Printer Location Awareness

[techie08]

Does anyone know a way of being able to select a printer like something similar to RM's Printer Location Awareness box that comes up when you log onto a laptop?
I currently run a vanilla XP 2003 R2 network and dont really want to install lots of printers on each laptop

[Michael]

To my knowledge there isn't such function in 2003 R2. The best advice I could offer here would be to create multiple sub OUs under say the Curriculum OU.

These OUs could be split into departments or year groups.

Curriculum OU
Sub - Year 3
Sub - Year 4
Sub - Year 5
Sub - Year 6

By moving computer objects into the relevant sub OU, you can then use the R2 Print Management and specify which printers these machines are to use. This means when a user logs on, they get the closest printers available to them.

[contink]

We use non-R2 win2k3 servers and login scripts that read off the computer names and assign according to those.

Granted it means you need to have an understanding of building layout, closest printer(s), etc... but it's easy enough to resolve and if it forces you to be better organised in terms of your computer naming it can't hurt either.

See the scripts forum and the mass of printer related threads for the necessary code.


Edit:

Should note, I'm in the process of working out how to assign printers based on laptops so I'm going to be using a "mobile" tag in the name which will then force the script to look at the user, their OU/group membership and then default the printer based on where they should be. I'll share that little nugget when I've got it written but it's just another way to handle the problem.

[FN-GM]

Just following up on what contink was saying

Scripting Printer Addition Based on Location - EduGeek.net Wiki

hope this helps

[srochford]

We use location based printer allocation (works out the printer based on the OU).

The problems start when a teacher wants 2 laptop trolleys so they borrow the one from next door. These "know" that they belong next door so connect to the printer next door. I've no idea how I can automate the process of getting the computers to connect to the printer in the room they've been moved to (web cam? RFID tags?)

[Geoff]

I suppose in theory if you could find out what Access Point the Laptops had assoicated with, you could do it based on that?

[Quackers]

Why not create a few small VBS Scripts? Then create a small Visual basic program linking to those scripts.

So you could have a Science button, and when clicked would call the following script.

Set WshNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")
WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\server\ScienceMono"
WshNetwork.AddWindowsPrinterConnection "\\server\ScienceColour"
WshNetwork.SetDefaultPrinter "\\Server\ScienceMono"

[plexer]

I set all my staff up with one vbscript.

First of all it checks the full name of the machine they are logging on to and then compares the first 2 characters which could be the room name to a list.

So if they log on to 06-01 they get the Room 06 printer.

If all of these fail it then checks the fullname of the computer i.e lp2005-06 which is a laptop, if a department has a printer such as the pe department then all of those laptop which are referenced by their full computer name are assigned that printer.

Ben