Print management software

[Ric_]

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.

 

It was only ever little annoying things... not the constant spooler crashes I know some people received!

 

I just figured, why spend all this money on a piece of software that has annoying bugs and doesn't offer as much flexibility as I would like when I can make my own PyKota server?

 

I have been running a PIII (Xeon) 700MHz with 1GB RAM as my print server for over a year... admittedly large jobs and heavy load slowed down printing but it has never actually fallen over! PMP wouldn't even have run on this I suspect. I am today building a quad 3GHz (P4) Xeonwith 4GB RAM to replace it. This server cost approx. 2 years maintenance for PMP!

[Michael]

@Ric_ - You pay maintenance? All the sites I support bought the software for £500 (from memory) and to upgrade is optional.

 

I took a look at 7.x and it didn't include anything that made me think the upgrade was justified. 6.x does the job as intended and all my sites are happy as printing costs are managed.

[Ric_]

@Ric_ - You pay maintenance? All the sites I support bought the software for £500 (from memory) and to upgrade is optional.

 

I took a look at 7.x and it didn't include anything that made me think the upgrade was justified. 6.x does the job as intended and all my sites are happy as printing costs are managed.

 

Maintenance is optional and gives you support and free upgrades.

[Michael]

Not sure about free upgrades I'm sure it's included in your maintenance charges!

[cookie_monster]

We ran PMP 6 on a PIII 1000MHz with 1GB RAM for 2 years and it was flawless that was on 2003 server as well, it was also our WSUS server and it never seemed to get bogged down.

[sahmeepee]

pcounter vote++

[Busybub]

Interesting that the later versions of PMP still have the same quirk that I am also experiencing on v5, which also occasionally throws a funny and doesn't update properly.

 

Latest one was increasing the kids print quota by £253.15 when it was supposed to add £2.50... quite why it decided on exactly £253.15 I don't know, but I have had to resort to updating groups manually just to be sure.

 

Only other remarks for anybody thinking about PMP, messenger service needs to be on for clients to pick up quota warnings, and v5 doesn't like HP3600 printers and cannot apply settings to them. Presumably the later versions have fixed this.

[localzuk]

Only other remarks for anybody thinking about PMP, messenger service needs to be on for clients to pick up quota warnings.

 

No it doesn't. There is a client that can be installed on clients which provides the same functionality, and allows for users to mouse-over the icon and check their balance.

[Dean]

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

 

Has anyone got the client software in an MSI form so that I can do a silent install of it.

 

Dean

[Busybub]

No it doesn't. There is a client that can be installed on clients which provides the same functionality, and allows for users to mouse-over the icon and check their balance.

 

 

True, but that's user initiated. If the messenger service isn't running on the workstation, it won't pick up automated messages from the print server.