print release station

[sted]

does anyone know of any software (preferably free/cheap) i could install so when people send a job to the printer it just sits there until they go to a pc near the printers and tell it to output?

[dhicks]

does anyone know of any software (preferably free/cheap) i could install so when people send a job to the printer it just sits there until they go to a pc near the printers and tell it to output?

 

You can set up a print-to-PDF "printer" on a Linux server running Samba and Ghostscript so that when a user prints their print job gets made in to a PDF document and placed in a folder corresponding to their username. Then you just need a touch-interface terminal of some kind next to the printer running something that lets users select jobs they want to be printed. You can get small "plug" computers with two ethernet ports that will let you use a pass-through connection to connect the terminal and the printer to the network if you only have one network point free, and USB-powered touchscreens for the interface.

[TechMonkey]

I may be wrong but I think PaperCut does this with a web interface. Depends on your definition of cheap though.

[laserblazer]

It probably doesn't help you but we now print virtually everything to our Canon photocopiers and they have 99 memory boxes that you can store to. Really useful feature. The other great thing about printing to photocopiers is the admin people look after them, so I don't have to order consumables, change the toner or fix paper jams.

[sted]

I may be wrong but I think PaperCut does this with a web interface. Depends on your definition of cheap though.

it does been playing with it on a vm

It probably doesn't help you but we now print virtually everything to our Canon photocopiers and they have 99 memory boxes that you can store to. Really useful feature. The other great thing about printing to photocopiers is the admin people look after them, so I don't have to order consumables, change the toner or fix paper jams.

again some schools i support have these one i was at dosent

[glennda]

Yeah would recommend papercut as is fairly robust.

[Michael]

Photocopiers are definitely the way to go. Easily the most cost effective and many copiers have the option (including Ricoh and Canon) to 'print to store' where the document is held on a hard drive. Printing quotas can be set up and it's fairly simple to manage.

 

I don't think having many different makes/models of printer controlled by software quotas is as good as the management built into a device.

[zag]

Papercut here also, they have a print release app

[protocol]

We use Papercut here too.