep in touch and see how it goes.
I look forward to visiting more often once I'm settled down again.
Cheers
Beeswax

[tarquel]

Glad we could be of service

Cheers and all the best

Nath.
Chief Moral officer @ Edugeek (lol not :P)