Print management software

[ltunstall]

Does any one know of some print management software as kids seems to be printing out rubbish all the time and we are wasting alot of ink and paper.

 

ideally would love it to be free but its never the case but any infor will be great thanks

[jamin100]

Print Manager Plus from Softwareshelf.com

 

Not free but works really well!

[kennysarmy]

Print Manager Plus from Softwareshelf.com

 

Not free but works really well!

 

We use that here as well

[Dos_Box]

Thirded, I use it too. It saves a lot of time and effort.

[pallen]

PMP here too

[TechSupp]

Paper Cut Print Logger is free, it does not manage the printers, just log what is printed by who, but what does manage the printing is putting a graph using the collected data on the staff room wall for all to see! The graph of shame has certainly made an impact where I have used it.

[cookie_monster]

PMP here as well.

 

Sorry to slightly redirect the thread ltunstall but does anyone use the client reporting tool?

[Sylv3r]

We use Pcounter here - a few teething problems with the drivers on certain Printers so Im not going to recommend it until we get those problems sorted.

 

If it all works as it should do, then it should be useful. Not sure of the cost, we got it thrown in with our new school photocopier solution.

[elsiegee40]

Print Manager Plus here.

 

It has only started to have a real affect here after we implemented "real" costs per page:

34.5p colour, 10p mono - Kids have a 2 colour pages per day limit.

Teachers have a larger weekly limit

Office staff have no limit (but most of them don't use the network printers anyway!)

 

We also use it to block jobs by name: so document (catches unsaved word), http (catches direct from internet printing), full page (catches A4 photos in Windows Photo printing wizard) are all banned.

 

Since the new page prices and name restrictions we have halved printing on the network printers

[Michael]

I use PMP 6.x and most of my sites. Integrates perfectly with Active Directory and soon pays itself off.

 

However, I had a look at PMP 2008 (version 7.x) recently and unfortunately it's rubbish. It didn't work, but re-installing 6.x worked. I couldn't identify what the problem was!

 

If you use Windows Firewall in your network, you'll need to make an exception. If you disable the Firewall using Group Policy, PMP works perfectly with wired/wireless LANs.

[dgsmith]

Nearly 35p for a colour copy? What sized paper.. A1?! Most of our mono printers cost 0.5p in the toner, so we calculate it to the nearest whole number up including paper/running, which is usually 2 or 3p. We use papercut which generally speaking is effective, although some tweaking on client reliablity is ongoing. The logging features are truely excellent and we can click on any monitored printer and get lists of recent documents immediately, or long term printing in forms of pdf and the like. There is also a free version of the software, albeit not as compact but inclusive of the more popular features, as detailed on their website (papercut.com).

 

Our costs are more truely reflective of actual costs, with an added pence or 2 for running costs and paper (so, the most expensive A4 colour printoff is 6p). That may be a reflection of the fact we give all students an allowance of "£10" to last the entire academic year, which given our trials last year, is more than sufficient for 95% of them.

 

Although there has been a noticeable decrease in printing (obviously not as much as if the charges where higher), the money regained when they must finance their own printing (if/when their allowance expires), should cover any excess costs; needless to say, most students are ensuring it doesn't come to that, thus are more concious of what they're printing and the quantity.

[jamin100]

PMP here as well.

 

Sorry to slightly redirect the thread ltunstall but does anyone use the client reporting tool?

 

Do you mean the small icon in the taskbar which tells the user how much credit they have left?

 

If so, then yeh we use it for all the staff.. they can hover over it an get the info or double click on it... very useful and they don't keep asking me how much credit they have left

[FN-GM]

We use Pcounter, works pretty well. The support is OK.

[localzuk]

We currently use PMP 6 but are now looking at CZ Print Job Tracker and CZ Print Polisher combined. The first does all the tracking, and allows for 'per project' budgets as well as 'per user' (which is a hugely useful tool). And the latter allows you to add text to printed jobs via templates. So we plan to add the username and date/time as a header on the pupil accesible printer.

[boomam]

Papercut here.

Good software. Easy to use, low memory footprint, supports multiple servers.

Can charge per person, per account. Can do top up cards, loads.

I highly recommend it.

[eean]

Check your manufacturer's website - OKI do a free tool (that only works with their printer) but can give very accurate costings. It looks at % coverage of each colour, how many colours are used (so how many rollers have been used) etc...

[cookie_monster]

@ jamin100, how do you roll it out i can't find an msi and it won't package with WinInstall?

 

 

@ Michael, i don't remember having to add a Windows firewall exception, what did you need to add that for?

 

Cheers.

[Michael]

@cookie_monster - For the PMP client you install on the workstation, to connect to the PMP database on your print server.

 

If the Windows Firewall is enabled (on XP), Windows will prompt you to allow the PMP client access. Of course if the Windows Firewall is disabled, it just works.

[cookie_monster]

Oh right i've never noticed that when i've been trying it maybe because i have the file and printer exception enabled.

 

Cheers.

[Geoff]

Linux box does our printing here. Samba + CUPS. Pykota is the software I use for quotas/monitoring.

[cookie_monster]

Geoff, does this tell your users when they're running low on credits?

[Geoff]

Yes, it sends emails and will communicate with a win32 client app that will pop up a message onscreen too. However you can supply your own script to do something else if you want to.

[farmerste]

i have used pmp v6 since it came out, it works well at stopping prints according to restrictions, the only problem i have found is that it doesn't update users accounts each monday when i tell it to, sometimes it does, and other times not.

i'd try the other software first:confused:

[Ric_]

I used to use PMP 6.x but didn't find it entirely reliable and it wasn't flexible enough for my needs. I now use PyKota on a Linux box and have never looked back. As Geoff says, users get bombarded with emails when their balance is low/depleted.

 

There's also a nifty little feature to stop the little blighters printing the same thing out over and over jsut because it doesn't print instantly - I have it set to bombard them with emails again

 

We do physically charge the kids after they use the credit that we give them at the beginning of the year but mono prints are a fraction of a penny and colour is (at a maximum) 10p-ish. Staff printing is charged back to departments too (although they receive an allocation at the start of the year - this is an incentive to print less... the less they print, the more of the allocation there will be left over to buy crayons and the like).

[Michael]

It's true, I also found bugs with early versions of PMP 6.x however the latter versions (I'm using 6.0.0.123) and it's very reliable.