control printing

[adamyoung]

anyone got any system to issue print credits/control printing, we have at ream of wasted printouts from our sixth form alone each day!

We have Windows 2003 server running the printer queues

[ChrisH]

Print manager and Pcounter seem to be the most popular ones. Each solution costs in the region of about £500 I think but that would depend how many servers etc.

[Ric_]

Check out Print Manager Plus Academic - per server licensing and very simple to configure and use

[kingswood]

Pcounter here- and I really don't like it...no I don't.

I'd prefer a built-in Windows 2003 print quota tool a la Mac OS X Server...

Paul

[Geoff]

Linux box running cups can do this for free.

http://www.cups.org/

[sahmeepee]

Pcounter is OK. The interface is a bit naff, but it works. You can do quite a lot with it, such as: stopping people from printing out web pages, stopping them printing sets of 30 (try walking to the photocopier to print your class sets instead!), setting different costs based on colour and paper size etc.

The reporting is slow and a bit clunky but it sort of does the job.

[andy]

Linux box running cups can do this for free.

http://www.cups.org/

I seem to recall reading somewhere that with cups, you could set it up so the teacher could choose which jobs to release from their machine - do you know where I begin to look at this Geoff? (or anyone )

Cheers,

Andy.

[Geoff]

Its part of PyKota. which is what you need to do the more advanced quota management with cups.

http://freshmeat.net/redir/pykota/37...n_Presentation

Also check out the features of cups web interface. You might be able to do what you want just using that.

http://www.cups.org/

[RobC]

And to really tax your brains (and I think I've asked this before but can't remember the answer...), is there any way of doing this when the printers do not run through a print server, but instead are hooked directly to the network?

[Geoff]

You have to run them through a print server to have quota control. You can still run network printers through cups using LPR though.

[RobC]

Hmm, I wonder what Fujitsu would say if I sneaked a Linux box onto the network & started screwing around with the printers... :P

[Geoff]

5p on:

"buh...?"

[Sirbendy]

Yes, we use Print manager Plus...the kids hate it..

[steve]

Depends what type of printers you have.

I tried Pcounter last year and found it very unreliable when calculating the number of pages printed from certain applications. e.g Corel Draw prints would sometimes be classed as 500 sheets.

What make of printers do you find works with Pcounter / Print Manager Plus? We have Epsons at the min, but looking to change aspap.

[secman]

We have a system called PaperCut Quota running on the W2K Server Print Server. website is www.Papercut.biz
You can easily monitor printing across the network and there is a client for the herberts to check their accounts. We don't currently limit printing but monitor the "higher level users." This monitors staff as well!!!