Creating printer quotas???

[gcurran1982]

Is it possible to create printer quotas for individual users through AD? Got a teacher who is killing my consumables budget and no amount of telling them seems to matter, short of sitting there and watching the printer queue i'm not sure what else to do. I don't really want to have to pay for additional software (the purse strings are tight) can anyone suggest anything? Any help would be great

[Heebeejeebee]

I would install the free Papercut monitor programme and then get SL to jump up and down on them until the problem goes away (only really works if they're not a member of SL of course )

HBJB

[soveryapt]

And if the jumping up and down on them fails, buy papercut and limit them (with the backing of SLT of course!) - it's what we have here and it works brilliantly for us, means we can track staff and they actually come to me now and tell me when they've had to do a large amount of printing for something or other .. it amuses ..

[gcurran1982]

I know im gonna sound thick now but what the hell i'm learning! What does SL stand for??

[K.C.Leblanc]

What does SL stand for??

Senior Leadership.

When you go to leadership make sure you've worked out costings to show how much more she's costing the school then if she'd gone through the proper channels.

[Geoff]

Yes, you need to work out the price it costs to do an 'average' A4 print. If it's a colour/A3 printer you need a figure for those combinations too. Don't forget its not just the cost of toner. The paper and printer costs money too. Once you have these numbers you can work out exactly how much your printing is costing you.

[gcurran1982]

Many thaks people once again edu geek saving me

[qcomer]

You could always disable them from being able to print to it. LOL.


Actually, I am fond of using cnetrally located copiers around campuses now and making them use their account on the copier when they want to print. Then the school can decide the quota.

[Max_Power]

If budget is tight then i would assume you cant afford to keep buying more and more toner.

Here we purchased papercut and rolled out printercredits to students and staff and although they can request more credits it does help them to take note of how much they do actually print. Papercut cost us around £700 but in the first year alone we saved over £4000 on toner!!!!!!!

Also try reducing the toner density on the printer and enabling economode. print isnt as dark but more than adaquate for use within lessons etc.

[Whoarya]

Interesting that you say a teacher is killing your consumable budget yet you don't want to pay for any software to sort it as purse strings are tight? The actual figures involved determine to course of action as control, accountability implemented prudently yield an immediate ROI

[glennda]

I saved 4k in the first year and on for 8k reduction in the 2nd year of running papercut.

[bossman]

Been using RM's built in print quotas for years now and has taken our printing budget from approx 18k down to 3.5k, the only thing I would advocate as others have stated is to go to SLT with your strategy to reduce printer costs without reducing efficiency.

I did this by also implementing remote desktops for staff and @webman developed a small web application for called teacher viewer which allows the staff to see students work and mark it (even from home) without the student having to print it off at given times of the year for the teacher to take home and mark.

[sonofsanta]

When you're working out costs, it's worth pointing out that the 5% coverage figure toners use to give page yield is only half a page of A4 of written text. A more accurate costing (which would work in your favour here) would be (priceOfToner/tonerYield)*2. Don't forget to add in the cost of a drum if that's replaceable as well.

It might also be worth working out how much all that printing would cost if done in your reprographics room, as I warrant much of that printing is being done as free photocopying - e.g. "getting 30 copies of this in repro would cost my department, where just printing it out will be free for me!" which is the kind of stupid walled-garden-budget thinking that costs schools pointless waste.