Printer frustrations...........

[KWestos]

Printing, I installed a full set of new toner cartridges in three printers last week and now two of them need 2 replalcing. Looked through our logs and it's because the little <edited> have been printing powerpoints, full colour edge to edge all day, every day!!! Is there an easy way of disabling the background colour theme in powerpoint when they print. I have questioned why they need to print powerpoints in the first place and teachers being teachers come up with a <edited> excuse, <edited> I have unticked 'print in background' in the customisation tab, but nothing!
Any suggestions - even <edited> will help!!!!


<There, fixed it for you. Swearing isn't clever, neither is the insinuation of swearing. It's the sign of a limited vocabulary dontcherknow? And whilst I can sympathise completely with your situation it's still no excuse. If you want to rant please go to the Red Door forum where Google does not index your posts which then appear as a Google search result, which makes us look really bad>

[elsiegee40]

The most effective way is probably to limit the number of pages the little darlings can print per day.

If they can only print 3 colour pages per day, they'll find a way of fitting more than one slide on a page.

The other thing to look at is your default printing quality. Can you set it on the server/printer to print at a lower quality by default.

Failing that, toner replacment costs have to be charged directly to the department budget of the teachers involved.

[TheLibrarian]

Name and shame, fit new toners and move on - unless toners are your budget it's not really worth your anger.

If toners are your budget then I'd say skin them alive and drop them into a giant bag of salt and vinegar crisps then shake vigorously.

[sister_annex]

I'd say skin them alive and drop them into a giant bag of salt and vinegar crisps then shake vigorously.

LMFAO!

[KWestos]

I use pcounter and the kids have 20 pages per week irrespective of colour/b&w. We have all sorts of issues when I implement quota's and mono, etc!!!!!!!! And yes, the cost of the toners is coming out of my pot. I think every class uses powerpoint instead of word now - it's effin ridiculous!!!!!

[robmal]

If it is some academic depts budget (and I guess it isn't because of your angst) then the truth will dawn on them eventually...

If it is your budget then some teacher education is necessary - starting with awareness of the true per page cost. Find out who the guilty teacher/subject is and extrapolate their behaviour into a likely cost to you over the year. Discuss this with SMT and see if they will cover it, which of course they are unlikely to.

Individual teachers are always too able to justify their lack of printer management in 'educational outcomes', examination board requirements etc etc; but this is lazy or defensive thinking (speaking from experience here). Some discussion about what they really need and could do in a different way; which will nearly always require some training to show them different print driver and/or programme features. Think of the time it will take as an investment!

Good luck - getting SMT to agree to a quota system in parellel to talking to teachers may be thye only way!

[KWestos]

whenever I go to SLT I just get 'do what you have to'! So I just do! But when I do, arrrggghhhh the teacher's moan like buggery - I can't win. This job would be good without printers and teachers!

[witch]

We have just had this very issue: since September we have got through £900 worth of toner - we arent that big a school - 450 pupils and 6 colour printers.
It DOES come out of our IT budget so my boss has shown the head the info, and now all the printers, except the one in the art room are set to greyscale.
We've been saying it for years but finally he seems to be listening - probably because he is leaving soon and so won't have to take the flack from the teachers!

[robmal]

I think every class uses powerpoint instead of word now - it's ridiculous!!!!!

Yes PowerPoint is the new Word - part of the general dumbing down. After all, three bullet points will earn the mark just as well as a paragraph of writing.....

I saw a 200 slide consultants report the other day, I kid you not!

[Gatt]

We've jsut finished re-evaluating our printer setup
Now, ALL printing with the exception of Reprographics is forced into Greyscale..
We used Print Management console to control the printers and set the defaults and publish via GPO
We also use PaperCut to charge users to a shared account so we can monitor printing (3p for Mono, 30p for Colour)
You can set a fair amount of restrictions - from file name (eg document1.docx, preentation1.pptx), spool size, number of pages, number of copies, etc..)

Had a few grumpy staff at first but they have accepted it all now..

[elsiegee40]

Name and shame, fit new toners and move on - unless toners are your budget it's not really worth your anger.

If toners are your budget then I'd say skin them alive and drop them into a giant bag of salt and vinegar crisps then shake vigorously.

I named and shamed last year
- one third of printing by one teacher who'd argued for a high allowance with SLT
- one third by one teaching department (we have 3 teaching departments)
- one third by everyone else in the school, including the admin staff and the pupils.

SLT response: First person had their print allowance reduced to standard levels, department got its print allowances reduced.

Quite pleasing result really!

Do any of the edugeek sponsors sell the oversize salt & vinegar crisp packets please?