Spec for a Print Server?

[TechSupp]

Had an issue yesterday where a teacher sent a load of high res photos to print and killed the server dead as it ran out of disk space! Once I'd figured this out and deleted the print job and informed them how to change the res of photos before printing I got to thinking that maybe setting up a print server may be worth while., but what spec does it need to be, server or just XP? Got an Espresso cachepilot going spare at the moment so wondered if that would do? Do I need to do anything other than set up the printers and share them out?

[TechSupp]

Just realised I could do it an easier way for the moment and move the print spooler location! Might do that untill we sort out a new server, but still interested as a side note as to my original post if anyone cares to offer suggestion.

[sted]

if you use xp it will only allow 10 clients before it will need rebooting iirc

[featured_spectre]

crank up the RAM to your print server. Ours was getting buggy after about 20 print requests (when a class was told to print) and it fell over after a while - especially on the big jobs like hi res photo's. It had 2GB RAM, I cranked it up to 16GB and its been fine since.

[TechSupp]

Its a photocopier so not sure about adding ram and would probably cost big time. Would like to budget in for a new server at some point so moving the spool is only a temp fix I know. Could do with resizing the partition I suppose as a longer term fix but dont have the time, money or I suppose confidence to attempt something like that at the moment (if it aint broke don't fix it but if its bleeding just stick a plaster on kind of thoughts :-) )

[buzzard]

Is your current server good enough? I know this sound stupid but if the specs are good enough just stick in additional RAM and HDD space and you'll be fine, our print server in my old place was a reall old HP workstation that used to run bromcom on NT4, if it ever got a bit slow we just maxed out the memory. AFAIK it's still going and doing the job after 8 years, I do think we stuck on Server 2003. How many printers does it have on and how many users print to it?

[skell]

Our current print server spec

 

- Windows Server 2003 x64

- 4 GB RAM

- AMD Athlon 9650 Quad Core

- 160 GB HDD

 

Desktop parts in an old 2U rackmount case.

 

Cheap as chips and hosts a couple of other things too.