controlling printing by password

[mercer77]

I teach autistic children, some of whom have an obsession with printing certain pictures, which I let them do as a reward once they have finished their work. I need a simple way to control their printing. I have used a program called printlock (first post so I can't link, but first fine on google) which simply pops up a password dialogue box when something is sent to print. This is perfect when it works, but is unreliable and now has stopped working entirely, and the developer is now ignoring my emails!

 

This might be a rather newbie question, but does anyone have a simple solution?

 

Thanks!

Neil

Edited March 26, 2012 by mercer77

[6Foot2]

From your description of the product I am guessing that this is the URL you wanted to post:

 

Link: Printer Password on your Windows PCs - Download Now

 

To address your question have a look at this:

 

Link: PaperCut - Print management software used by 50k organizations to control and quota printing

 

It isn't free but you can download a 40 day trial to see if it works for you. You can set print quotas, schedule when queues are available/not available.

 

No exactly what you were looking for, perhaps, but it might do?

[Sylv3r]

I guess you could also pause the printer and just delete the jobs you don't want printed and unpause - pause when necessary.

[mercer77]

I guess you could also pause the printer and just delete the jobs you don't want printed and unpause - pause when necessary.

 

Brilliant, thanks for the replies! The trouble is that the printer is also shared by other classes and teachers and pausing it would stop them printing too, so I need to control it by the single computer. I'll have a go with papercuts - looks good!

[sister_annex]

Brilliant, thanks for the replies! The trouble is that the printer is also shared by other classes and teachers and pausing it would stop them printing too, so I need to control it by the single computer. I'll have a go with papercuts - looks good!

 

 

You could always create multiple queues that point to the same printer (assuming network based printer and some form of print server).

 

This would allow you to stop one queue from printing (and therefore students) while not affecting the others who may send jobs to that printer.