Printers ..... and Staff

[button_ripple]

Why is it that staff think that they can print 50,000 copies of things out of a tiny little inkjet printer. I get through about 2 ink cartridges a year at home. At school i have an identical printer but get through 2 cartridges a month!

 

Staff have no thought about our budget. We get £2,000 a year to spend on ink. We have worked out this means that we can buy ink for every printer in the school twice. So far we have purchased at least 6 black cartridges for one printer!

 

We recently set-up a networked colour laser in the staffroom that will print high quality documents - will staff use it? NO!.

 

What do you do to make staff stop printing? We would like to get some printer limit software, but this will cost too much and we have no budget left!

 

We have no repographics department - the TA's are supposed to do everything (they just sit around all day moaning).

[localzuk]

Take their printers away. We did that here... Worked well, except for some whinging.

 

If you are willing to dip your toes into Linux then you could use Pykota and CUPS to do the limiting - there is a howto on the wiki.

[button_ripple]

They don't have individual printers - just 1 in the staffroom, 1 in our office, 1 in the ICT Suite, and then the head + deputies (and several in Admin)

 

We don't mind them printing large things in the staffroom. But our office and the ICT Suite cost a lot of money to run.

 

I have seen staff printing things because "they look nice". We also have them printing personal stuff and tonnes of photos that are never seen again.

 

@localzuk: If you are talking about a Linux server we have no hardware that can cope with being a server. We only have an apps and a DC, both with W2003.

[strawberry]

£35 hp laser in office if they demand one. Big network jobs in suites and photocopiers.

[maniac]

Roughly £18,000 of toner this year and counting. No restrictions (yet), everything seems to be printed in colour, SLT don't seem to care so we just keep ordering the toner. Out of what budgets we don't know, we just tell the burser we need more toner, and it gets ordered.

 

We have about 15 networked colour laser printers, and over 50 B/W ones around the school, plus loads of standalone printers of various shapes and sizes. Our average toner order is £3000 and we order toner at least once a term.

 

Annoys me how much is wasted in the school, but not a lot I can do about it, so I just put up with it now.

 

Some departments like Art are getting through £200 of toner a term.

 

Mike.

[localzuk]

@button_ripple

 

You can install vmware and have samba and pykota running in that, on top of your windows box. And it would all be free.

 

But as I said, just take the inkjet away and put the colour laser in its place. Don't give the option - it won't work.

[laserblazer]

I moved the colour printer out of the staff work area and put it in the library office. This means they have to walk 20 metres to get their print. That's worked well. Pupils are told they must always ask before printing and must never use colour unless the teacher specifically says so. I record each cartridge change and if I feel they have been taking the p*ss I say sorry we have run out and it will be a few days until the next order arrives. Now, if I go into an ICT suite and they are printing in colour, the teacher will rush up and justify it.

 

I also suggest teachers get the admin staff to print heavy colour stuff on their laser printer because the quality will be better (and it comes out of admin budget )

[tomscaper]

@button_ripple

Do you have any printing management software to limit how much they can print and keep logs of what they print, we use papercut works with windows. - http://www.papercut.com

Also we force staff to photocopy rather than print, so say if they need 30 copies of a document staff used to print it out 30 times. so now we make them photocopy it, which the photocopier is far better for this and ink is cheaper and lasts longer.

 

We also charge for paper, paper is locked away and we log how much they take. Currently tallying up the charges for this term on paper, ink and photocopying, it is looking very expensive, but papercut shows exactly what was printed, how many pages and who by.

[localzuk]

@tomscraper , he says that he doesn't and has no money to buy any...

[jcollings]

We spend about 11k a year on consumables which I think is a scandal.

 

We took all our inkjets out over time and replaced them with laser (b&w) or colour (HP2600n cheap as chips) - in the long term these work out a lot cheaper.

 

We really need to implement some kind of control but Pcounter doesn't work well with our QMS from what they say.

[Edu-IT]

This is probably a daft question but what do you mean by QMS?

[tomscaper]

@localzuk

Didnt notice the part about the budget, my fault i briefly skimmed the message.

 

@button_ripple

I know your budget has gone, is there any chance if you explained that they could save money in the long run, that could get your budget increased a little.

The logger part papercut is free so you could use it to show them how much is being wasted. This might force there hand and you might get some money or get the SMT on your side to get the staff in to shape regarding printing and wastage.

 

We waste alot of paper, i will go into the comptuer rooms to find a whole ream of paper has been wasted and no one has come to collect it.

Staff and Students both don't care about wasting paper.

We have whiteboards, computers which supposedly makes the system paperless but they still need to print for some reason.

[laserblazer]

We have whiteboards, computers which supposedly makes the system paperless but they still need to print for some reason.

 

They tell me it is because they need to keep records of pupil achievent. It makes me laught. The PE Dept video the kids and keep it on DVD. The Music dept records the kids and keep it on CD. The ICT dept print it out and keep it in ICT Folders.

[Geoff]

The ICT dept print it out and keep it in ICT Folders.

 

We're pushing printing to PDF atm to get round this.

[jcollings]

This is probably a daft question but what do you mean by QMS?

 

QMS Printers - they are minolta/knica whatever they call themselves thee days.

[SOSAGES]

install pcounter/papercut/print manager plus

charge for prints + photocopies

make money or at least break even

Edited May 19, 2008 by SOSAGES

[elsiegee40]

Local printers are mono lasers, apart from the one in the office for our secretary which is colour.

 

If staff want to print colour they have to use the network colour laser in the ICT Suite. The inconvenience of having to check whether the printer and room are in use and of having to change buildings to get their output slows them down!

[mrforgetful]

Yeh Papercut to limit their printing.

 

You can also tick the box in printer properties to keep all printed jobs if you want.

Though some people do get confused when things break I often get told 'theres still 257 documents waiting to print'

[kennysarmy]

Without warning we introduced a print credit system using the software Print Manager Plus.

 

years 7-11 get 6 prints each week.

years 12-13 get 10 prints per day.

 

If they need more for coursework etc they have to come see me.

 

We were forecasting in the region of 25-30k on toners/inks alone never mind paper.

 

Staff are also encouraged to photocopy as that costs them 3.5p per copy as there dept. gets charged 5p each time they print to a networked printer.

 

Without the credit system (which has only been running since last week) I am sure students were just printing for the sake of it -possibly bringing in their families printing too....

[ranj]

I would take a more pro active approach. Install some printer management software and then compile a report and show SLT your findings. Once they see those then they will pay some attention.

 

Imagine how much man hours a week you could save by not replacing toner and cartridges.

 

My rule is take out all your inkjet printers and replace them all with lasers with high yield capability this will involvles less time for techies, will save costs in the long run and the printers are far better.

[David_PCN]

Week 1 + 2 :Audit Only.

Week 3 -6; Use quotas to stop waste (I recommend to set this to affect 10% of users)

Week 7+; Use extra rules ro redirect jobs based on content/size or block jobs.

 

Most Audit software has a reasonable eval period - use this to prove the requirement.

 

Soon the message gets around, and everyone thinks about what they are printing.

 

[SOSAGES]

Week 1 + 2 :Audit Only.

Week 3 -6; Use quotas to stop waste (I recommend to set this to affect 10% of users)

Week 7+; Use extra rules ro redirect jobs based on content/size or block jobs.

 

Most Audit software has a reasonable eval period - use this to prove the requirement.

 

Soon the message gets around, and everyone thinks about what they are printing.

 

 

I agree, as soon as they see how much they spend and the first time a job gets denied because they didn’t choose duplex (or whatever reason you set up) they will hopefully start being sensible.

 

I think most people just need to be shown how much money they waste and then they wont do it again. Going to them with some detailed reports of what they have printed is an excellent start. I dont know of any print monitoring software that would give you plenty of report options.

google print management/ print accounting / print monitoring etc etc or use the search tool on edugeek to find various options.