Print Management

[Jon]

Hi All,

One of the schools I attend to has asked me to look into print management software.

What solutions have you come up with? Is print Manager Plus worth the licence cost?

Thanks in advance...

[Oops_my_bad]

I have tried a few and am currently trying using papercut. So far it is the dogs b*llocks for what we want to do and I think we will be going for it.

But again, depends what you want to do with it.

[Jon]

Hi,

all we really need is to cut down on printer resource costs, maybe by limiting the number of pages a day the students are able to print.

[Domino]

we use pcounter - its alright, does what it says on the tin, but sometimes seems a bit flaky

[Diello]

Print Manager Plus - Great app, but seems to develop random "issues" sometimes.

[fooby]

There is a free option....


... Tell the students not to print rubbish so much? Do not allow unsupervised room access? We dont use any print management but have shouty teachers.

Also saves the inevitable "couldn't print my homework as I have no credits"

fooby

[Ric_]

If you are prepared to invest a little time, use PyKota... works a treat for me. I moved from Print Manager Plus to get a bit more flexibility.

There is a HOWTO on the wiki which should simplify things

[j17sparky]

There is a free option....


... Tell the students not to print rubbish so much? Do not allow unsupervised room access? We dont use any print management but have shouty teachers.

Also saves the inevitable "couldn't print my homework as I have no credits"

fooby

I usually disagree with the management vs technical solution arguement but...

We didnt want to limit the pupils to what they can print as 90% of the time they dont need to print at all, then when coursework deadlines come...

We use Papercut free to log and get the teachers to pause the printers when they are not in use.
This works great as they can print coursework, and when little "jonny im going to print 100 copies of x" comes along he gets caught straight away as no-one else can print.

Since we started doing it this way we have cut print costs probably by 50% if not more